What is the #1 issues facing young professionals and emerging leaders in the CPA Profession?
We asked them and they answered. First in a private ThinkTank session as follow-up to our 2014 Leadership Academy class and just last week at the AICPA EDGE (Young Professionals) Conference in New Orleans.
Their answers were consistent across both groups. and the #1 issue is:
Not enough time!
Turns out that helping them save time and grow as leaders was a major focus of my presentation, The Bounce – Maximizing Your Career Trajectory at the AICPA EDGE Conference after polling the 200 young professionals in the audience (poll results are slides 35-43).
The group was almost three quarters (74%) Gen-Y (millennials) and one quarter (25%) Gen-X and one Baby Boomer (1%). Two thirds came from Public Practice and 20% from Business and Industry, a emerging category of Consulting captured another 8% and Government and NFP was 8% with about 1% in Education.
Here are the top seven issues facing young professionals:
- Not enough time
- Being Reactive vs Proactive
- Talent Development
- Keeping Up
- Growth (and opportunity)
- Doing More with Less
- Information Overload
- Context and strategic thinking – understanding their context (strengths and values) and the organizational and industry context they operate in.
- Connections – “your network is your net worth” and they need to build their network virtually (micro-connections) and in-person.
- Communication – the ability to make their thinking visible to others in-person and virtually with their digital footprint (using blogs and social technologies).
- Collaboration – after all it is the year of the sticky note and MBSN.
- Computers – being technologically savvy to leverage computers to accelerate their own learning and development (see my top tools on slide 30).