Mark Holtzman, Chair of the accounting department at Seton Hall University, is one of the few accounting professors who really gets it. Not only is he a really nice guy who is passionate about accounting, he’s a member of the really small club of social media enabled business professors. He blogs regularly at Freaking CPA.
Pic credit – Mark P Holtzman at Freaking CPA
Holtzman is sold on the idea of using infographics. He wrote about it in April, 2012, “Accounting and Infographics.” In the image at right, he shows the complete disconnect between accounting and infographics.
Infographics are fairly easy to create. They are created in PowerPoint, and what accountant isn’t functional in PowerPoint?
Today, Holtzman posts the following infographic on his blog. Created by Bisk CPA Review, thisinfographic discloses that accounting graduates can earn a nearly 50% increase in salary by becoming a CPA. Bisk CPA Review helps students prepare for taking the CPA exam.
Michelle Golden is a terrific resource. She advises professional services firms (e.g., accounting and law) on growth. She is extremely well regarded, annually making the Accounting Today list of Top 100 Most Influential People. I feel fortunate indeed that we are friends.
In the following video, Michelle teaches us how to make a meaningful connection with someone upon first meeting. She points out that the traditional elevator speech doesn’t work and shouldn’t be used.
When asked, “What do you do?,” some of us succinctly provide a one or two word self-description. Mine is, “I’m an accounting professor.” Knowing that most people ask only out of politeness or as a means to break the silence, I never provide details. After the predictable, “Oh, that’s a really tough subject,” or “I hated that course with an unrivaled passion,” this topic shuts down and perhaps we continue talking about something else.
For many of my readers, though, making a contact that could lead to a potential sale is extremely important. So the traditional sales guru recommendation is to launch into a rehearsed elevator speech. I’ll do this if I want someone to read The Summa.
Michelle Golden says that a typical elevator speech epitomizes everything that is wrong with marketing today. It is like product marketing, which is far different from services marketing. The elevator speech broadcasts a message, “Buy me.” And most people shrink back or shut down from such a message. She calls it spam. The elevator speech delivers information at the wrong time and place is therefore irrelevant to the listener. She says that the elevator speech does nothing to build trust.
Michelle continues on. She says that what you want to communicate is you can help other the other person. And this can only be done if you first find out more about the other person. I like this thought, shifting the focus from self to the other person.
Michelle Golden recommends these five questions to help get the other person to open up:
Where to you work?
What inspired you to go into that?
What do you like about what you do?
What was that like when you started doing that?
How do you approach something that you are doing now?
She says that often the person will reciprocate by asking you questions. This is where telling personal stories comes in. And by telling a story relevant to the other person (because you know about them), you often get a chance to help them. And that gives you a chance to stay connected.
Michelle Golden is a fantastic resource, and you should watch her video.
From the data I’ve seen, we receive twice as much daily e-mail in 2012 than in 2008. And yes it has hit me too, like an elephant dart square to the face.
Pic credit: Holly Riesem of Ragan.com: News and Ideas for Communicators, “7 ways to manage email overload.”
It gets started for me in the morning upon waking up. Not yet out of bed, I pull a laptop onto my lap and start checking e-mail. Today there were 1,000+ e-mails to download. A few hundred more arrive in the next six hours.
At one time I budgeted three hours per day to deal with all my e-mail. Now, I’m afraid to tally up the time. It’s getting more difficult to process it all before lunch time.
Why do I receive so much e-mail? Mostly it is related to my job. As a professor, I must keep up with developments in the accounting world so I can stay current in my classes. I receive news alerts from Google (about 60 key terms related to accounting), newsletters from major national and international newspapers, Twitter notifications, LinkedIn group notifications, etc.
As a blogger, I keep up with the latest essays from influential professors, economists, writers, social media gurus, etc. Most e-mail contains a link to a news article or blog post. Reading a paper newspaper takes way too much time. Everything I read is online.
Holly Riesem of Ragan.com: News and Ideas for Communicators has a nice piece titled, “7 ways to manage email overload.” She suggests the following.
Create an e-mail schedule.
Create these folders: follow-up, hold and archive. Then add sub and sub-sub folders as necessary.
Two minute rule–immediately deal with anything that will take two minutes or less. Otherwise, put it in the follow up folder.
Unsubscribe from lists and alerts as you no longer need them.
Longtime readers of The Summa know something is up with me. Instead of posting 15 times per month, this fall I’ve barely posted at all. In large part this is due to having taken a new position in a different state.
The new position has forced some changes in my teaching. I’ve written several new chapters for my students. These chapters are basically transcriptions of my traditional lectures. But they usually take 8-15 pages, and are much like textbook chapters. Add to this new HW problems and solutions for each one, and most of my writing output has been directed toward students.
The semester is almost over, and I’m making plans for the four week break. I’m going to blog almost every day. In addition, I’m going to read a lot.
Return on Influence by Mark Schaefer
Double Entry by Jane Gleeson-White
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Too Big to Know by David Weinberger
If you have suggestions for additional books to read, please leave them in the comments below.
At first glance, this blog post appears to be fluff put forth to get a chuckle or laugh from you. There is a serious side to it, though. Social media should be a subject of keen and intense interest for all financial professionals, be they out working or still at college. Opinions, thoughts, ideas can go viral in this social media world. Memes are one such channel for these opinions, thoughts and ideas.
In this blog post I exhibit a collection of memes on studying for tests. Working professionals probably remember taking their own exams. Current professors and students are now in crunch time just prior to final exams.
As defined by Merriam-Webster, a meme is “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” In 2012, many of us think of it as an image or video passed from one social media user to another.
The study of memes is important, because memes open a window into the popular culture. Memes that spread quickly reveal what a large number of people think or believe.
I am an accounting professor, and what students think is of interest to me. I performed Google image searches on key words related to studying. Google results are structured to reveal the most clicked on images first. All images presented in this blog post are thought to be in the public domain.
Most of these memes convey what older generations have called gallows humor. Those who are about to be hanged are somehow able to find humor in their situation.
A consistent theme running through the various memes is that studying is painful.
Although officially called Thanksgiving Day in the USA, many call it Turkey Day. Ever wonder why?
I have many fond childhood memories of Thanksgiving in Iowa. It was always spent with Mom’s side of the family. Each year there was always a huge turkey and many pumpkin pies to eat. There were so many pies, we kids were allowed to cut our own slices, as large as we wanted. And Aunt Bessie’s whipped cream was the absolute best.
Thanksgiving feasts have changed quite a bit since then. In America they are all standardized. How so? They all start at the same time–halftime. And now we have space turkeys who go “Hubble, hubble, hubble.”
Ever wonder why a turkey is called a turkey? Mignon Forgarty, the Grammar Girl, has the answer. It turns out we should call it a Mexico.
One of my favorite TV shows was The Smothers Brothers. Regular Jim Stafford always had a funny song for Thanksgiving. Hope you enjoy.
It’s official, I’m a flipper. The Accounting Today commented on my work in flipping the classroom. I’ve been doing it for years, predating the 2007 figure in the image below. In this post, I explain what is flipping the classroom.
What is a flipper? I’m not talking about the dolphin named Flipper. Nor am I talking about a 1920s flapper, nor a basketball flopper.
In a flipped classroom, students study theory at home and come to class for the how-to. To give the students the theory (and the why), professors digitize their lectures (usually via video or audio). Students are supposed to study these.
Now to present an infographic by Knewton and Column Five Media that does a fine job of summarizing the approach.
Flipping the classroom works well in college, and it works great in collegiate accounting courses. It is the foundation of my becoming a master teacher.
