Episode 145: Workplace Transformation Is Not An "Elongated Harvest", It Takes Time And Patience With Chet Buchman
Workplace transformation is not an 'elongated harvest' — it takes time and patience. In this compelling episode, we sit down with Chet Buchman, the Managing Partner of Swindoll, Janzen, Hawk & Lloyd LLC. Growing up in a small agricultural town with fewer than 500 people, Chet’s journey to leading a flourishing firm in Wichita, Kansas, is a testament to perseverance and vision. Chet shares his remarkable story of transitioning his firm from a grueling 52-hour workweek to a more balanced 45 hours, illustrating the commitment and strategic foresight required for such a transformation. Tune in as we explore groundbreaking initiatives like the 'Path to 45' and 'First 15 Reading Program,' which have significantly enhanced both the firm's culture and the well-being of its employees. This conversation is a masterclass in balancing ambitious career goals with personal fulfillment, the lasting impact of mentorship, and the power of small, intentional changes in creating a balanced and meaningful life.
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Workplace Transformation Is Not An "Elongated Harvest," It Takes Time With Chet Buchman
First 15 Reading Program
Welcome to this episode where I interviewed Chet Buchman. He is the Managing Partner of Swindoll, Janzen, Hawk and Loyd, a full service accounting firm in McPherson, Hutchinson, Manhattan, Selina, and Wichita, Kansas. Chet’s passion lies in helping people. Whether it’s with their clients, their community, or themselves. His focus is on helping them get where they are to where they want to be.
Chet is a member of the Kansas Society of Certified Public Accountants, Central Kansas Chapter of KSCPA, a member of the AICPA and the Charter Global Management Accountants. He is certified by the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts as a certified valuation analyst that certifies him to perform business valuation services. He is certified by the exit planning institute as a certified exit planning advisor.
This designation is specifically for business advisors who work closely with owners of privately held companies. During this interview with Chet, we discussed his journey from a small town with a population of less than 500 people that was focused on agriculture and farming to eventually leading his firm as a managing partner in Kansas. Chet shares his journey of transforming his firm from working on average over 52 hours a week to 45 hours a week and the commitment it took to get there. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview. There’s so many great action steps to understand of what true workplace transformation is.
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Welcome to this episode where I’m with Chet Buchman. I am so excited to have you on the show, Chet. Do you want to give a little bit of background on yourself before we get started?
Thanks. I’m excited to be here. I’m looking forward to it. I am Chet Buchman, the Managing Partner of Swindoll, Janzen, Hawk and Loyd, which is about an 88-year-old firm located in Central Kansas, a mid-sized firm and multi-location. We’re best known for our first fifteen reading program, as well as what we call PATH to 45, which is most people, most weeks, during our busiest times of year, work a total hours of 45.
What’s the first fifteen reading program?
At the beginning of every day, people start their day. They have the option of reading for fifteen minutes. This is our 11th year. We’re up to like getting close to 4,000 books read. Somewhere around 400,000 pages, 45 pages. It’s all optional. It’s not a book club. It is required that it’s a nonfiction book, a physical copy book. We have libraries stocked around our offices. You’ll walk around and you’ll see probably 70% to 80% of our team on any given day, beginning their day with reading.
That reminds me of those reading books in elementary school where you got like prizes.
The same in Kansas. It was the book reading program with Pizza Hut. That’s get a personal fan pizza.
I want to get to that Path of 45 but we’ll hold that later to your story because I want to see how you got there. We’d love to start with the background on you. Where’d you grow up? What did your parents do for a living?
Growing Up
I was generally raised in a small town in Northeast Kansas called Alta Vista. It’s a town now that probably has a population of around probably 350 to 500 people, mainly Ag. I’m the oldest of five kids. The ranges from our ages, me, the oldest then my youngest sister’s thirteen years younger than me. When I was in the 5th grade, my parents moved us to a town, McPherson, Kansas, which is about an hour and a half away from where I grew up. This is applicable, probably.
How old were you, fifteen?
Fifth grade. I was about twelve. My grandpa died at a fairly young age and he owned implement dealership, so farm implement dealership. My dad was on the business side and my uncle was on the mechanics side. After my grandpa died, it’s a failed family business transition. My dad and my uncle didn’t get along. It was a rub. Shortly thereafter, maybe then a couple of years, my dad packed us up and moved us to MacPherson, which is a town of about 14,500.
That’s a big difference.
My dad left that and sold farm machinery for another company, Case IH. Over the years, he went from that, got my back and got his master’s degree, then did insurance for a lot of years. My mom is a stay-at-home mom. She raised kids doing hard work.
Going back to your dad and your uncle, was your family close with that extended family?
Very close. A lot of our relatives still live in and around the community. We were the black sheep.
I’m assuming you had a lot of cousins.
I do. Dozen or so, probably at least.
Were you in contact with them when you moved or did you have to move from them, too?
Maybe like a couple times a year, we would go back and spend time with my grandma then holidays but that was about it. Whatever that was, many years ago, that communicates the technology was much different.
What was your perspective on that with your dad and your uncle?
I didn’t understand that at the time because I was so caught up in the effects on me. Fifth grade is such a transitional phase. In that school, I knew everybody. I was a part of everything. In McPherson, a smaller town. In Kansas, it’s hard to come in and fit in. I wouldn’t have been a tremendous athlete or anything like that at the time or had all these creative artistic abilities that would set me apart. That was a tough time period for me, just the transition and getting acclimated to a new school.
Were you mad at your dad?
Yes.
How did you get past that at that time?
I don’t know what I did at that time. That’s probably something that took me a lot of years before I could see that differently. My dad’s a hero to me. There’s a part like, I look up to the guy. I think the world of him and my mom. It’s like you’re stuck with this dichotomy of one part of your brain is frustrated, sad, angry, and disappointed. The other part is these are your heroes and you look up to them. You’re sponging everything they teach you.
I remember a time when my dad told me. He said, “As you get older, I’m going to get smarter.” That about maybe my second or third year in college is when I started understanding why he did what he did. It became like, “That was one of the hardest things that you had to do.” It helped me out tremendously in my life. I never know what the pathway would have been but it did create so many more opportunities.
Challenges, yes, but opportunities for me and my siblings and our family. That’s something I started talking more openly to my dad in recent about that so I can know more. He did a good job of protecting. He never said one bad thing as I remember as a kid about his family, my uncle or any of that situation. He didn’t make it somebody else’s fault or saying a negative would make feel bad or angry towards another family member. I appreciate that about how he handled it.
When he’s saying, “I’m going to be seem smarter to you get older,” what was that epiphany that flipped that for you?
I was a late bloomer. I bloomed late. Maybe like my senior year at high school. You have those couple of year periods where you do whatever blank out and do a lot of dumb stuff. Maybe I started maturing and paying closer attention maybe in my sophomore junior year of college then I started then seeing my dad differently.
I don’t remember what the exact time was when that happened, but I started engaging with him differently. Also, I would say then a couple of years after I got into the working world, I started reading more. As I started working on my own personal development, you start coming across things about forgiveness and looking at things a little bit differently. It allowed me to examine that part of my life and that part of the history of my life. As I examine that, you start having more a-ha moments like, “Huh.” I probably reacted like a twelve year old kid. Not as a mature adult in that situation.
It’s so important just that thought because there’s a lot of thoughts in our head that we carry from whatever time period that we don’t reassess. We carry that and then all of a sudden one day, you might look at it differently if you stop and think about it instead of repeating the pattern or the thought or the whatever you say. We don’t even noticed that it’s happening. To your point, at 20 years old versus a 12-year-old, how can I reassess something differently? Do you remember any book you read or something that started when you’re talking about reading books on forgiveness and things like that? How did that even begin?
I don’t remember the exact book. I probably started with reading the classics, probably Zig Ziglar, Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. Some of those things, which in those books allow you to do some self-evaluation in that genre. You start peeling back those layers and you start saying, “Oh, wow.” You realize that. You understand then that was a highly emotional time period, which is why it’s such a strong memory.
As you said, you think of the situation, hold these patterns then, all of a sudden, you see them through a different lens and it sheds new light. And then you also say, “How many other of these situations, beliefs, and patterns have I been holding on to?” You start unpacking them a little bit one at a time. Maybe that’s the maturing process.
If you allow yourself to mature. What your dad said was interesting because sometimes when kids grow older, they see people for who they are and don’t think they’re smarter. They might have thought they were smarter when they were younger. That’s a good reverse pattern to have as well. Being the type of person that you did that internal reflection is probably unique, especially at that age to do it.
It was helpful. As Tony Robbins, it takes you sometimes a little bit to catch up. Tony Robbins has a book. It was Unleash the Power Within and Awaken the Giant Within. One of those two books where he talks about how you can go back and figure out these triggering moments. As you examine the triggering moments and you can make some choices like execute your own agency over like how you process that man going forward.
While this was going on, your dad was trying to protect you from all the adult drama and keeping that away. What was your mom doing as you were struggling?
At that time, at twelve years old, maybe she was pregnant with my youngest. She miscarried in her sixth too, but being a parent myself, it was a lot of little kids around. She was doing everything she could to keep the wheels on. It was a lot. Our household was a lot. I didn’t grow up a lot of money or anything like that. We had a lot of other things but not tangible things. It was a lot. It was keeping us all going.
The other thing is, as the oldest, you’re the one navigating for everybody else. I’m sure your younger brothers and sisters were looking to you to see how to handle things.
As you look back, I don’t think I handled it very well. I knew for a fact I resented my parents for doing that for several years. During that time period, I wouldn’t have been the best brother to my siblings.
Those are important things to recognize but also the fact that you’ve had those conversations with your father and I’m sure your siblings as well. I had a memory come up for me of something that I was made to do. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do by my mom. It was not inviting. It sounds silly, but I was that age, twelve years old. I was about to have my Bar Mitzvah and I wasn’t allowed to invite my best friend.
For some reason, my mom had an issue with this girl all the times that I was with her. I do not know why but it made it miserable. I couldn’t sleep at her house but I was always trying to dodge it with her and not say anything because I didn’t know how to handle it. What was I supposed to say? I don’t know why my mom doesn’t like you. This came back to me. It sounds silly, but it ended up being a major thing where when I didn’t invite her, it created this whole thing where people are like, “You’re standing up to her.”
I didn’t think I was standing up to her at all. I didn’t want to do it but I don’t know what happened on her side. I only know in my side. I felt like I was hiding or whatever. That’s how I’ve always viewed the story. For some reason, my friends and I were talking about things that happened when we were younger and this came up for me. I was like, “I don’t know what happened to her,” because she ended up going to another high school.
I reached out to her on Facebook. I hadn’t seen her since I was twelve. I was like, “I don’t know if this affected you or not, but I need to tell you. This is what happened.” She responded, “We’re going to dinner tonight.” It’s funny but there’s a whole story on her side that I never considered. At twelve years old, you’re still in your own story and out of control of whatever is happening in your environment.
That’s great. You’re going to be able to talk to her about it too.
Even when something might seem silly, older, facing people and having those conversations and what their perspectives were when you can get a better perspective is so healing.
To that point, your friends like being a part of a community like having your friend group. That is your life then your parents are trying to say, “They’re doing everything they can to protect you and give you the best chance of success as possible.”
Workplace Transformation: Your parents are doing everything they can to protect you and give you the best chance of success as much as possible.
You can’t rationalize it at that age. Those are important things that happen in our life that are those moments of learning then how we grow from it. How did you end up being in accounting from the background that you were in?
Into Accounting
During my childhood, my dad worked a lot to take care of take care of our family. I was raised to work hard and like most accountants, I was good with numbers. I was given numbers fairly decent with people. Also, when I look back at it. I’ve talked to my dad and his viewpoint was accounting, the CPA specifically. CPA is like a very safe career path.
If you’re thinking about, let’s say the pressure of your oldest. You want your kids to be okay and live a good life. It’s like, “These align well.” He had a lot of influence and directed me to that. I had an opportunity. I took accounting classes in high school, Accounting 1 and Accounting 2. As I said, I was a late bloomer. I wasn’t popular. I also had the high school accounting teacher grab ahold of me. I poured into me. His name is Chris Strathman.
He helped me out tremendously. I was his teacher’s aide as a senior. Where I went to undergraduate, I had an opportunity that a good accounting professor there at the time, Dave O’Dell at McPherson College. I had an opportunity to go there and play golf and do sports information, which is like stats. Dave poured into me too when I was at college. It’s like I had this pattern of people directing and pouring into me and giving me an opportunity. It’s with them carrying on me and me being okay at the class. It resonated and clicked then I could start seeing it. I was on the pathway.
This has come up in a number of my interviews. These people that are these moments in time that have such a powerful and it could be a bad effect, too. In this case, the fact that they took attention and did something. No one ever knows those seeds they plant in people. Have you kept in touch with your high school teacher or your accounting professor?
I’m fortunate enough. I went to grad school at K-State, Manhattan. We ran away to Kansas City for a couple of years and move back to get married and raise our family. They’re both in and around the community still. I’ve been around them for the last 15 to 20 years. To share appreciation, not as much as we should. I had opportunities to connect with them in different ways. It’s been good to see it.
It’s also good to see like, I can see them through a different lens and start noticing all the people that they have affected in that similar way. It was so cool. I was nowhere near the only one. To your point, if someone’s got their right mindset, the impact that they can have on just one kid or one person at a time and over a 20, 30, or 40 year career. The impact is incredible.
Workplace Transformation: If someone's got the right mindset, the impact that they can have on just one kid or one person at a time, and just over a 20, 30, 40 year career, is just incredible.
We had a conversation before this episode but it is one person at a time. Sometimes, when we’re looking to change and transform, we think we have to go big and do these big things. You have such an exponential impact one person at a time. Think about what they did for you and now you have this firm where you’re affecting all those people and all their families. That all draws back to the high school teacher. That’s so cool.
The maturer version of me now recognizes that. For the last ten years, I was not wired to always like, “Go big or go home.” You realize, “You do need to focus and do one thing at a time or one person at a time.”
I’m sure too, for you having seen the different where you didn’t have much growing up and the possibility. This is what your dad was trying to get through to you. It’s like, you can have a different life than this. You can have a more secure life than this. You probably get a taste of it and are like, “Look at what’s possible.”
Very much so. It’s like every step up to what you mentioned. Every step along the way, there’s been someone who’s opened a door so I could see. As you can see, someone cares and grabs you. Grabs your shirt and pulls you along too. It’s like, “Now my eyes are wide open.”
When you graduated college, where did you start working at this firm or were you at a different firm?
I started at a big four. I started at KPMG in Kansas.
Me, too.
Where at?
In Cincinnati.
I did an internship there then went back. I was there about a little over a year then I got busy feet and left. I ran away from public accounting. At the time, it was sexy to be a mortgage broker. I was a mortgage broker for a period of time and went into banking for about two years. What I didn’t realize is that, the mortgage broker job was 100% commission. What I did not plan for and it didn’t even dawn on me and think about.
I wasn’t asking anybody for advice either. From if you help somebody with a mortgage day one, it takes at least 30 days to close. I had no pipeline. No real big network. It’s like, “I’m going to start here a little bit before I figure this thing out.” It was a good learning opportunity for me then we moved back and raised our family.
Where did you end up working when you came back?
There is a bank. When you’re starving, you have to figure out and you get resourceful. The connections I did have were back in. Kansas City is about three hours from the town I’m in. I had some connections back to the bank that I’ve banked with since people out days at age twelve. I called on the real estate department there if there was any loans that they couldn’t do or needed help with anything. I start cultivating the relationship there.
That real estate loan officer, maybe six months later-ish, left and went to another bank. He reached out to me to see if I would come back and work at their bank. It was Home State Bank and Trust. I had an opportunity to come back and do that. It’s been helpful for me in my career to see the banking side. I did that for about two years.
One of the partners here, the old managing partner came to me and said, “There’s no guarantees. Our firm, one of the partners, Swindoll, is getting ready to retire in about five years. If you’re willing to start back over at the bottom and work your way up, there may be an opportunity for you.” At the time, maybe we had a firm of about 22 or 25 people. I also then realized in banking, it’s hard to make a good living. You can make a good living, but where I wanted to get to, it’s hard to do that in banking without owning the bank. He tapped me on the shoulder at the right time.
Workplace Transformation: In banking, it's hard to make a really good living without owning the bank.
Your trajectory, in five years you became a partner?
I was 30 when I became a partner, then I took over managing partner at 32.
How did that happen?
Timing. The previous managing partner, Kyle Hawk was also my mentor here. He had done it for probably 15 or 18 years previously. I’m wired towards like advisory and business. He was my mentor. I sponged it. Timing-wise he was ready and I wanted it. I wanted to be a part of helping drive change in our firm. It’s a mixed bag and to turn over their range to a 32-year-old. His hindsight probably would say one of the scariest moments of his life. Probably Daisy would say, “It was the stupidest thing I ever did.” Other times like, “That was taking a shot.”
Do you feel you were ready at 32?
The 32 year old version of me was cocky enough. I was ready. I was moderately invincible, it seemed. I hadn’t been bloody enough to realize what I know.
That is the difference in age. When about myself now versus younger, you think you want all these things. You’re climbing for all these things then you get them. You’re like, “That’s all it is.” Now there’s more stress. We’re somewhat wired and goes back to like, “I was wired a little bit more toward.” You have an achievement orientation you want to have. It’s the best of both worlds. I can help people and I can see the impact, which is awesome. I’m achieving. For me, it would have been seeking approval and the oldest stuff. All those things. You’re going the next level of achievement and each one you realize, “To your point, this is what that is.”
The Shift
When you said you’ve been bloodied, maybe explain what that shift was for you.
Early on, I’ve learned to try things and understand it’s okay to try things and you’re going to fail as part of that process. We’ve been embarking on this journey of Path to 45 like transforming our firm. Transforming a quality old school legacy firm from school to a new school. We’ve been doing that for the last twelve years-ish.
Why didn’t you want to?
I was buried to quit.
It’s too many hours for you.
Our 4 or 5 partners at the time, the average was 2,800 to 3,000 hours a year. I had three kids. My oldest at the time would have been like 6, 4, or 2. Whatever the numbers. I was feeling like not a very good dad. I was struggling and say, “I’m going to do something. I’m going to have to quit or do something different. I can’t.” That’s hard for me because I was brought up to work hard like work hard, go get it, don’t whine, don’t complain, and go.
What I was about to quit and we had a partner retreat called a retreat, un-facilitated retreat we got together. We got on a board and talked about, it’s like, “What do we want?” What we found was each one of us wanted the same thing. We wanted to work less and make more. The make more wasn’t a huge thing. It was like work less then be there for our families and have more fun doing what we do. In that partner retreat, we all came out of there knowing we wanted something different or bought into it.
Was everybody around the same age?
No, I would have been whatever that had been. At the time, maybe 31. Maybe the year before I became the engine partner and they were 50 or 51. The other three partners would have been like twenty years older than me. They’re in their early fifties and wanting something similar but no one knows how to do it.
It’s interesting because even now, in this day and age, we still struggle in that age range of partners wanting to shift because now they’ve done it and it’s become a way of life. What was it that those part because you had young kids. All those stressors. They’re not in that same situation. Where they feeling pressure from the staff? What was it that they were feeling pressure about to make this change?
Going through it now, you reach like, I might say midlife crisis. You reach a point in your career where you establish your career. It’s not about the money then anymore. You start evaluating lifestyle. In the 50s, they’re evaluating lifestyle. It’s like, I wanted something different. Fundamentally, it was a lot when you’re cranking that many hours for that many years. We still had a family friendly firm. They weren’t missing any kids games. They’re going to the kids games, then coming back of working. I didn’t miss any of that stuff but just ready. Ready but still lost on how to do it.
Workplace Transformation: You reach a point where you establish your career and it's not about the money anymore and you start evaluating lifestyle.
How did you do it?
That’s the bloody part. It’s like, “Here’s what we want,” and there was no playbook to how to do it at the time. At least one that we were aware of.
You were way ahead of your time.
Old school from new school. It’s like, “Go. You have our support. Start figuring it out.” We’ve tried hundreds of things. Some big things and some small things. We fail at probably half the things we try, or they lead to adaptations but we started going. Honestly, the first hardest thing I had to do was the walk of shame.
The walk of shame was like, we had at the time in one office location. It used to be during a busy season and we started early. It’s like a race. Not a race but who would get their first. You go from getting there at 6:30, 6:00, 5:30, 5:00, and to 4:30. One of the hardest things to do was to start coming in at 7:00 when everybody was coming in at 5:30. I say everybody, the three other partners, a couple of partners, and walk them by their office. It was probably more me than anything. They may not even notice that we did what we did.
It’s still 7:00 AM.
To intentionally start changing and say, “We’re going to do this different. We got to try this.” Being willing to do it was a tough one. Over time, the dominoes started to tip.
What was that tipping point? What caused it?
What caused it was the momentum of like starting, like taking the action. I would say, the original thing was us committing. The second thing was starting to take action. The first action was start coming in a little bit later and stick to it and not give.
I want to pause there because that’s important. You have one little thing to change first because if you take on too many things, it’s going to fail. You had to get over that hurdle of time in the door.
You started attacking in one next big problem at a time. In the early days, our January was a mess. It’s like our January created this domino effect. Our payroll team, our 1019, we get off to such a bad start. Once we started building ads, the domino start tipping. It was like, “Let’s fix January.” We started with January.
From there, it was the next thing. You can tell by in the background, I read a lot of books. It’s like applied learning. Learn something and try to apply it. Here are some different theories. Would it work in practice here? We tried all different kinds of stuff.
What are some things that failed?
Firm Forward
There is a great book written by Edi Osborne called Firm Forward. I read it many years ago. It resonated. She did a magnificent job writing a story on a firm transformation. Have you read that before?
Firm Forward: A Journey From the Land of Compliance to the World of Reliance
No, I haven’t.
It’s good. It’s a simple story read. It is excellent. It resonated where we were at that point in our journey. At the time, she had what this thing called level five advisory. I’ve bent towards advisory. The thought process was, if we could take an up-skill the majority of our team to delivering advisory services. We’d be able to do less of the stuff that we don’t want to do. More of the stuff that creates this huge feedback loop than we know. You’ve done tons of advisory.
When you do advisory and you help people. It feel like it creates such a sense of joy in you and your heart but then also allows for premium local service, and deeper relationships. All the pauses come on the backside of it. At the time, she had level five training where you could go out and get trained by her in California.
Maybe it’s like $12,000 to $15,000 a person, you could go out there. I had this bright idea that rather than doing that, why don’t we have her come here and train more of our people? We had her come do it. There was nothing that she did wrong. She did a fantastic job. We got a ton of value from it, except for we shocked our whole ecosystem. If we had a lot of people on our team, now hindsight is 2020.
We had a lot of people on our team that were comfortable and stuck delivering core commodity services and weren’t doing, as about the spectrum if you have this core commodity services. You have the jump to basic advisory, intermediate advisory, and advanced advisory. We had tons of people that weren’t even doing basic advisory.
We were trying to take them from no advisory to in management consultant superstars overnight. Again, that was the immature version of me saying, “This makes tons of sense.” It made sense to me. I did it, but realized is that, “I need to be a little bit smarter. We should add 2 or 3 of us go through that then stair step, bring along the next ones.” I got going too fast, screwed up, and immature. It shocked our ecosystem. It took about a year to rebuild that.
Somewhat rebuild the trust of the team because we had to pivot but we still do a version of that now. Edi’s training was transformational. Her stuff is good content. Her book is fantastic. Where I screwed up is I had a lot of people in the room that weren’t ready to be in the room. We gave them the option if they wanted to do it or not. Looking back, it’s like, that wasn’t a valid choice we were giving them. They would have felt the pressure of their career had they not said yes to it. not to put them in the wrong or rest of our time.
The big thing with that when I work with firms on this transformation, as you said, you have to start with leadership and make sure you can shift all of that. When you’re introducing it to people on the staff, you’ve also come up with what you’re going to do to help nurture those people so they feel safe and secure that they’re not going to lose their job. People’s natural tendency is to feel fear versus excitement and what’s in it for them. If you haven’t put a plan together of like, “This is how we’re going to support you on this journey and train. We’re not going to just let everyone see who can rise to the top.”
I thought, “Everybody was in the same mindset. I’m halfway as me.” It’s like, “No, Dummy.” At the time, I was introduced to systems theory after that, complex adaptive systems and systems theory. As soon as I was reading that stuff, studying it, getting to know it, and apply it. It dawned on me like, “Oh my gosh. I committed one of the biggest.” It’s like there’s that.
We all walk in our own shoes and that’s the thing. We can only see things from our perspective a lot of times if we don’t have that moment to step back and try to think about what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes. It’s like the story of your dad. Until you could step back and see what it was like to be in his shoes outside of your perspective. It’s the same thing with time. We can look back and see those things.
Very much so. You look back and you’re like, “Oh no.” Put your hand on your head like, “What did I do?”
You wouldn’t have this amazing firm. There’s a balance because one of the things I do believe is, to be a good leader, you do have to make people uncomfortable. Your job is to constantly be thinking about what do we need to do next? That’s a way of protecting them, too. Not just being sad as quo. There’s always going to be change so that we can stay on top and be the best for our clients and for each other. There’s a balance of vision and process.
A trigger happy leader that like, “Slow down and think things through a little bit.”
When you realize that it’s not like a thing to judge. The growth part for anybody is awareness. If we become more aware of that, we can only grow from it. Our role in life is to constantly be aware and notice things but not ever be too hard on ourselves about it. When you saw that happen, you had to shift again and learn.
Pivot. It’s like you’re saying, sometimes you have to experience it. The only way you know is to experience then take an inventory and be more self-aware of a learning a learning mechanism.
Path To 45
Where are you at now with this after this journey?
This is a good busy season for us. A few years ago, we drew a line the same because we had made a lot of progress. Most people in most weeks work in 52 hours a week. It’s just not good enough. There’s a difference between 45 and 52 hours a week. That doesn’t sound like a lot mathematically, but the seven hours we’re talking about is people getting their weekends back and/or one extra hour in the evening.
I always think back if I’m a working mom or a working dad. I get home at, let’s say, 5:30 or 6:00 and the kids go down. At 8:00, you start your bedtime routine. It makes a huge difference for an elongated period of time. If we’re talking about a normal 10 to 12 week busy season. It’s not a one or two week harvest. It’s an elongated period of time and it affects it.
That’s from your perspective.
We have a metaphor we can always use here. Where we’re at is, we drew a line in the sand a few years ago. Again, this is a learning moment because what I would have thought years ago, you had a more mature version of Chet. He was, except for, I was going to go from 52 to 45 in one year. I would have shock the whole ecosystem again. Thankfully, I started embracing the team way more and using a lot of checks and balances. Knowing that like, “You have your own biases. You have your own the way you experience our firm. Make sure you’re gathering value, different opinions and seeking counsel around our firm.”
We ended up at the right spot. We went from 52 to 50 to 48 then 45. That’s during the various busy times of the year. We have multiple departments, in our outsourced accounting department. For example, payroll would be have a busier year-end. In December, we want to look up for them. We have an audit department. We have several 630 year-end audits. We do several employee benefit plan audits. You have different times of the year where you want to make sure. For us, it’s path to 45. We want to cap what people are having to work during their busy time periods of the year. Not just the traditional what you call tax season.
Does that mean what will happen is mostly some people thinking maybe you had to hire more people or raise prices? What things did you do systematically to get there?
All the above. Are you familiar with Henry Cloud’s work on boundaries?
No.
You have boundaries very much. That helped a lot of thinking through boundaries or theories of constraints. If you take like boundaries, theories of constraints, and Parkinson’s law. These are all things. Parkinson’s law is work expanding to time. Theory of constraints would be things like, and this is a chat, a bridge version, which like I get half the themes.
When you constrain a system and you say, “We’re going to go from this normal work week down.” We go from 52 hours to 50. That’s a boundary and we’re not going to change it. It forces us to figure out how to. Constraining the system and the resources forces you to get smarter. We’ve done then all the above. We’ve hired seasonal. We staff a bunch of interns. We have admin interns and executive assistants. Our interns, this busy season. We had 22 on our team. That’s 22 if I send an email that everybody during tech busy season.
It went to maybe 116 people. We’ve chosen to do that onshore versus offshore. We have an offshore yet but all the things. We’ve called clients. We’ve added strategic locations. We’ve staffed more heavily and admin. In general, we’ve adopted a theory of having our accounts function like doctors be doctors. How do we help and centralize billing? How do we take things off our accountants hands and get the right work to the right people at the right time?
Scheduling like all kinds of stuff. In theory, at a high level, the macro decision was constraining the system and committing to it. Everybody knows in the heat of the battle, I will not say, “We’re increasing hours this week.” If people know that we will not do that, then it forces you to work smarter. Not just harder. We’re still fighting and we’re working on now is called Path to 45 2.0. Our last two weeks of this busy season, too much compression. Even all the things we’ve done, we had way too much compression and it wasn’t as much fun. 2.0 is like we’re constantly working on it.
That is a big piece of this is. It’s never done. You have to monitor the system to make sure that it maintains because the minute you stop watching it, then it starts popping back. Who is disciplined enough or watching the system enough? Where are those people planted around the organization to ensure that you can meet your goals?
Into that point, in the system, we’ve gotten to where in our firm where every day from 9:30 to 11:30, we have a thing called focus time. That’s two hours a day where our office functionally turns into a library, which it’s two hours a day to do your deep work, focused work, best work, and uninterrupted work. It’s this old adage too we looked at.
An a-ha moment was, I can’t remember how many times I used to say and we used to say, “If I only had a couple of hours of uninterrupted time, what could I get done? Every time we would have like free time, it’s amazing what you can get done.” We reverse engineered that like, why don’t we incorporate that across our firm? Every day, we started beta test during busy season, maybe four years ago. Over time now, every day throughout the year, it’s on everybody’s calendar from 9:30 to 11:30. Focus time to do your best work.
That’s amazing. There’s so many things about this that’s so important that you’ve talked about. About the length of time this takes, people think there’s an easy button. We’ll just raise prices. That’s not going to get you there. As you said, there’s so many facets of the system, organization, processes, and technology. You have to evaluate everything in your firm then there’s a firing order. You can only take on so much at once of like, “I’m going to do this now. I’m going to do this next,” and realize that it’s progress.
We have a value in our business called progress not perfection because we know if you’re putting something new in or we’re putting a new initiative out. It’s not going to be perfect. We’re going to run into issues as we go through it but we want to keep making progress and saying, “What can we do better?”
Rapid Fire Questions
It’s important in your story because there is no easy way to do this. Everyone’s got to be on board to do it. You had to have support of your partners to do this then the monitoring of it when you’re coming into work later and they’re still not coming into work and being accountable to each other on this thing. It’s just such an important story. I’m so glad that you were able to share that with us. I do like to end with some rapid-fire questions and to figure out from you where you’re at and what things you would look to do different from a personal standpoint or what things you like. Pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Money. Money would be fun.
Things or actions I don’t have that I want with money.
A jet. Once you’ve had the opportunity to fly private, it’s blows you.
It’s hard to go back.
I don’t know. I have one. I want to be able to go on our airplane or small airplane, get on it, go, and get back.
Like a car. Things or actions I do have that I want to keep.
House. A home. A big one for us. To make sure our house is a home and the stuff where like our kids and friends want to be at our house and do things at our house.
I love that. Things or actions I don’t have that I don’t want with money.
A second home. I’m not a good maintenance person. I’m keeping up with something else.
You don’t have a private jet to fly between them.
I know it’s like that.
Last one, things are actions that I do have that I don’t want.
We have tons of crap at our house. That’s the professional you say. like just crap that accumulates. We got to do a better job of purging those things.
You got to get rid of it. Many great things from your story. Is there anything that you haven’t said or you want to emphasize before we end the show?
I love that you’re doing this. I love the topics that you talk about. I would say to provide encouragement to anybody that would be reading this, you can. It’s cliché but anything’s possible in our industry. There’s a lot more people out there that can unite around a common vision. If you want a better life, transform your firm or transform your career, it’s possible. There’s a lot of people that will gather around you to help you do it.
For us, there isn’t anything that we’ve remotely accomplished that would have happened had I not leaned more into our team. The level of things that we’re able to accomplish now happen because we have a bunch of people bought into a vision and they’re helping make it happen. I hope that anybody that readd this finds encouragement.
There’s a lot of people who want what we all want like a more meaningful, balanced, and integrated life. There’s a lot of people that want the same thing. It’s one of those things that we feel like a little bit hesitant to talk about, but then as you start talking about, you realize, we are all somewhat similar and want similar things.
Thank you so much for being on. I look forward to talking to you again soon in the future.
Thank you.
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Now for my mindful moments with this interview I had with Chet. There were so many key areas here for those of you that are looking to help transform your organization and what it means to do that. The path is never over of transformation that a lot of times we think when we go into change management that we do it, set it, and forget it. Except that’s not how it is anymore. Technology keeps getting better. We keep having more demands on the system, whether it be from clients and from people that work for us.
It’s important that we make the commitment to the long haul of making that journey to where we want the future of our organization to be. During this interview, we talked about his path to 45 hours a week and what it took to get there. The other processes and programs that he has in place in order to ensure that they create the culture that they want in this organization. We talked about his life story and some key moments that changed him as a person. That was a tipping point in 5th grade.
In fifth grade, he moved an hour and a half away from his extended family that was living in the small town in Kansas. They had a population of less than 500 people to a town that was a major city in Kansas. This was a time in his life where we all know what middle school is like. Not understanding the perspective of every decision an adult has to make. One of the things he learned was how hard it was to fit in. During that time, being mad at his parents for going through this but his dad saying to him, “As you get older, I’m going to get smarter.”
That’s one of the things that when change happens and we have to understand that as leaders. A lot of times in our organizations, the staff that is there are comfortable. There are some staff that want change, but when they go through what change means. They aren’t as excited about it than when they started because change means work. We have to start somewhere. We might go through hard times as we’re going through change management.
I thought this quote is such an important quote in change management because as leaders, we’re making decisions that we think are best for the future and not everyone can see our vision when we are doing it. As time goes by and as things get implemented, then as people are feeling the change and the benefits of the change. All of a sudden, you’re the smartest person in the room. As things are going wrong along the way, people aren’t real happy with you.
Even what he experienced as a child, he also has experienced as an owner of a business of trying to move his business into the future and making sure everyone is on that journey with him. As he got older, he understood his father better. One of the things that appreciate he appreciated about it was that he understood it from a different perspective.
It’s important that when these things are happening in our life, we always go through from one lens of what it’s like to be us but not necessarily thinking about what it’s like to be someone else. One of the things that he learned was he never said any bad things about the family or didn’t make him feel guilty for the feelings that he had during that time, which I also think is a good lesson in change management. It’s realizing that the people that work for you are going to feel frustrated and to not hold them accountable to that or blame that forever on them.
Everybody deals with change differently. It’s important that as people learn and they’re nurtured along the way, we help them to not feel guilty about maybe how they first felt about it or even what they said. We don’t always hold that over their heads. I see a lot in the consulting that I do that when someone fails at something early on, especially in something new. A lot of times, people don’t forget. They’re bringing it up like three years later and way past that performance era where they’ve improved but we haven’t opened our perspective to see them in a different light.
That’s important. As we learn from Chet’s path and his own experience and his family just realizing what it takes to do the things that we need to do that are hard. If they were easy, it wouldn’t be easy to be a leader. We talked about him wanting to drive change with his partner group once he became managing partner. What he had a discussion with his partners was that many of them were working 2,800 to 3,000 billable hours a year. Which meant that those partners were mainly focused on client work versus leading the people around them or managing or coaching.
They were missing important times in their families lives and their kid’s lives along the way. It wasn’t even just the staff that was asking for this. It was also the partners. This started many years ago where they sat around a table at a retreat and asked themselves what do they want. They wanted to work less, make more and have more fun. They all had to buy into it.
This is a big message that I have when I do consulting. We think there’s an easy button to making change on this organization as Chet has said here, it’s taken many years to get there. They had the vision years ago but they had to keep each other accountable and be the example for everybody else in order for them to see that it is okay to make these changes as well in their own work life. If they don’t see the leaders doing it, it doesn’t happen.
Their path to 45 started out with little things that they had to change. One of those changes were the partners were coming in at 5:30am every day. If the staff is seeing that, they’re feeling like they need to come in at 5:30am. Chet talked about how hard it was for him to even walk in at 7:00 AM in those initial years and walk past those offices of those partners so that they would see that he was making a shift so that they would start shifting it as well.
He talked about what was important. Number one was commitment to the change. Also, as far as the actions to do one at a time. Sometimes, we take on too much. When we do that, we leave people in the dust. Not everybody learns at the same pace. He ran into that problem very early on where he shocked his whole ecosystem and jumped in too fast. Instead of stair stepping things and taking one thing at a time. He wanted Things to move faster and when he did that, people failed at that because they didn’t understand what was going on.
They weren’t being nurtured along the way so that they felt safe and they weren’t going to lose their jobs. It’s important that people during a change process, as we know what we want. We’re also building in what is the support we are going to provide in order to make sure that people feel safe during those change processes. I also thought that it was an important thing. I also titled the episode where he said it’s not a 1 to 2-week harvest, which shows his background.
Instead, it’s a long-gated period of time that it takes to do change. Going from 52 hours a week to 45 hours a week took four years. They had to keep adjusting little things in their system to get there. They went from 52 to 50 then to 48 then to 45. That meant year-round. When we talk about making this change, we don’t necessarily think about what are all the processes and surrounding things we need to do in the business in order to do that. That includes people, automation, offshoring, how we schedule, price, client call, and set our client personas.
All of these things take time. Each thing makes its own difference but it’s not just one thing. I loved that they set up this 9:30 to 11:30 focus time every day, where people are uninterrupted and able to get work done so they’re not multitasking and not having to do things later in the day or over time in order to get work done.
He left off with that anything is possible when you get people to unite around a common vision. That is so true. We cannot do these things alone. It takes a team, a village, and a community and everyone believing in the outcome. Also, getting their feedback along the way to ensure that it will be successful. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Chet. There were so many actionable stories that he talked about during this.
I also truly appreciate how transparent he was about his life story. We all learn from each other’s life stories and it shows that we connect better when we show up more transparent. When we shift our energy, it shifts the energy around us as well. If you like this episode please subscribe. Also share with your colleagues and friends so that everyone can take these actions. It’s one person at a time making this better.
Important links:
Chet Buchman – LinkedIn
Kyle Hawk – LinkedIn
About Chet Buchman
Chet is the Managing Partner of Swindoll, Janzen, Hawk & Loyd, LLC (SJHL), a full-service accounting firm in McPherson, Hutchinson, Manhattan, Salina and Wichita, Kansas. Chet’s passion lies in helping people. Whether it’s our clients, the communities we live in, or each other; his focus is on helping them get from where they are…to where they want to be.
Chet’s areas of concentration include coaching closely-held businesses and individuals, tax strategy and planning for individuals, partnerships and corporations. Chet has Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and Finance from McPherson College (McPherson, KS) in 2002 and a Master’s Degree of Accounting with an Emphasis in Taxation from Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS) in 2003. Chet entered the accounting profession with KPMG, Kansas City, MO in 2003 and joined SJHL in August 2006. He was admitted as Partner at SJHL in 2011 and became Managing Partner in 2014.
Chet is a member of the Kansas Society of Certified Public Accountants (KSCPA), Central Kansas Chapter of KSCPA, Member of the AICPA, and Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA). He is also certified by the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA) as a Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) that certifies him to perform business valuation services. He is also certified by the Exit Planning Institute as a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA). This designation is specifically for business advisors who work closely with owners of privately held companies. Chet is the founder of The First 15 ™ Reading Program and also the Certified Numbers Coaching™ training program and certification.
Chet resides in McPherson, Kansas with his college sweetheart, Jami, and their three children: Reese, Cru, and Everlee. The Buchman family is very active in the community, with all kids being involved in a variety of sports and activities – Chet has enjoyed coaching several of their teams over the years.