Episode 46: Set Your Self Apart: Analyzing Information Goes Beyond the Numbers with Todd Shapiro
Analyzing information is often associated with having to go through lines and lines of data and trying to figure out what it means. The President and CEO of Illinois CPA Society, Todd Shapiro, joins this episode to provide clarity on what it really means, not only in the workplace, but life in general. Growing up in a diverse environment, he had a different view than some from a young age. Recognizing the importance of diversity, he gives a reminder about the negative effects of stereotyping and generalizing people and situations on our society. In a corporate setting, Todd defines where diversity and inclusion should start as he talks about the issues with the pipeline of diversity. He further explains why being proactive, and understanding and analyzing the data you have strategically, are the keys to being successful in business and in the world.
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Set Your Self Apart: Analyzing Information Goes Beyond the Numbers with Todd Shapiro
I interviewed Todd Shapiro, the President and CEO of the Illinois CPA Society, one of the largest state CPA societies in the nation, representing more than 23,000 accounting and finance professionals. Prior to joining the society in 1998, he amassed twenty years of financial and managerial experience as Director of Finance for Unilever, a multinational consumer packaged goods company, as well as Helene Curtis, Quaker Oats, Zenith Electronics and Continental Bank. Shapiro is regularly recognized as a thought leader in the profession and has been named to Accounting Today’s list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting for five consecutive years. During my interview, Todd shares his background growing up in a small, diverse community outside of Chicago that has helped to shape his core values and passions that he has as a leader.
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I'm with Todd Shapiro. Todd, do you want to start off and give a little bit of background on yourself?
Thank you very much for having me. I'm the President CEO of the Illinois CPA Society. I’ve been with the organization for more than twenty years now. Fourteen years as the CFO and now as a CEO. I’ll be honest, I’ll come clean. I'm not a CPA. I may play one on TV, but I'm not a CPA. I am a finance person by background. I came out of the corporate finance world from large companies and midsize companies. It came out of that world to led me to here. I'm a lifelong finance person.
I’ve interviewed a number of CEOs. They're not of these societies and many are not CPAs, so it's the passion for the profession and what you're doing.
A lot of learning finance people by background. Being a finance person by background has helped me both in understanding the issues and in gaining some credibility with other professionals.
Let's get into your story because our readers would like to know where you began, where you grew up, what did your parents do? We'll start there.
I come from a small city about, a 60,000-person city, South of Chicago. It’s not a suburb, very different. It’s a blue-collar town. My parents, neither one of them actually finished in college. It was critical that all three boys were going to. Yes, there were three boys in the house. We're all going to go to college. I am the classic person who was good in math in high school. Of course, the accounting was there. I went to college. This sounds interesting. I went to college but decided very early on by my junior year of college that audit tax wasn't the path for me. I wanted to go the corporate route of corporate finance. It sounds strange, but I didn't do this.
I will tell you by my junior in college, I said, “I can see myself as a CFO of a company someday.” The reason I went to that corporate route was right away and even in college, I may have had somebody with a summer job, but I always enjoyed the business of business. In a company, I felt I could make a difference. I could get involved in decisions, I could get robbed and learn about the company and help make decisions. My very first job out of college was as an internal auditor. My second job, I had gotten down this trajectory of where I am now.
What did your parents do?
My mom spend time at home and then eventually became a teacher's aide. Bless her heart, she was a saint. She worked with kids with disabilities. She had a hard job in that. My father went through two years of college, dropped out and became a real estate salesman and then property insurance sale of a broker. Neither went to college but it was the expectation that we're always focused on education and us all going to college.
Why was that for them?
It's one of these I want my kids to have a better life. I will tell you that one of the cores of my soul is built on a family that was a middle-income family in a diverse community. I lived in a middle-income family and diverse community. I will thank my parents for actually allowing me to grow up in that a world because it formulated me. They probably always wanted their kids to have better. My father probably would tell you if he was alive, his regret was he made a mistake by not finishing college.
What did you learn from growing up in a community like that?
The very first thing you learn is my job at 15.5, I was working at something like Steak ‘n Shake. Cincinnati would understand this. I believe Steak ‘n Shake originated in Cincinnati. It had been and had gone private. I worked there as a dishwasher at 15.5. I realized quickly that that was not what I want to do for my career.
Analyzing Information: Value what you have and treasure what you have, but you also need to realize that if you want more, you would have to strive to achieve that.
You were working alongside people that were there.
It wasn't even that. It was going home at night at 10:30 or 11:00 at night and scraping the grease off your face. It's a hard life. In that kind of environment, I learned that you learn core values that you have to make your way and what you say matters. Being in a middle-income household, you valued and you treasure what you had. You also realized that if you wanted more, you would have to strive to achieve that. It was a very diverse community. One of the key initiatives of Illinois CPA side is focusing on diversity and inclusion and that core value came out. I'm a child of the late ‘60s, early ‘70s. I lived through the days of rage. Given the fact that this diverse community, our school was heavily impacted by the days of rage. I learned a lot about people, both good and bad, and about what I thought was right and wrong. I was very engaged.
Maybe you can give us a story. What sticks out for you during that time?
I will share a very short story. I was working at a food store, a grocery. I moved down from the fast-food place. I was tired of that. There was a young individual who happened to be black who tried to walk out of the store with empty pop bottles. He went to my high school. He noticed me at high school and decided he was going to try and make amends for me stopping him from absconding with some empty pop bottles. You take them and then you bring it back and you collect money on it. It wasn't about the racial unrest at the time. It was about people and you learn that right or wrong, people are people. You don't do the wrong thing, no matter what and you don't stereotype, you don't generalize because of the situation at the time or the people or the color somebody's skin. At the end of the day, you do something right or wrong, it's about doing right or wrong versus any color. We eventually had to resolve our differences. Let's leave it at that. When we resolved our differences, after I got on the school bus afterwards, everyone said, “This was a racial incident.” I said, “No, it wasn't. This was a question of right versus wrong. Don't take it someplace that it shouldn't go.” That was a lesson.
That's been going on longer than that. That's so hard with growing up in a diverse community and having those experiences. How do you suggest people to have that conversation? Obviously, you can't always go out and have a fistfight.
We resolved our differences. You have to be honest and try to understand, you’ve got to walk in the other person's shoes. If you can't walk the person’s shoes, then you'll never understand them. You have to understand the situation they're in. When we're all born, we all grow up. Two, three, four, and five-year-olds, they don't know. They don't have any preconceived notions. All the notions they have, they learned. It's justified based by your situation. It comes down to, how do you have those conversations without having to resolve your differences? You have the conversations because you try to be empathetic to anybody. You’ve got to do the right thing. How do you have those conversations? They're tough sometimes, but you’ve got to be honest. If you care and you're not doing it to make a name for yourself or to get a headline or something like that, people understand. People of all races and creeds, they'll understand.
Do you think it helped you living in a community like that as you've gone through it? How has it helped you?
I raised my kids in the suburbs, Chicago. You look at the difference. It made an impact on me from, one, never taking anything for granted. We lived a comfortable middle-income life, but it wasn't extravagant. We had a small three-bedroom house with three boys. It means two have a shared room. I learned never to take anything for granted and be appreciative of everything you have. I learned that if you want more and want better, you have to strive to do that. I loved my job at the grocery store stocking groceries. I came home one night and said to my dad, “I may go full-time at the grocery store.” He said, “No, I don't think so.” He saw that the path was limited. He didn't understand. I was a financial analyst. To the day my father died, he never did have a clue of what I did. He knew what I did. I said, “I'm a financial analyst for Quaker Oats.” He goes, “What do you do?” I explained it to him. He glassed over. That core stayed with me. Don't take things for granted, work hard, be honest and open to people. Always try to see the world through somebody else's eyes. That was key. It was a very political household. My family is in politics. My uncle was a one-time governor at the State of Illinois. I'm one of those weird people who think that most people who go into politics go into it because they want to right the wrongs.
People are well-meaning and then life happens sometimes. You're going to react to those things. This is important in that same vein of discussion. When you're talking about picking a career that you didn't see that wasn't in your household, which is a lot of the issues with diversity and inclusion in the accounting and finance profession, if you don't see it, how do you know that's an opportunity for you? What was your exposure to it?
Good math and go to college. I went to the University of Illinois. I was an accounting undergraduate. All was good. I was no different by any way than any freshman or sophomore. They have no idea what the world audit or debt. By the fact that it's about a $500 million company based out of Kankakee, my hometown, and my father was on the school board with the CEO of the company. By the way, they were called summer jobs. In 1977, they weren't called internship but a summer job. My summer job was as an internal auditor. That was a life-changing moment for me because I was going to be an accountant. I didn't know what CPAs were. I had no idea about CPA and I took the job. They didn't have me doing copies. I was doing bank recs, I traveled constantly for two summers doing inventory observations. I was in the Southeast. I was in Canada. I was in the East Coast. It was a great summer job, but it was turning point. I watched this other side of the company that I had no involvement with the treasury function, whatever it was. I was like, “I want to be involved in making decisions about what the company is doing to grow.”
There is an inherent thing in my DNA that loves the idea of growth and loves the idea of building. I love to build. I don't know where that came from. I noticed when I was an internal auditor that that desire to grow, the desire to help build a business wasn't satisfying. I went back and changed my major. That's why I didn't become a CPA. By the way, that is a regret. I finally become a CPA and I could have done as a finance major, but when that path of changing my major to finance and it was going to be corporate financing, but that was it. That summer job was truly a life-changing moment. Had I not had a summer job, it would take me a lot longer to find my path. That was what did it.
When you moved on after college, you went to the pivoted path that you took.
No, it didn't exactly pivot quite that fast. The reality is reality. The company that I worked for, they wanted to come and work in internal audit. It was time for me to get out of the 50,000-person town 60, 70 miles south. I worked in internal audit for a bank in Chicago for 1.5 years. I knew that wasn't my path, but it was the job I could get. Zenith Electronics, which your youngest readers won’t know what Zenith is. It’s everywhere. They were only the second-largest TV company back in the ‘70s. They had nobody in the internal audit job. You’ve got to take a chance. I went out and interviewed with them and I will tell you this. On my first interview, they had a whole day set up on me talking to different departments and such. I talked to one person and the very first thing he says is, “Why do you want to come work for Zenith in internal audit?” I looked him right in the eye. I wouldn't recommend this all the time in an interview. I said, “I don't. I have no desire to work in internal audit. I want to be a financial analyst. If it takes me working in an internal audit to get it, I’ll do that.” He walked out and came back and said, “We're going to change the schedule for today. Instead of talking to the director of internal audit, the manager of internal audit, and the controller, you're going to talk to these four people who were in financial analysis over the course of your morning. We'll have you talk to the director of internal audit too. At least we'll keep one of those scheduled.” That was it.
You ended up getting a job as a financial analyst. That's great. What an open guy. That's an important thing that he did.
Analyzing Information: People are people. No matter what, don't stereotype or generalize just because of the situation, time, or the color of somebody's skin.
I’ve told my son this too. I have two kids. One actually is a CPA. I see this in people all the time. In my mind, the key to being successful in the world of business is understanding and being proactive and understanding data and using analysis. As I went through my morning with that individual, and we talked about why I wanted to do finance, it's all about your thinking process. He saw something in me that felt I could come into the business as a financial analyst and be able to contribute and help the businesses grow. That's the core of my thinking process.
Once you got into corporate and that side, was it what you expected?
It wasn't what I expected. I’m dating myself again. Computers, what the heck is the computer? I have a slide I'm doing for young professional accountants. On the slide, I show a picture of an Abacus, the slide rule, a portable PC, and then a laptop finally, and a mainframe. I was luckier than most. The company I worked for, Zenith Electronics, was a baptism by fire tech company. This 24-year-old financial analyst. I'm the key advisor to the director of black and white TV products, audio products, and video products. I'm sitting in their budgeting forecasting meetings, providing feedback on what I think is going to be successful, not successful, which is in hindsight was crazy. What the heck did I know?
They were empowering.
It was down to the person, you had to be able to and you had to know your stuff. You had to learn. You had to do the analysis. I will always believe I am an analyst. I may be the CEO, but the core of myself, that has been the case since high school. I analyze, I process information. I analyze information. I’ll tell you, I don't believe in intuition. I believe everything that's conscious thought. I don't believe in intuition when it comes down to understanding, analyzing and processing information. It was what I expected. We had green bar paper. We didn't have computers and you'd be at work until 11:30. We were there at 11:30, 12:00 at night and sometimes back at 7:00 in the morning. All of a sudden, one day in the room there appeared these three things. We didn't know what these things were. They were these personal computers because Zenith was making monitors. We had three personal computers and we're like, “What are those? We’re on SuperCalc? What is SuperCalc?”
Even from that, yes, it was what I thought it would be. I went from there to a company called Quaker Oats. The accounting doesn't exist but people know. They’re a marketing-driven company. The way we're successful with the finance profession was if you could demonstrate the ability to process information, analyze information, and then call us that into a thought that was going to help drive the business or not drive business. I will tell you and some would say I was lucky because I got great projects. I would say that I got a great project because I was good. As anything in life. I'm also a believer that 50% of the opportunities that arise in front of you are because you're in the right place at the right time. Fifty percent of it is when that opportunity arises, you're able to step into it and perform.
It's still applicable advice as well because even though you're not on the green bar paper but as AI and machine learning have come into play and do a lot of those calculations for you, it's still what sets you apart as how you process and analyze information?
More than ever, I espouse to this. I was lucky enough even coming to the site, it was all happenstance. I truly believe with AI and RPA coming in, I am a believer. I hear people say all the time, “We've been through Excel and we've been through this technology thing.” I'm like, “This is not Excel. This is a whole new world.” I stand in the room sometimes. I will ask the attendees in a meeting, “Going back to 1995, maybe 1993, have we been through a technological revolution?” Inevitably every hand in the room goes up. I said, “No way. We have been through a tremendous evolution of technology. We've had all these productivity tools, which have changed everything and allowed us to do more. The revolution is coming. AI is coming.” To your point, what will separate the wheat from the chaff in the future with AI? Those who can process the information, understand the information, think about it strategically. I’ve always thought one day I'm decent as being an analyst and probably decent strategic thinking skills, with AI and RPA, it's going to be more important than ever was.
How did you end up with the Illinois Society?
I went from CFO and transferred to Quaker Oats and I worked safely and good. I worked for Zenith Electronics and Quaker Oats for ten years and I decided to make a move. Quaker was a great company, but it was a little bigger than I want. A little bit smaller company where I could have a big ramp. I went to a company called Helene Curtis. Most people go, “What do they do?” They made you think about Finesse, Schwab, Salon Selectives and other major brands of deodorant. They were in Chicago. I went to work for them as a Director of Finance. For my mind, that was my last move. This is the age.
This is old school. You wanted to work for a company. My dad worked the same company for 40 years. This is my last move. I thought Helene Curtis, their level of financial sophistication was not at the same level as Quaker Oats. Zenith was a great place of fire and brimstone. Quaker, for a marketing company, had very sophisticated financial theories and practices and thoughts. Helene Curtis didn't. I was able to bring that knowledge, that experience from Quaker. That was my last job. That was it. I started there in 1992 and left the company in 1997. As a finance person, they launched a strategic planning initiative in 1995.
They sold the company in ‘95. They launched the strategic planning initiative in ‘95 and they involved 100 people. They involved plant workers in this strategic initiative planning process. It was very broad and then narrowed down to 30 people then to ten people. I was a finance director. I was amongst a number. Maybe it was luck, maybe it's good, but it involved in that last part. At the end of the day, they decided to sell the company was the right solution versus trying to continue an independent company. The reality is they said, “Do you want to go to the East Coast?” I said, “No, I don't.” A job opened up in the only space that I know. Can you imagine going from Unilever? I was part of Unilever. I didn't leave right away. I was there for two years after the sale. I'm now looking for a $50 billion, 500,000-employee company. I walked into the doors and on the Illinois CPA Society, I was interviewed as their CFO. We all know that if somebody walks in the door and says, “This is not going to work.” For some reason, the CEO at that time liked my way of thinking. I looked at him and I said, “If you want a guy who's going to do the accounting, I'm not your guy, but if you want a guy who's going to be a strategist, I'm your guy.”
Look at you at your interviews telling everybody what you're going to do. That sets people apart. When they know what they're good at, it's not any good in an interview to say you're good at something you're not because then you're not going to be happy in the job.
The only space at that time had 63 people, I'm coming from a massive global company with sophisticated methods. If you want me to come in and do the accounting, I'm not the guy. That's not my expertise. Once again I’m honest and worked here. I did the accounting and all of a sudden, we have the site. He has a brand that we managed called the Center for Corporate Financial Leadership. That was we, I launched that. I launched it because notably CPA societies and the profession don't do enough to support the hundreds of thousands of CPAs who work in the corporate world. I realized that because I had come out of that world. I launched our Center For Corporate Financial Leadership and started developing education along with all my CFO responsibilities and administrative responsibilities. I did that. Our CEO left in 2000 and then in 2012 I said, “I’ll throw my name out there.”
Analyzing Information: You have to be honest and understanding. Walk in the other person's shoes. If you can't walk in their shoes, then you'll never understand the situation.
Going back to your beginnings, being in a diverse community, the society isn't always as diverse as that. What have you done as far as this effort because there's definitely a spotlight on it right now? I’ve been in a number of conversations where it's an uncomfortable conversation for many accountants, CPAs. They know it's an issue. They don't know where to begin. What is Illinois CPA Society doing to try to help in this conversation?
The first thing was to make it important. Going back to my foolishness, when you interview for something, I'm interviewing for the CPA, for the CEO job, along with other external candidates. I told them in the interview that if I'm selected, diversity and inclusion will become a key initiative. It was not a key strategic initiative in the CPA society before 2013. I said, “If I am chosen for this position, that will be a key issue. That's a nonstarter if it's not.” I used some interesting ways to describe what I thought. It had to start in the board and let's call it what it is. I'm interviewing with a search committee that had no diversity at it.
My first comment to the room of the interviewers was, “Why do you say basic stat?” I'm sitting there with the search committee. I said, “It has to start right here. It's going to start in the room here. We cannot continue to be a board of white men and white women if we are to embrace diversity as a strategic issue in this room.” Maybe I should have used the word ‘old’ in there too. Why would you sit in a room interviewing people and then refer to them as old white people? They were, but it was bringing point. What have we done? One was to start beginning to increase the diversity of our board of directors, because it has to start there. It has to start with the leadership of the organization. That's with the board of directors.
The other was to invest in staff invested initiatives. For instance, we have what's called our Mary T. Washington Wylie Program. Mary T. Washington Wylie was the first female African-American or black CPA in the world. She got her CPA certificate in 1943. One of our former board members was a partner at the firm that she started. She provided the pathway for hundreds, if not thousands, of people to become CPAs. If you think about the 1950s, you couldn't become a CPA because you had to have the experience. You couldn't get the experience if no one would hire you. One of this was a foreign board member who eventually worked for a firm and went to the University of Illinois, graduated in 1953 and went to interview for a job.
The University of Illinois was a great accounting school back in the ‘50s. He interviewed with a large national accounting firm. They told him, “We'd love to hire you but we can't because we can't send you out to clients.” Eventually, Mary T. hired the young guy. She became a CPA because somebody took her under his wing. She got the experience, started all from Chicago and she literally provided the pathway for hundreds of people she would hire. You would get the experience, which gave the ability to become a CPA.
It's an interesting thing. When you don't walk in someone else's shoes, which is an important key here, when they took the requirement of not having experience, I always thought that was a bad thing. To be certified as a CPA, it's good to say that person has worked in the field, but I never thought about that being a diversity issue, that was an inhibitor to someone becoming a CPA. That's interesting.
As I was saying, this individual I'm referring to at Mary T, his name's Lester McKeever. He received the AICPA gold medal award. It brings almost tears to my eyes because Lester is my hero. He would tell you I'm insane to say that. Lester truly is one of my heroes in life. He helped form our Mary T. Washington Wylie Fund which is an endowment fund. How are we trying to pay it forward to make a difference? One is the Mary T. Washington Wylie Fund. We've now raised over $1 million for it and every year in January we bring 25 to 27 individuals up to Chicago. They’re college sophomores, juniors and seniors, and sometimes in graduate student programs. They tend to come from smaller schools. We can put them through a week of intern training. That intern training is how to do an audit. That literally is an intern training prep of how do you carry on a conversation? How do you dress? How do you do a business meal? How do you learn in a professional environment? We have accounting firms come in and talk about the accounting side of it. At the end of that week, especially the firms that have been significant tributaries of which all the big four plus some others. Granted, some others have been participants in that. They interview these kids, and most of these kids, the majority, have gotten an internship with these firms, which is a life-changing experience.
The accounting firms are going to the colleges these people went to. You have the opportunity. We provided them the training and then the opportunity to interview and get an internship. That's one way. The other is we have a pipeline issue on diversity. Everyone covets a black or Hispanic CPA person to hire in the firm, but they leave like everybody else. They go and they don't stay in public accounting. We have a pipeline issue. This is not a profession that is sought after. It's not an accounting major that is sought after. It's not a college major that's sought after by many in diverse communities, the black and Hispanic communities. We go out into the high schools, usually with somebody who is of a diverse background. We talk to them about how an amazing career this is. We get very direct. We go, “In four years, picture yourself making $65,000 or $70,000 a year.” When you go into the inner city of Chicago, those numbers that you can't even fathom. We very much believe that we've got to start in the high schools, if not younger, espousing the benefits of this profession, both the financial security, the financial benefits, the ability to be a player in the business world.
By doing that, hopefully get these kids to go to college and major in Accounting. In accounting, they think H&R Block down the street, they think catching H&R Block down the street. In fact, when we talked to high schools, we can't even say, “If you get in accounting, you can go work at Walgreen's,” because they'll think, “I don’t need to be an accountant to work at Walgreens.” If you had an accounting degree, you go work at Boeing because by the way, most of these kids don't know the big four firms. Work at Boeing, you work for the FBI. The paths open. The most significant thing we've done outside of scholarships is our Mary T. Training Program and focusing on trying to change the pipeline. It's going to take time. We are short-term society. When I retire, we will not have accomplished the change I want, but will made a dent.
That's why I like starting from the beginning and stringing the story because you can tell some of them wouldn't know why you're passionate about that issue if we didn't know your background.
A lot of people will go, “Why do you care?” It started with the core upbringing and then living to the days of rage and looking at the days of rage as people are people. The days of rage were there because people felt left out.
Which is also what's happening now. All of this stuff is repetition of history until people feel heard.
We sent out an email to our membership after the killing of George Floyd and it was titled, “We need to do more,” and I truly believe we do need to do more. We can't rest on our laurels. We can't say we've done enough and we've got to figure out what that means. How do we be open to hiring somebody who doesn't look like me or who doesn't have the background like me? You may not have gone to the best school, but going to the best school, that doesn't make the DNA of being a good thinker. You have that DNA or you don't. Can we bring that out?
What's also important is what each person can do. A lot of times using your role as an example, you wouldn't say like, “This is a passion of mine. I can incorporate this as being the CEO of an accounting professional society.” We can find a way and everything we do, whatever issue it is, that's in the environment, diversity, schools, or whatever hits home. It's important to shape the work you do to make the social impacts you want to make.
Analyzing Information: Those who can process and understand information think about it strategically.
Being an analyst, when it came down to what are we going to do? You can throw money or you can put money into scholarships, which is important. We'll be there to teach you that dream of financial is important, but that's when it came down to the pipeline. Our high school pipeline program didn't exist and it exists because that's where I brought it all together. I’ve got the information and pricing information. Look at the numbers. Early on, I said, “I want to see the number of students who graduated in Accounting degree in Illinois colleges by race and I want to see that as a percentage of the population.” They showed me the numbers. I said, “There's a problem. We can do it. We can do everything in the world we want, but as long as the people of diverse backgrounds are underrepresented as a percentage of the total population in major in accounting, you aren't going to solve this problem.”
I appreciate you sharing your story. I like to end with rapid-fire questions. You pick a category. Family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Family and friends.
Things or actions I don't have that I want with my family and friends?
More time because I work too much.
That started with finishing at 11:30 at night?
I don't do that anymore. I was told once when I was interviewing for the job, “I know why you want this job. You probably want a great job where you don't have to work that hard.” I said, “Are you nuts? I work every night until 8:00 or 9:00.” More time.
Things or actions that I do have that I want?
I am blessed to have a wonderful family. I'm old enough to be a grandpa. I have two wonderful grandkids. I have two kids who are successful and successful in many ways, not just with their jobs, but successful in what they're doing with their lives. I have a wonderful wife. Things or actions I have that I want, an unbelievable family and I have great friends and fantastic coworkers.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want?
I don't have COVID-19 and I don't want it. I was doing everything not to get it. I had lunch with a managing partner with a firm and it was indoors, but we took appropriate. I'm not letting this paralyze me per se. I don't think I ever wanted to be a professional dishwasher again. I do the dishes. When I do the dishes after dinner, which I usually do, I tell my wife, I say, “I'm better at this because I was a professional dishwasher.” I say to her, “You made dinner. Let me do this. It's my job.”
Last one. Things or actions that I do have that I don't want?
I'm going to go off the curb because one of the great things that I have enjoyed as being CEO is I have met hundreds, if not thousands of our members. I go out, I talk to members, we'll go on 40 to 50 firm visits a year and I don't mean stop it. Meeting, sitting and talking for 1 hour and 1.5 hours with the managing partner or with the partners. Our accounting summit that you're going to be talking at, that is one of my favorite events. It’s over two days, but I will talk to hundreds of members. When I retire, I literally am saying to people that I want to have the ability to have those members and interact with those members as I leave.
We have a phenomenal staff. We are living in isolation. Things I have that I don't want, even though we have a few people on our staff, we don't come into our office and voluntarily we have 4 to 6 people coming and I miss my staff. I miss seeing them and yet we can do the Zoom thing. We've been using Zoom. We started using Zoom years ago. It wasn't like this was a new product for us, but I miss being around people. When I do my session, I'm the keynote kickoff for our summit, the reality is I'm redoing our learning tweaks here in front of the camera.
Analyzing Information: Diversity has to start with the leadership of the organization.
I will not ever forget the first time we had our summit. When I was CEO back in 2013, I'd never spoken in front of 1,000 people. When it's time, I'm going to walk up on our stage. We had a room full of 1,000 people, and somebody came up to me and said, “Are you nervous? Are you okay?” I'm like, “I'm ready to go. Let's bring it up. We're getting ready to rock and roll.” I stand in that stage. I get my energy from our members. This time, I'm going to stand in a conference room in front of a camera. I know most people will do recording. I’m doing my live to an empty camera. That is an action that I have that I don’t want.
Being a speaker myself, it's definitely not getting that eyeball contact where you're like, “They're with me.”
When we have our summit, usually there's a stage that’s about 3 or 4 feet high. To amuse myself when I'm presenting sometimes to a group that large, I’ll walk right up and have my feet hanging from the stage. Some of my staff will be in the front row and they will see me do this. They will see the front of my foot hang up and they will be waiting for you to fall off the stage. That interaction doesn't exist now.
You have to shift expectations living in the present moment. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I'm very excited to share with our readers the things you've been doing at the society that will be helpful.
What you're doing is great because you're showing a side of people that my members wouldn't normally see. Thank you for having me.
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For our Mindful Moments, what a journey that Todd took us on in his very fascinating career from starting out in a very small town outside of Chicago and not being a CPA, but starting out thinking he was going to be a CPA and working into finance. Learning about his background with his parents not going to college and their importance that they placed on education, and also what he experienced as a younger person, younger man that has influenced him throughout his career. It's important for us to take those moments to identify what are the things that have impacted us most in our lives, so that we get a better understanding of how we thread those themes through.
One of the things that was impacting him as a younger man was the diversity in his community and the differences of understanding of how each person walks through life and what their experience is. Also understanding that a conversation needs to happen, that there can be a lot of misunderstandings based on outward behavior, but not necessarily what someone intended. A lot of unrest happens when we don't have those meaningful conversations. When we talk about mindfulness, mindfulness is being silent and listening to the other side. Not coming up with what your argument is, but truly trying to understand what the experience is of somebody else. Whether you agree with it or not is another discussion.
If we are going to have a conversation, it's important that we're taking in all those inputs of why someone reacted the way that they did or chose the behavior the way that they did. If we don't ask the question, which he gave a great example of working at the grocery store and another teenager stealing those empty bottles and the interpretation that both sides had of what occurred. If we don't have the conversation, then what we're going to do is apply what we know because we've only walked in our shoes to the experience. That's when conversations go off the rail because we're not listening to each other. We're not trying to understand what is happening on the other side. If we can come maybe not to full agreement, it doesn't mean we have to completely buy into any one person's story. If we get those little nuggets of learning along the way, how that can open our minds to the next experience and we keep growing as humans.
The other thing that was important in his story was as he did his pivots and careers, understanding that what set him apart was not putting the numbers together, but how he processed information and analyzed it. When we talk about processing information and analyzing it, it doesn't always mean that that is numbers. It is taking in like that story that I was referring to previously, taking in all the inputs. Understanding other people's perspective and taking that information. If we're good at analysis, we can then take it from a point with non-emotion so that we can better come up with solutions. That helps us think more strategically. Whichever area of our life that we apply it to, we can take a skill that maybe we learn at work that we're good at.
How do we apply that skill in different aspects of our lives to gain a better understanding of our humanness and how we connect together? Lastly, that brings me to his passion around diversity and inclusion at the Illinois Society. A lot of times we don't even realize why we're so passionate about a certain area and it can be people you wouldn't expect to be passionate about different topics. We should never make an assumption from the outside look where he's a white male that is in a role like that and then assume that he hasn't had experience with this. He demonstrated his experience with it and why this was such an important issue for him as he became CEO of the society. It's important that one of the things that he talked about was, it's not about saying you have the initiative, but it's the actions that you take afterward to follow through and make sure that these initiatives come to a conclusion. That there are ways to make an impact and shift it.
We can throw money at an issue or create funds, but if there's not the actual follow up, the education and analysis of the information of how successful that initiative is, then we're basically saying we have an initiative, but we're not doing much about it. What he's demonstrating as an example is what can each of us do to impact issues that are important to us, whatever they may be. Those can be very small things. It doesn't have to mean money. It has to mean that we're opening our eyes and seeing what action we can take to make things better for the people around us.
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About Todd Shapiro
Todd Shapiro is president and CEO of the Illinois CPA Society, one of the largest state CPA societies in the nation, representing more than 23,300 accounting and finance professionals. Prior to joining the Society in 1998, he amassed 20 years of financial and managerial experience as director of finance for Unilever, a multinational consumer package goods company, as well as with Helene Curtis, Quaker Oats, Zenith Electronics, and Continental Bank.
Shapiro is regularly recognized as a thought leader in the profession and has been named to Accounting Today’s list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in accounting for the last five consecutive years.
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