News

Every year after events like the Finance, Accounting & Bookkeeping Show (FAB), I see the same pattern. Teams come back energised. There is a buzz in the office. Someone says, “We should definitely look at that new tool,” or “We need to rethink our pricing.” And then nothing really changes. A few weeks later, those ideas are buried in someone’s notes app, and it is back to business as usual. The problem is not the event. It is not a lack of motivation either. It is the absence of structure. 

The real issue is not inspiration, it is implementation. Events like FAB are brilliant for exposure. You get access to new ideas, different perspectives and a sense of what is possible, but most firms attend them passively. They try to attend too many sessions, absorb too many conflicting ideas and leave without a clear priority. What you end up with is information overload that feels productive in the moment, but rarely leads to change. In reality, firms do not need more ideas. They need better filters and clearer execution.

Ahead of FAB this year, we decided to approach things differently and instead of encouraging people to attend more, we focused on helping them attend better. Because once that is clear, everything else becomes easier to filter.

What came out of this is a simple framework that any firm can apply.

Before you even look at the agenda, get clear on your constraints. Ask yourself where the firm is actually stuck, what is slowing things down, and what single change would make the biggest difference this quarter. If your issue is capacity, you do not need five artificial intelligence (AI) demos and a pricing session. If your issue is pricing, a workflow tool will not solve it. Without this clarity, everything seems relevant – and that is where time gets lost.

At the event itself, less really is more. Instead of trying to attend everything, limit yourself to two or three sessions that directly relate to your core constraint. Be deliberate about what you ignore. Prioritise conversations over content. Some of the most valuable moments at events happen between sessions, in honest conversations with other firm owners facing the same challenges. Those conversations are far more useful when you are clear on what you are trying to solve.

This is where most firms fall down. There is often no dedicated time to turn ideas into action, so the energy fades and nothing sticks. The fix is simple, but rarely done. Schedule implementation time before you even attend the event. We hosted a short post-event session focused on turning notes into actions, deciding what to implement first and allocating ownership across the team. Because the real value of an event is not what you learn on the day. It is what changes in your firm the following week.

Why this matters more than ever

The accounting industry is moving quickly. Between AI, changing client expectations and ongoing capacity pressure, firms are being exposed to more ideas than ever before, but more input does not automatically lead to better outcomes. Without structure, it often creates distraction instead of direction, urgency without clarity and activity without progress. The firms that move forwards are not the ones consuming the most information. They are the ones implementing the right things, in the right order.

Copy this into your firm this month. If you are attending events this year, try this approach. Define your single biggest constraint before you go. Limit yourself to a small number of relevant sessions. Prioritise conversations over content. Block out time after the event to implement what you have learned. 

If you do not have a clear view of your constraint, start there. Even a simple diagnostic across pricing, capacity, people and systems can quickly highlight where your focus should be.

The bottom line is that events like FAB are not the problem but the way we approach them often is. You do not need more notes, more tools or more ideas. You need clarity on what matters, discipline in what you focus on and structure in what you implement next. Do that, and events stop being a temporary boost of motivation and start becoming a genuine driver of growth.