Don’t succumb to the forgetting curve this tax season

Research shows we tend to forget most of what we learn or experience within 24 hours of encountering it. In fact, almost 50% of the knowledge we take in vaporizes within the first 20 minutes of receiving it. There’s even a name for this phenomenon called the Forgetting Curve, developed over a century ago by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. 

So, why am I bringing up the Forgetting Curve when we’re knee deep into busy season? Because now is when we’re heavily involved with client demands, processes, tax returns, document collection, etc. This is when all our firm’s processes are in play in terms of the client portal, emails going out to clients, gathering data and information, and delivering our tax work to clients. I know it can be stressful when all of these demands and factors are occurring simultaneously. But you can also look at busy season with a growth mindset. What if you viewed busy season as an opportunity to make continuous improvement? What if you view this hectic time of year as a laboratory for becoming faster, more efficient and more confident for the next busy season?

Again, you don’t have to make major breakthroughs every day. You just have to strive for incremental improvement, say just 1% better each day. That’s called the “Kaizen Effect,” named after the Japanese word for “continuous improvement.”

To minimize the impact of the Forgetting Curve, document all the issues and bottlenecks you’re facing while they’re still fresh in your mind. How can you document all these issues while your hair is on fire seemingly every day from February through April? I’ll get to that in a minute. Just know that if you wait until you have a breather in May or June, you are likely to forget critical details and mistakes that are occurring right now. Unfortunately, that means you’re likely to repeat missteps again when the next Busy Season ramps up. 

As discussed in my article Autopsies without blame, high-performing firms will look at something that went wrong and ask: “What are the systems, processes and training that need to be fixed, and how do we fix them?” The key is they just look for solutions to the problem; they don’t point fingers or try to assign blame.

I have two simple suggestions for helping you retain important information (and pain points) while still fresh in your mind:

Notepad: The goal is to come up with one small issue a week that you can improve upon. All you need is a pad of paper on which you can easily take notes. List each issue, the date that it occurred and the recommended steps to fix it. If you don’t have a recommended step, that’s OK. Just write down the “kink” in the process so it will be easy to recall after busy season. It doesn’t have to be an issue you’re taking to the operations team or to your partner meeting. It doesn’t need to be solved in the middle of Busy Season. You just want to document it now, while you’re working in the business, so you can solve it mid-year, when you have some bandwidth to work on the business.  

Source: L&H CPAs and Advisors

Voice recorder: Sometimes issues arise that are too complex to write down. Or, you might have more to say about an issue than will fit in the grid above. That’s when I recommend using the voice recorder on your smartphone or a transcription app such as Rev.com to dictate a 20- to 30-second message about what the issue is, what you are seeing, and what you think could be a possible solution? Just save your observations and then you’re done. When you revisit the issues several months later, they’ll be fresh in your mind to share with your team, or with the operations group or partners. 

At the mid-year debrief meeting, when partners request feedback, they’ll ask everyone to consolidate their own thoughts to make the best use of the meeting time. Partners will likely say: “What issues are we running into? Just whiteboard them so everybody can see them.” Once the data dump is complete, a partner or meeting facilitator will highlight the most important issues on the board and ask everyone to agree on the top three processes for the firm to improve. As more and more colleagues notice the same issues and breakdowns in the process, it will be easier to come to a consensus and work collaboratively on more relevant improvement for your firm’s busy season processes. 

What’s your firm’s process for remembering (and correcting) Busy Season pain points? I’d love to hear from you.