I have spent the last couple of weeks primarily writing about how problems may occur in the workplace. Granted, my goal there was to provide some insight on how to respect others and learn to productively work together, but it is never that great a feeling to concentrate on potential strife.

So this week, I want to continue in the vein of working toward a comfortable, happy workplace, but hopefully from a more positive direction. Because, after all, shouldn’t everyone be able to embrace having confidence in your company’s direction?

Over those last couple of blogs, I discussed how some work issues could arise because of different general philosophies - whether someone is promotion- or prevention-focused when it comes to general belief and strategy. Those are concepts that cannot often be proven right or wrong because they are more ephemeral. This can lead to endless debates with no hope of resolution, but a business should always have some concrete pieces that are indisputable.

This is one of the reasons that it is key to keep accurate, up-to-date (and honest) books.

Not having books in that state is causing a lot of large companies trouble lately (read this recent article from USA Today to find out more about that). I can’t imagine people who work in those places read such things and feel that confidence I mentioned. It is difficult enough for employees in such companies to feel they have any hand in the direction of a company, so it can be damaging for them to then feel those in power are incompetent and possibly nefarious.

There is still a warning here for small-business owners, though, that the more concrete, definite and timely you can be with your financials, the better off you are.

The concrete and definite part leads to the confidence that is necessary for that happy workplace. For even when people have those previously mentioned differing philosophies, one can still instill some faith if big ideas are backed up with hard evidence.

The timely piece is probably affecting many this time of year as companies scrambled to get their financial information together for tax season. If you are conscientious about your bookkeeping, that isn’t such a trying endeavor. For many, though, that is not the case.

(Sidenote for those of you hit with a tax bill you were not expecting: Better bookkeeping can help with that, too. A quarterly review of financial statements, after all, helps estimate taxes that should be paid. )

This isn’t necessarily an awful thing. You didn’t enter your business because you were excited about keeping its financials in order and being ready to pay your taxes every year. Most of your efforts should be focused on the areas of your business that excite you, those reasons you started the business in the first place.

Some of us, though, started businesses because we do love those parts of business. We like the peace, confidence and power that can be given by making sure that bookkeeping and tax information is kept up-to-date and accurate.

So if this time of year is showing that some increased bookkeeping power would be a positive thing for your business, we would love to hear from you.

Before I get into the meat of this writing, I want to give a public service announcement. Earlier this week, the IRS released a new alert about scammers pretending to be from their agency to get personal information from unsuspecting victims. The largest takeaway from the announcement is IRS Commissioner John Koskinen saying, “Don’t be fooled. The IRS won’t be calling you out of the blue asking you to verify your personal tax information or aggressively threatening you to make an immediate payment.”

And sure this is a bit self-serving, but add this to the list of reasons why it is better to go into tax season with qualified professionals on your side who can help you navigate the increasingly muddied waters. But even apart from that, if you ever end up in a situation that feels wrong, chances are it is wrong. If someone asks you over the phone or through email for information that you don’t feel you should give them, don’t give it to them. 

Even if real situations with the IRS arise (and wouldn’t you really want to not be doing it by yourself then?), you shouldn’t feel bullied, but it is going to feel disconcerting. You have an almost mythical government organization coming down upon you. Their power seems great, your power seems small and any chance of your voice being heard – never mind actually winning – seems impossible.

In such situations, what we are seeking is justice.  We do not want to just feel like a cog in a large machine that is expected to do its part without being seen as an individual piece. This is something that is easy to understand on this large scale, with such a remove beyond us as single people and government agencies, but it also must be understood on smaller scales.

Last week, I wrote about how the difference between being a promotion- or prevention-focused person affects how you think about business and the work you do. If someone in your company (especially those higher up) works from a different focus than you, it is easy to feel that things are moving in directions of which you disapprove and are impossible to control.

Of course, it is possible for people who use different viewpoints to work together. It is even a positive, for the more views that are heard, the more potential problems are ready to be combatted. This works best, however, when everyone feels that they are being heard, especially if the choices they would have made aren’t the ones being implemented.  This is called “procedural justice.”

That term is often applied to larger concepts of law enforcement and jurisprudence, but the concept of fairness in dispute resolution and resource allocation trickles down to the smallest areas of our lives. Those spots are even more important, for they are the ones where we feel we should be able to exert some power.

So remember that in the workplace. Pay attention to how we can make jobs easier for those around us. If you are able to implement changes, don’t do so in a way that only addresses your problems. Everyone around you has the same positive goals, the more we listen to each other and try to address their problems when making changes, the better chance we have of making those changes happen.

Assuming total power only serves the will on one individual. Make concerted efforts so that a group can work together and where that group ends up will be further than you could get alone.

First off, if you’re reading this blog with any level of interest this news likely doesn’t apply to you, but let it be known that it has recently become more expensive to not file taxes due to new penalties that take effect this year. So if you happen to be browsing around for advice on just whether or not you should file, you should.

In the business and financial worlds, there is lots of room for debate on many different issues, but that is not one of them. I do, however, want to write a little here on how to look at some of those inevitable debates. Whether you are a business owner or an employee, I want to give a possible framework for how to look at your work, how you go about doing it, and why you do it the way you do.

Have you ever felt like you were in a business that refused to try anything new? Have you ever felt like you were part of a company that overlooked poor indicators and thought the next great thing was always right around the corner?

These are both easily understood scenarios, but how we react to them varies. In fact, whether or not we have one of those thoughts or the other may come down to the type of person we are. A lot of the difference between those ideas is based on whether you are a promotion-focused or prevention-focused person.

Those who are promotion-focused tend to come off as more optimistic for they are always oriented toward positive outcomes; these people are always looking for their next victory and are convinced it is coming. Those who are prevention-focused seem more pessimistic for they spend time worrying about negative outcomes; they may not be aimed toward the next victory, but they ensure that they are not pointed toward the next loss.

We all tend to fall to one side of the other of this divide, and if you want to delve deeper into what it means and how it can affect one’s life, read this piece from Psychology Today. If there is one thing to take away from the concept, however, I believe it is that we need to realize that everyone, even those who come at problems from an opposite focus as ours, are oriented toward achieving positive outcomes.

There is good in both cases, whether you win or don’t lose. It is just a matter of framing and how much risk one is willing to take.

If you’re an employee where those in charge are making choices that make you feel leery or unsafe, that can be difficult because you feel far away from the large decisions. If you are a business owner, it could do you well to take this into account when hiring people. You may want employees who carry out your same aims in the same way, or you could prefer those with different viewpoints to keep you from moving too far in one direction.

Again, it is one of those issues where there is lots of room for discussion and no real correct answer. Wherever you fall, however, assume positive intent for those working with you. They don’t want the company to fail either.

I will close there for this week, but over the next couple of blog posts I will be returning to the places where these two viewpoints overlap and speak of some things businesses can do to rally everyone and continue moving in positive directions.

For those of us in the tax and financial world, the beginning of the year can come with dread. When the calendar turns, we know our sleeping hours will decrease until we pass April 15^th.

(Though really it’s the 18^th and 19^th this year due to local holidays, but more on that to come in the future.)

Although this is the difficult time for our industry, we are not the only industry that ever faces difficult times. Whether they occur due to the calendar, deadlines, orders, etc., we all have moments when work feels overwhelming and we wish it would go away (if only temporarily). It is during those times, however, when it is most important to remember why you are doing what you are doing.

When we are kids (and as adults we pass this along with inquiries to the next generation), we are often asked what we want to be when we grow up. The answers come with passion, looking toward a future filled with fulfilling work. So remember during those trying work times that are times when you believe that work can, and should, be exciting.

Granted, some workplaces make this easier than others. If you have ever been a fan of DVD special features, you may have realized that Pixar is near the apex of those places. And even if we don’t all have the skills to be master animators, the company can teach us some lessons in this area.

Authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson take a peek at the company in their book Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Corporate Playground. Much of what they discuss in the book is the childlike wonder that the company encourages; employees there are not required to only work by following aged, staid workflows.

The book speaks of a study that asked two groups of people if they were good singers, good dancers and good artists. Only about two percent of businesspeople answered yes to all three questions. Nearly 100 percent of first-graders, however, say yes to all of them. We could do well by reaching back and embracing that youthful creativity that crossed through all areas.

Capodagli and Jackson conclude that “collective creativity within a corporate culture never happens by accident, it begins with creative leadership that is trustworthy and in turn trusts others to accomplish big dreams.” So if you are stuck in one of those malaise moments when work feels like too much, think of things you could do to use your work as a path to something that expresses more creativity and excites your passion.

Those of you who run businesses should also keep this in mind. The more freedom employees have to accomplish their work through different means, the happier they will be with their work. This will only help overall morale. “If you have low morale,” Pixar director Brad Bird has said, “for every one dollar you spend, you get about twenty-five cents of value. If you have high morale, for every dollar you spend you get about three dollars of value.”

So even if this isn’t a trying time for you and your work, keep these things in mind. It is never bad to remember that there were times in our life when work sounded fun, and that recapturing that ideal could be very fruitful.

Working with other business people, my team and I get very involved with how people work. Working with those business people’s money, we often have to figure out how they can work better.

David Zweig’s book The Invisibles also looks at how people work and says we can find the best ways to work by looking at the people whose work we never see.  Zweig hypes the premise that “receiving outward credit for your work is overrated.”

People who work that way, those “Invisibles,” all share three traits in Zweig’s opinion, and I think it is best to let his words speak to them before commenting on them:

“[T]he first of the Three Traits-an ambivalence or even indifference toward recognition for their work. … If there is one underlying message of this book, it is the value of reaping reward from the work itself, not recognition for it.”

Then there is being meticulous:

“Several meta-analyses of studies on personality and job performance conducted by the Notre Dame business professor Timothy Judge, along with others, show that conscientiousness-which in the studies is defined as being ‘cautious, deliberate, self-disciplined, and neat and well-organized,’ in other words meticulous-is a core predictive trait for successful business people.”

And finally:

“[P]eople who want responsibility, who truly revel in it, are more likely to move into leadership roles within an organization. This desire for and even savoring of responsibility-the third of the Invisibles’ Three Traits-is apparent in nearly every Invisible I interviewed.”

All of these things sound like great things to find in a worker, but they also seem rather obvious. Working with other businesses, after all, leads to hearing horror stories of bad employees, so sure, we would all love all our hires to embody those three traits.

So what is Zweig really doing here?

I think that he is starting from a view that everyone is seeking celebrity and placing that over the value of work.  As we travel through the age of reality stars and the accessibility of social platforms like YouTube, the availability of, and grasping toward, fame is greater than ever before. We may then sometimes see people who we feel are undeserving of reaching great heights. However, I don’t think that this means some of them have not worked hard or that it is driving many others to not work as hard because they feel huge fame is an easy destination

It seems that the concept of recognition lies behind all this discussion. Sure, there are plenty of Invisible workers out there, but are they really only working for the work? Even those who work behind the scenes are receiving recognition of some sort; seeing the completion of a project, watching it enter the world, even just getting an ‘atta boy,’ or receiving a paycheck are recognition of work.  Not everyone wants to be on the cover of People, but no one wants to feel useless.

Let me now try to wrap up a lot of these ideas. First, for those of you reading these who are in positions of power, let those who have you helped you get there know that you appreciate their part of that journey. Let this also be a time to give personal thanks to our clients and express appreciation for being part of that journey together.

Personally, even as a public part of a business, I understand that I am an invisible piece behind many other (often much more prominent) businesses. There is much to enjoy in this and it is very fulfilling. All of our team takes pride in doing what we do, but more so in doing what we do well.

Now in the midst of tax season, we all are forced to engage with a bevy of numbers that quantify our work. Here is to hoping that what you do is fulfilling and brings you happiness. Otherwise, those numbers may feel quite daunting (though, sure, we can help with that, too).

This is an especially interesting time for those of us who work with taxes. Forms, schedules and deductions are on everyone’s mind and when one knows you have some knowledge, they want to pick your brain. This is not a complaint, for we do this because we enjoy it and there is a level of satisfaction that comes with knowing you provide a service that others need.

Well, this at least applies to those others who go about it in the right way. There are also those who are simply looking to take advantage of those services, getting as much as they can without paying for it. I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but with the increased access to do-it-yourself tax-preparation services in the last decade or so, the number of those questions may have increased.

(And should that not be a warning to any who use such means to handle their taxes? If you still think there are secret ways to bigger refunds, maybe you should be working with someone who could give you access to that “hidden” knowledge to start.)

Amazingly, the people who are most intent on getting that information out of you are often the ones who are most upset when you do not give them the answers they were seeking. On some level, they feel they already know the answer and just need someone to back them up. Even if the first nudge toward that knowledge came from an undignified source three degrees of separation away, they so much want it to be true that they ignore mounds of evidence to the contrary to find the one small piece that backs up their preconceived notion.

This phenomenon even has a name – the Confirmation Bias. This is the tendency to interpret and favor information in a way that proves your worldview correct. Beyond that, it also includes an active search for such material. It helps explain why conspiracy theories can take such a strong hold; if you will not be satisfied until you find evidence that proves your point of view, then you will find it.

Social network analyst Valdis Krebs has done research on what political books people purchase, finding that those who read liberal-leaning books tend to largely buy only other liberal books, while those with conservative leanings overwhelmingly buy books written from the perspective of the other end of the spectrum. And if one prefers to get their news from MSNBC or Fox News, there is a reason beyond which station has prettier graphics.

The mental pull to seek out self-affirming knowledge probably gets a little stronger when it can have an effect on one’s finances.  Making a mistake there, however, can have larger implications. Do you want to just believe than claiming a deduction is allowed by the IRS, or do you really want to know?

On most levels, I think everyone benefits from being willing to be wrong; that is how we learn, that is how we experience new things. Our brains, though, do not always make this easy. This means there can be peace of mind in having a qualified, disinterested third party handle some things for you.

If you then are finding the tax world maddening as you search information that can lead to greater benefits – and maybe ignoring knowledge that goes in the other direction – why not instead enlist the help of someone who knows? We love this stuff after all.  Give us a call 508.791.7982 

Iowa and New Hampshire have not cast their votes, and whether you are pleased or not with the results, the presidential race is about to heat up even more. Combine that increased bickering with the ever approaching date of April 15^th and talk of “The Tax Code” is about to become much more prevalent.

It is folly to think that a candidate will be able to get into office and flip a switch or wave a magic wand and largely alter this Code. (And there are times when everything they say sounds like folly, but that is a subject for elsewhere). Sound-bite politics, though, make tax law seem much easier than it is and we should remind ourselves of that when quick fixes are promised.

If you need a reminder of just how complicated it is, note that The Economist reported in 2010 that the head of the Internal Revenue Service, Douglas Shulman, has someone else do his taxes.

In that same article, it was reported that the US Tax Code is over 70,000 pages long. That is a ludicrous number, and if it were true the IRS should provide tax preparers with free bookcases. To put it in some perspective, a 32-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica published in 2003 that I found on Amazon was only listed at “only” 32,640 pages.

This 70,000-page number, though, has been reported by such respected news outlets as CNN and the New York Times.  So could it really be true?

Andrew L. Grossman, an attorney with Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, has reported that the number is much less than the mythical 70,000. And although his purpose is to points out that tax law is simpler than the popular conception, I am not sure he achieves it.

Grossman says that he has a copy of the Tax Code that starts on page 100, skips 500 pages in numbering somewhere in the middle, and ends on page 4,037. When removing some outdated information, Gross estimates that the actual Tax Code is around 2,600 pages. I can conceive of that number better than then 70,000, but it is still astounding and intimidating.

I also would have preferred that those in charge of tax law knew how to count better than that story says they do.

Although it appears impossible to derive a real answer to the Tax Code’s length – the real answer probably lies somewhere between the two extremes, as it usually does - it can be concluded that it is long and it is complicated.

Yet, there are ever-growing ways for people to go about handling their taxes on their own. Yes, one can use them and file a reasonable, legal return. That can also put you at risk, though, as evidenced by a TaxSlayer data breach that was recently revealed.

You do not have to be overwhelmed, though, for there are people out there that can help you navigate these waters (whether they be 70,000-pages deep or not). If you want some of that help, we would love to hear from you.