ByADAMDAVIDSONJuly29,2013Like a lot of accountants, Jason Blumer never really wanted to be an accountant; he wanted toplay guitar in a hair-metal band. But like most guys who want to play guitar in a hair-metal band,Blumer eventually realized that there wasn?t much money in touring bars and being paid in beersmeared$20 bills. So he changed gears and decided to follow his dad into what seemed like oneof the more steady businesses around. After college, he bought some suits, joined a midsize firmin South Carolina and processed his clients? payroll and tax returns. He billed them by the hour.He hated every second of it.Blumer, 42, wanted to infuse a bit more rock ?n? roll into his industry. So when he eventuallytook over his father?s small firm, he made his own rules: There would be no time sheets, no dresscode and, most radical of all, no billable hours. He was convinced, in fact, that the billable hourwas part of a series of mistakes that took all the fun out of his profession. To him, it seemed likea relic of a dying economic age and one that was depriving his industry of billions in profit.The notion of charging by units of time was popularized in the 1950s, when the American BarAssociation was becoming alarmed that the income of lawyers was falling precipitously behindthat of doctors (and, worse, dentists). The A.B.A. published an influential pamphlet, The 1958Lawyer and His 1938 Dollar, which suggested that the industry should eschew fixed-rate feesand replicate the profitable efficiencies of mass-production manufacturing. Factories soldwidgets, the idea went, and so lawyers should sell their services in simple, easy-to-manage units.The A.B.A. suggested a unit of time ? the hour ? which would allow a well-run firm tooversee its staff?s productivity as mechanically as a conveyor belt managed its throughput. Thisled to generations of junior associates working through the night in hopes of making partner andabusing the next crop. It was adopted by countless other service professionals, includingaccountants.During the past few decades, as the economic logic of the United States has changed, globaltrade and technology have made it all but impossible for any industry to make much profit inmass production of any sort. (Companies like G.E., Nike and Apple learned early on that the realmoney was in the creative ideas that can transform simple physical products far beyond theirgeneric or commodity value.) Similar forces have ripped through professional services,particularly accounting, a profession that, until recently, was little changed from its 16th-centuryroots. Software like TurboTax has made the most basic work worth little. Cheaper accountants inIndia, Ireland, Eastern Europe and Latin America have steadily taken over the more routine typesof business, though not quite as voraciously as once predicted.2Just as Apple doesn?t want to be in the generic MP3-player business, Blumer didn?t want to bejust one more guy competing to charge a few hundred dollars an hour to do your taxes. A fewyears ago, he said, he realized that the billable hour was undercutting his value ? it was hisprofession?s commodity, suggesting to clients that he and his colleagues were interchangeablecontainers of finite, measurable units that could be traded for money. Perhaps the biggestproblem, though, was that billing by the hour incentivized long, boring projects rather than thosethat required specialized, valuable insight that couldn?t (and shouldn?t) be measured in time.Paradoxically, the billable hour encouraged Blumer and his colleagues to spend more time thannecessary on routine work rather than on the more nuanced jobs.But those complex problems were the ones that Blumer wanted to solve, and he also knew hisinsights were more valuable than the time it took him to conjure them. So he identified a niche? creative professionals who struggled to manage their finances as their start-ups becamemature businesses ? and he endeavored to help his clients make (and save) enough money thatthey would gladly pay a significant fee without asking about the hours it took him to figure outwhat to do. Blumer has been so successful in his approach that he has become a leading voiceamong a national band of accountants who call themselves the Cliff Jumpers. Many CliffJumpers have abandoned the traditional bill-by-the-hour approach to focus on noncommodityaccounting solutions for specific client groups. One focuses on entrepreneurs hoping to sell theirnew businesses; several work with people who are terrified about starting a small business.Perhaps without realizing it, the Cliff Jumpers are at the forefront of one of the great challengesof modern economics. Measuring productivity is central to economic policy ? it?s especiallycrucial in the decisions made by the Federal Reserve ? but we are increasingly flying blind. It?srelatively easy to figure out if steel companies can make a ton of steel more efficiently than inthe past (they can, by a lot), but we have no idea how to measure the financial value of ideas andthe people who come up with them. Compared with the mid-1900s, goods production is not asimportant a part of our economy, but we continue to devote about 90 percent of our statisticalresources to measuring it, says Barry Bosworth, a Brookings Institution economist who is aleading thinker on productivity in the service sector.Many economists have tried to break professional knowledge workers down into theircomponent parts. It?s fraught enough with lawyers and accountants, Bosworth says, but it?s allbut impossible with other professions, like doctors and teachers. We don?t even try witheducation, he says. In the meantime, the Bureau of Labor Statistics directly measures theproductivity of only 60 percent of U.S. industries, which means that nearly half of our economicactivity is unknown, including almost all of the fastest-growing sectors. If education and healthcare are not becoming more productive, as many economists fear, it will be hard to know ifgovernment policies to improve those sectors are working without knowing what to measure inthe first place.During the 20th century, industry started out in small workshops that created unique handcraftedproducts. Over time, they morphed into massive plants that churned out a countless number ofidentical units. Now there?s a synthesis. In the era of mass specialization, companies are usinghigh-tech efficiencies to make customized products that each consumer finds especially valuable.This has enormous advantages for both consumers and producers, but the big problem it creates3is that we don?t know how to do the math. Blumer, who, after all, is an accountant, told me thatset formulas and financial spreadsheets are just not compatible with this new approach to work.He can only figure out what to charge his clients after spending a lot of (unbilled) time talking tothem about their needs. But now that it?s clear that the fundamental nature of work has changed,it is fitting that a bunch of rogue outliers from one of the world?s oldest professions are helpingguide the way.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/magazine/whats-an-ideaworth.html?ref=accountingandaccountantsGuidelines for summary:1. Read through the whole report with concentration. Then construct 3-5 sentences ofyour own about the whole report. Thus, you will be targeting broad words/sentences andonly one central idea of the whole article. These 3-5 sentences will thus stand as the firstparagraph of your summary.2. Then go back to the report, looking at only paragraph one of the article. Thensummarize the ideas in that one paragraph in your own paraphrased words and sentences.If the paragraph in the report is about 6 sentences, you might be able to paraphrase themain ideas of that particular paragraph in about 2-3 of your own paraphrasedwords/sentences (or more if you need to).3. Do not include verbalizations from the report into your summary withoutconverting it into passive voice.4. If the report does not contain neat paragraphs, then divide the report into neatsections yourself. The idea is to deal with each and every part of the report.5. Do not include subheadings in your article summary. Embed the subheading as acomplete sentence to include in the summary.6. When you have successfully worked on constructing some paraphrased sentences ofyour own for each paragraph in the report, you may merge your paraphrased sentences ofthe first paragraph of the report with the second, making it a fuller paragraph for thesummary.7. The whole summary will approximately have 3-4 full paragraphs about one A4 sizepage.
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