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True colors

By Claude Solnik

Friday, January 6, 2006

A successful Long Island accounting firm was within a hairsbreadth of merging with a successful Manhattan firm.

It was a marriage made in heaven, a deal where, in a single swoop, Melville's Nussbaum Yates Berg Klein & Wolpow, LLP would establish a solid foothold in the big city.

It seemed too good to be true.

It was.

As the firms negotiated, Nussbaum Yates executives began to realize that the two entities weren't just separated by the East River, but by a culture gap.

Steven Wolpow, managing partner at Nussbaum Yates, says he became convinced the merger candidate's management was too narrowly focused on the bottom line at the expense of employees.

A merger, he says, would have been a case of corporate culture shock.

Every firm wants to grow, but figuring out how to grow best and manage that growth with minimal growing pains involves difficult decisions. And a key decision is determining how to be true to an intangible corporate culture in everything from mergers to day-to-day operations.

It's something that's sometimes not taken into consideration, the difference in culture, said Stephanie Leibowitz, a partner at Proposal Docs, a Massapequa-based consulting firm. Styles can be different.

They sure can. In the case of the Melville-Manhattan merger that never came to be, Wolpow, said that after a number of due diligence meetings with them, we realized that the cultures of the two firms were not compatible. Our firm has a culture that there's more to life than just working and quality of life is extremely important to our entire firm, including our partners.

And the guys from New York City?

The other firm was much less concerned about those quality of life issues and much more concerned about how hard their employees worked and how many hours they put in.

Nussbaum Yates wanted to stick with its focus on employees which has resulted in low turnover in a very competitive field. Then too there was the all that good, hard work, Wolpow believes is a direct outgrowth of the suburban firm's corporate culture.

THE DILEMMA. We felt that this merger would be a bad mistake for us, he said. So we decided to do it on our own, to enter the Manhattan marketplace at our own place and our own terms.

So in November, Nussbaum Yates instead opened a small office at 489 Fifth Ave., a primo location near the New York Public Library.

We plan on some explosive growth in Manhattan with a physical presence there, Wolpow said. It is our strongest goal to maintain our firm's family culture as we move into Manhattan.

BOTTOM LINE. Management consultant Leibowitz maintains that while corporate culture may be invisible, it can exist in very tangible forms as well, ranging from mission statements to procedures for everything from flex time to vacations. In the case of Nussbaum Yates, even its mission statement set the stage for a family-friendly approach to employees.

We established from the get-go a family culture to our business, Wolpow explained. In our firm, the needs of the employees and their families always came first. We wanted it to be a place that is extremely employee-friendly.

A mission statement can be lip service unless it's implemented. And corporate culture is about reality, not just rhetoric. Nussbaum Yates employees point to flexible scheduling and the ability to do some work from home as examples of family-friendly culture.

Christine Sena, an accountant at Nussbaum Yates who has had three children during her 12 years at the firm, says they realize your family's an important part of your life. They are flexible with work schedules.

It comes up in something as simple as the annual holiday party. While many a Manhattan firm was hustling to book the hottest new watering hole for its annual do, the folks at Nussbaum, Yates, for instance, held theirs at the Glen Head County Club where, as usual, employees children were most welcome. At most holiday parties, it's either the employee being invited or the employee and their partner, says accountant Sena. At this holiday party, the whole family was welcomed. They were entertained by a magic show. And they were given presents.

CHANGING. Being true to one's corporate culture can mean embracing change as well, welcoming diversity as a strategy to grow and create a good workplace.

The whole culture of the firm continues to evolve, says Luis Portiansky, marketing director at Margolin, Winer & Evens in Garden City, which has ballooned to a workforce of about 210 people from 130 five years ago. We are a much more diverse firm, culturally, in terms of the background of employees who are coming in. It's become a much more contemporary kind of firm.

Nowadays it routinely recruits employees with a wide range of backgrounds, from Indian to Chinese, Japanese to Jewish, African-American to South American and from all parts of Europe.

STABILITY. While all companies face obstacles as they grow, small companies often confront their own issues, including the need to act consistently even as they are forced to change their culture.

Leaders often must learn to let go of the reins and shift from an owner-operated company to one where responsibility is shared. Written procedures let new hires know what they should do and how to do it, making it easier to delegate.

As a company grows, they face new operational and marketing challenges, says consultant Leibowitz, who notes that putting principles and procedures in writing eases growth. If you're hiring people, if you want to be the rain-maker, they have to know what they're doing.

The boss can be the rainmaker all right, but he or she had better supply an umbrella, too. At Margolin, Winer & Evens, Portiansky feels that accountants here have an opportunity to build a career and long-lasting client relationships; they're not shifted around from one job to another as they might be in other firms.  An employee-centric culture can be good not only for workers, but for recruiting and retention. Wolpow claims his firm's turnover rate is less than 1 percent.

The proof is in the pudding, he said. As we evolved, some of the people who have gone out on maternity leave were such high-quality employees they've come back to us afterward on a less than full-time basis. We're very happy to have them with us.

CLINCHER. Remember, though, that companies don't necessarily have only one culture: A Long Island-based firm's Manhattan office sometimes develops its own identity.

I think there is a slightly different Manhattan culture, says Margolin, Winer's Portiansky. Professionally, they're the same.

Margolin Winer last year fielded two teams in the Chase Corporate Challenge, one from the Manhattan office and one from Long Island.

So the firm was competing against each other. Which finished first?

It doesn't matter at the home office. What matters, as the firm will tell you, is they had one very important thing in common: They both got out there and competed and sweated right to the finishing line.