Kent Burns Blog

I am a creature of habit.  I love my routines.  One thing that my friends and co-workers tease me about is my lunch routine.  I go to the same place.  Every day, M – F, with very few exceptions.  It’s a good place...bar food...about a half mile from my office.  Almost all the employees know [...]

I have a history of back/hip/leg issues.  Been a problem for years.  I lived with it for a long time, until one day in 2014 my wife and I were at a show of some kind...It wasn’t the boat and travel show, but it was something like that.  Big venue, lots of walking.  I was [...]

  We live in a world today where no one wants to make a decision.  Yet, decisions are what make the world go around. What’s up with that? There are a few reasons, but the biggest one (by far) is fear.  Plain and simple.  Fear of making a mistake.  Fear of being wrong.  Fear of [...]

Had an interesting – and increasingly common – thing happen recently.  In conversation with a job candidate, a particular company name surfaced.  The candidate had a swift and immediate reaction: “They just had a major shakeup at the top.  New CEO and CFO.  The stock is down seven dollars.”  I could almost feel this person’s [...]

There is a great article in the current issue of Harvard Business Review about feedback.  For decades now, we’ve been lectured on the value of feedback...how to give it...how to receive it...what to do with it.  Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall have written a great piece here that, not surprisingly, supports Buckingham’s prior work. Feedback [...]

I remember it well...I was sitting in my old mentor’s office.  My mentor – Dave – is the man who taught me the recruiting business.  I was new to his Firm; a CPA and a 15-year accounting/finance guy who was taking a chance on a totally different career.  This was sales.  This was hunting.  This [...]

The blown call in the fourth quarter of the Rams-Saints NFC Championship game a couple of weeks ago was unfortunate.  It was clearly a mistake.  The Head of Officials said so.  The NFL said so.  It stinks.  It’s unfair.  But this is life.  We’ve all heard numerous times, “Life isn’t always fair.”  In the days [...]

  Lots of people tell me they want to be successful.  My guess is that 75% don’t fully understand what they’ve just said.  And realistically, a subset of those 75% have no idea what they’ve just said.   What I’ve learned over time is that there is a big difference between wanting success and becoming [...]

The word “no”.  It’s one of the first words we learn as infants.  First, we hear it; then we learn to say it.  And we soon figure out that it’s one of the most frequently used words in the entire world. No is very interesting.  We often love to say it, but often hate to [...]

We are living in such interesting times.  Times have always been changing, and people have always been changing, but these days I find myself getting surprised more than usual.  Case in point: I was communicating with a potential candidate about their career.  The discussions were early and general in their nature.  As part of that [...]

Four weeks until Christmas.  Are you chasing a goal for 2018?  If you are, where do you stand?  In the event you’ve already achieved it, congratulations!  Was your goal too low?  Or did you just hit it out of the park with time to spare?  Either way, it’s a win and you should celebrate. What [...]

It’s Thanksgiving week.  For many (not in sales), it’s the beginning of the end.  People start manufacturing all kinds of excuses on why things can’t get finished/get started/get bought/get sold...you name it.  Thanksgiving week leads to the week after Thanksgiving, when many have a Thanksgiving hangover.  Then there’s about two weeks in December when things [...]

Both recruiters and external job candidates alike become mortified when they hear a hiring manager say, “We may have an internal candidate.”  After all, how can someone who is unknown compete with someone who is known?  It’s difficult – but not impossible – to overcome. What fascinates me is when this occurs in the middle [...]

Few people I encounter embrace risk.  Let me restate that...few people I encounter want anything to do with risk.  Granted, my audience is mostly accounting and finance professionals.  But shouldn’t we be particularly attuned to risk?  Aren’t we professionally trained to evaluate and assess risk?  Accountants and finance people are (supposedly) trained to gather facts [...]

Simply Driven is on the march to a record year.  A lot of things have contributed to the company’s current success, but perhaps none more than our ability to get focused late in Q2 of 2018. The world is a noisy place.  There are bright lights and shiny objects everywhere.  It’s so easy to lose [...]

It’s that time of year.  Summer is over, and school has started.  Raises are in place, and promotions are finished.  Fall is here...but the Holidays are still a good five or six weeks away.  It’s time for the annual ritual – One Last Move.  The final migration of CPA talent from one firm to another. [...]

People do business with people.  Beyond that reality, people do business with people they like. It’s always been that way.  My guess is that it will always be that way.  I’m fine with leveraging technology to facilitate the transaction...but the transaction and the relationship are two very different things.  Jeffrey Gitomer says, “If you make [...]

You might be surprised.  We had one of the more egregious ones just this week.  Our candidate in this case was very responsive and engaged throughout the process.  Said all the right things.  Expressly said they wanted the job. Several times.  Our client was excited.  Thought they were making a good hire.  So, what went [...]

I sat and watched in amazement as Tiger Woods won the PGA Tour Championship this past weekend.  As the final holes played out, the crowd of people running and rushing behind him to the 18th Green was a sight to behold.  Five years and four back surgeries later, Tiger would finally win again.  As he [...]

Over the past 20 years in this business, I’ve learned that clients often don’t know what they want when filling a position.  They think they know, but as they start evaluating talent, it becomes apparent that something is amiss... One of the biggest “tells” that a client lacks clarity is when they continually ask for [...]