If you are deciding on pricing this quarter, an AI tool next quarter and a hiring plan sometime after that, you are making one decision in three pieces, and the pieces will fight each other. A price change shifts the work your people do, the tool changes how many people that work needs, and every one of those choices changes what the business is worth to the next owner. My rule is to put every growth lever on one page, with one person deciding the order, before any of them gets funded.
That is worth a few minutes because most owners get each lever pitched separately, by someone who is paid on that piece alone. The accounting trade press said as much to its own readers in a CPA Practice Advisor column, Real Accounting Firm Concerns for 2027 and a Readiness Plan to Address Them, which tells firms not to run their big concerns as separate initiatives, because each one "materially affects the others." The same column asks for leaders who can make the hard calls across pricing, people, AI and ownership together. That list fits any expert-led company.
Why do growth levers fight each other when you run them one at a time?
Take a firm that bills by the hour and buys a tool that takes over much of its preparation work. If pricing stays hourly, the tool cuts revenue. If the freed hours go to new clients, the firm needs a different mix of people to serve them. If the owner is getting ready to sell, the buyer will ask which of those choices the numbers show. None of that is a technology question, and none of it gets answered by the vendor who sold the tool.
Each lever looks sensible on its own page. The trouble shows up where they touch, and nobody owns that spot unless you name someone. In most mid-market companies that is the owner, or a partner sitting next to the owner who holds the same picture of where the company is going.
The person holding that page decides which lever moves first, writes down what it will change in the others, and keeps the board and the CFO looking at the same sheet.
AI is one lever, judged like the rest
AI belongs on the same page as the rest. In my years in retail marketing, every tech pitch got the same first question from the table: what are we actually trying to fix, and how will we know it worked? That is still the question for every lever on the page, AI included. If the answer for the tool is "free up hours," the next line on the page has to say what those hours become: more clients, a new service or a lower price.
Sequence the levers so an early win pays for the hard one
The CPA Practice Advisor column has good advice on order: win a few easy ones so the team believes the plan, and save the long, hard lever for once they do. I agree, and I would add one condition. Do not commit everything to the first lever that looks promising. Keep money, people and attention in reserve for the lever that turns out to matter most, because most of what decides the outcome is outside your control.
A one-page version needs four columns for each lever: what it changes in the others, who owns it, the date it starts and the number that will tell you it worked. If a lever cannot fill in the second column, it is not ready to fund.
A company with one live decision does not need the page
If you have one growth decision on the table this year, decide it. The page earns its keep when two or more levers are moving at once. And sometimes a lever does not wait for the plan. When a partner announces retirement or a lender changes terms, handle that one now. Then write down what it changes in the other levers before the next one gets decided, so the emergency does not set the strategy by default.
Put your levers on one page before the next planning meeting
Before your next leadership meeting, list every growth decision on the table this year on a single sheet. Next to each one, write which of the others it changes. The levers with the most lines running to them are the ones to decide first, and together.
If you want help deciding that order, here is how I work with owners on growth decisions. Two related pieces: why an AI plan belongs inside your strategy and how a partner turns a shared vision into a map. If your levers are pulling against each other right now, I am glad to talk it through.
Source note: the CPA Practice Advisor column ranks the top concerns for accounting firms going into 2027.
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