First impressions, lasting values

Outgoing ACCA chief executive, Allen Blewitt, talks to John Prosser

Allen Blewitt is in the final phase of his role as ACCA's chief executive. His successor, Helen Brand, will take the reins on 1 September and shortly after, Allen will return to Australia. His planned five year tenure as CEO has been characterised by both rapid change and progress for ACCA as a global professional player and a strong commitment to transparency and best practice. He regards ACCA as 'fundamentally an idealistic organisation' changing lives and offering opportunity throughout the world. But Blewitt is also a realist, acknowledging that wherever his travels have taken him, he has been 'on call', linked to ACCA 24 hours a day by the electronic umbilical cord of e-mail and blackberry.

Originally appointed regional director, Asia Pacific, in May 2003, he was appointed to the post of CEO shortly after the retirement of former CEO, Anthea Rose. I ask him what were his impressions of ACCA on his appointment, what has he achieved at ACCA, and, perhaps even more importantly, where now?

'My first impression was of an organisation that still had a chip on its shoulder and there was perhaps a sense that "we're not yet good enough",' he recalls, 'but this corporate chip on the shoulder was greatest in the UK and the "chips" were smallest the further you got away from the UK. For example, in Asia Pacific we had members and staff with a deep sense of pride in what they were doing and a sense that they were playing a leading role in their market but this was not necessarily widespread across the organisation,' he says. But he readily acknowledges that, 'today as a result of ACCA's growing confidence and market recognition, there has been a process of maturation and ACCA is now recognised as a first tier global professional body both by members and stakeholders and this is something I'm really pleased to see'.

Blewitt adds: 'As we grow we've got to extend the devolved lines of management and governance to encourage members, and empower them to take up their own destinies in their own markets. ACCA is evolving into a series of regional hubs and the ongoing challenge will be how do we go from a centralised model to a devolved regional hub model, without losing direction and creating reputational risk, yet continuing to maintain our core values. It's one of those classic management and governance tensions: you want centralisation for quality assurance and consistent branding, and for relationships with global regulators, to assure them that we are a coherent and integrated organisation, but since ACCA is fundamentally a membership organisation, you have to empower members and staff locally and give them a sense that they can make a difference in their own markets.'

As the organisation has become more complex and its relationships more sophisticated, Blewitt agrees that, 'one of our greatest challenges is to help members see the multi-channel influence the organisation has on their behalf, not only with newspapers, ministries of finance and treasuries, but with global regulators like IFAC. If you are a professional these days, whether you are in business or practice, you are reliant on your professional body to manage those stakeholder relationships so that your designation, in which you have invested, retains its value and is respected. But a lot of this work is behind the scenes and we need to communicate to members those powerful and important things ACCA is doing on their behalf.'

In response to the thorny and continuing issue of statutory recognition, Blewitt says: 'Statutory recognition is strong in the UK, Asia-Pacific and certain areas of Africa because of relationships with local accountancy bodies. For the best part of 100 years ACCA had been a challenger brand in many localities, but there are cases where you can bypass statutory recognition by market recognition. The fact now is that employers and regulators respect what we're doing. Employers are giving ACCA members jobs, and finding out how good they are, and in that way we are now taking the place in the market that we deserve'.

Blewitt adds: 'Apart from our reputation and influence, one of the things that gives me greatest satisfaction is the partnerships we have developed. One of the most significant differences between ACCA in 2003 and 2008 is that we now have many deeply valuable partnerships with highly respected organisations like Said Business School at Oxford University, Cambridge ESOL, Oxford Brookes University and the Securities and Investment Institute. All of these partnerships are immensely important and are adding lasting value for ACCA's membership.'

Blewitt looks back with pride on ACCA's sponsorship of the 2006 World Congress of Accountants in Istanbul, as 'one of the great commercial opportunities to position ourselves in a global sphere and say that ACCA is a major backer of IFAC, a supporter of the profession in the developing world and a significant participant globally'. He also clearly regards the major seminar in Hong Kong in 2007, and Al Gore's endorsement of ACCA's enduring global programme of sustainability reporting as a significant milestone. 'This put great heart into our members in Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific region' he says.

So what next for ACCA? 'Many of the strategic initiatives we have launched will continue', he says, 'but we will need a much more clearly devolved regional structure. Our governance will have to change to incorporate a larger grouping of members. The International Assembly has huge potential and I don't think we've capitalised on that as a governance tool rather than a think tank, but ACCA is a highly complex organisation and we may need to come up with more sophisticated governance tools to deal with that real organisational complexity.' He adds, 'we will see greater autonomy in some of our larger national offices with clearly defined and scoped roles for committees of members working closely with local management, and ACCA's focus on reputation and influence will grow.

He concedes that there have been tough decisions to make along the way and that time for reflection is a scarce resource in the chief executive's role; but he clearly has great pride in and affection for ACCA and he says this will continue. 'We are still making a difference to tens of thousands of people's lives', he says, 'and that motivates me enormously.'