KPMG helped create a unified vision for tax transformation

The KPMG Ignition Executive Program™ is a three-part experience aimed at accelerating change through a facilitated, collaborative approach, customized to the needs of each client. The experience includes three sessions—Discovery Session, Executive Session, and Team Session—with a series of one-on-one interviews with key individuals between sessions one and two. In the Discovery Session, the company met with the client to understand the current landscape and define success for the program. In the Executive Session that followed the interviews, the Ignition team presented its interview findings in ways that challenged some of his going-in assumptions and led to new perspectives on opportunity—summarized in the vision statement he drafted. In the Team Session, an all-day in-person event, the client and his team collectively refined a one-year vision for the department—both credo and action plan—and aligned behind it.  

1. Helping leadership align on the right questions

In the one-hour Discovery Session, the Ignition team sought to elicit and define the issues and challenges important to the client. His concerns were how to serve the company even more effectively. He wanted to raise the bar for the tax department: He wanted to determine how to define and measure success, and how to work more smoothly as a team. He was keenly interested in best practices for leadership and defining the future state of tax.

After the session, KPMG conducted one-on-one interviews with six of the client’s future direct reports. KPMG learned that the tax department was not aligned on customer service standards, and there was a lack of clarity around the tax department’s vision and supporting goals. A reason for this, KPMG discovered, was a feeling that tax was rarely consulted as a strategic partner. Our client wanted to find ways to demonstrate the increased value his company could receive if the tax department were more involved in higher-level decisions. 

3. Turning a group into a team

The Team Session, a full-day affair, was designed to carry the decisions and vision the client had defined in the Executive Session to his direct reports. Using advanced technologies, often involving 3D visuals like those in hit movies, Ignition breaks down the walls that inhibit creativity, and allowed the client and his team to find innovative solutions to their issues. 

In this new Ignition environment, freed from common constraints, the team highlighted some disconnects around the customer service standards, identified gaps and ways to address them, and discussed their ways of working. They explored and crafted a vision statement of their own. The client’s draft was then revealed, explained, and discussed. Working together, the team and its new leader synthesized the two versions and aligned in support of its one-year vision for the department.