When I was at PwC, I noticed a distinct pattern in who stayed and who left. I knew plenty of smart people who quit simply because they were stuck with a specific manager or partner. On the flip side, I consider myself successful largely because I was fortunate enough to be matched with leaders who believed in me and gave me room to grow.
It wasn’t the technical work that drove people away. It was the leadership.
I wanted to dig into the data behind this observation. In the latest Everyday CPE course, Change Management and Influence, we look at exactly how managers impact engagement and why the “human side” of accounting is actually an ROI calculation.
The Data: Managers Control the Variance
We often obsess over technical accuracy—whether the ERP is implemented correctly or the audit is clean. But we neglect the “how.”
I reviewed the research for this course, and the numbers are staggering. Managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement scores.
If you are a manager, you are the weather. Whether your team feels sunny or stormy depends almost entirely on your leadership style. In high-stress environments like tax season, this correlation tightens. A bad manager directly leads to higher error rates and lower retention.
The Crisis of Change Fatigue
We are currently in a “middle manager crisis.”
I looked at data from Gartner regarding “change capacity”—essentially, how much new information and process change an employee can handle before breaking.
- Change capacity has dropped 50% from pre-2020 levels.
- Middle managers report a 42% burnout rate, which is higher than the executives above them or the staff below them.
I experienced this squeeze myself. There is immense pressure from the top to sell work and outperform, but often a lack of staff below to execute it. You end up as a bottleneck. The natural reaction is to hoard work because teaching someone else takes too much time.
This is a mistake.
The Solution: Delegation is Development
The course posits a different view on delegation. It isn’t about dumping work you don’t want to do. It is the number one tool for retention.
I analyzed retention data from LinkedIn Learning and Deloitte:
- Gen Z and Millennials list “lack of development” as a top 3 reason for quitting.
- Organizations that prioritize internal mobility see nearly double the retention rates.
When you delegate, you satisfy their need for growth. You aren’t burdening them; you are upskilling them.
Case Study: Morgan Stanley’s Succession
To see this in action, I looked at the succession plan of Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman. He didn’t just pick a name out of a hat when he retired.
From 2021 to 2022, he expanded the roles of three potential candidates (Ted Pick, Andy Saperstein, and Dan Simkowitz). He gave them enterprise-wide responsibilities beyond their specific units. He used delegation as a test environment.
By January 2024, Ted Pick assumed the CEO role seamlessly. Because the other candidates had their scopes expanded during the process, they stayed on board rather than quitting out of spite. The stock price remained stable.
The Accounting Angle: From a governance perspective, this is about Delegation of Authority (DOA). Gorman structured the handover to ensure no gaps in accountability, effectively mitigating Key Person Risk.
Tools and Analysis
To put this post together, I reviewed the course transcript and analyzed the accompanying research report. I used Python to parse the text for key statistics and an HTML-based visualization tool to verify the engagement variance data before writing this summary.
Key Takeaways
- Managers Matter Most: You control 70% of your team’s engagement.
- Fight Fatigue: Change capacity is down 50%; don’t overload your team without support.
- Delegate to Retain: Use delegation as a tool for upskilling, not just workload management.
- ROI of Empathy: Putting humans at the center of transformation improves success rates by up to 6x.
If you want to dive deeper into the charts and take the quiz for CPE credit, check out the full course on Everyday CP.
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