vol. XV no. 2

				How Jim Copeland Copes with Change at Deloitte & touche Change has swept the accounting profession to such an extent that the "Big Eight" firms that once dominated the industry have consolidated into what some cynics now call the "Final Four." Jim Copeland, CEO of Deloitte & Touche and its global parent Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT), is comfortable with the basketball analogy. He was point guard for the Georgia State Panthers in an era long before the basketball program gained national prominence. "I can remember the years when we would have gone four or five seasons to get the number of wins they had last year," said Copeland (BBA '67), who also played first base on the Georgia State baseball team. An Atlanta native whose wife Patricia was a high school classmate, Copeland keeps a home in an Atlanta suburb as well as an apartment in Manhattan. When in Atlanta, Copeland works out of the Deloitte office on Peachtree Street, just a few blocks from the Robinson College. The competitive fire that fueled Copeland's athletic career has propelled him onto the road as an evangelist for constructive reform in the accounting industry in the wake of the Enron scandal, which virtually destroyed rival Arthur Andersen. In speeches to such forums as the National Press Club and the Detroit Economic Club, Copeland cautioned that the nation's leaders must be careful to avoid unintended negative consequences in legislating changes to avoid another Enron debacle. Copeland is comfortable dealing with change and points out that his is not the only industry undergoing a transformation of epic proportions. "It certainly is a period of profound change, not just in our profession, but in the entire capital market system, particularly for the financial reporting parts of the system," he remarked. "Over the years, our firm has developed a positive attitude about change. We have seen a tremendous change in what our profession looks like and, almost invariably, we have prospered from that change. Part of it is the fact that we have learned to recognize it as an opportunity. From our standpoint, we don't have a negative reaction to the need for change. We think it almost always has worked to our benefit." On a personal level, change is as comfortable to Copeland as a basketball court. "I have always thrived on change and like it, in fact. Some of my partners would say if circumstances don't create it, then I do. I get bored pretty quickly with the status quo. And that is one of the reasons I adapted fairly easily to a really demanding job. A big part of that is having the attention span of a two-year-old. I think you need to be able to move from one subject to another quickly, compartmentalize the issues you deal with, move from one 15-minute meeting to a 30-minute meeting to a 10-minute meeting and be able to do that all day long and not be influenced in the next meeting by the last one." Yet he is the first to acknowledge that having a positive attitude about change doesn't make a transition easy. In early January, Copeland realized enormous changes were inevitable for his industry. The awareness hit him as he absorbed the news that Andersen's Houston office had destroyed thousands of Enron documents. Top | Next Page

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