NOTE: After 2 years with Accent, Joseph has moved on and is now an auditor with Deloitte & Touche. We wish him the best!
When everyone in the company is focused on achieving goals, it makes Joseph Mainez’s job easy. As the Accounting Supervisor for Accent Computer Solutions, it’s up to Joseph to manage and report the company’s finances. He attributes progress that he sees in the company’s bottom line and continued high client satisfaction ratings to the dedication and hard work of the whole Accent team.
“With accountability, we can see progress,” said Joseph. “It means that everyone is doing their job. We’re able to keep paying our bills and provide fun incentives for employees. It makes my interactions with clients that much easier because I’m backed up by a really good product and a really good service team.”
Numbers Represent Focused Teamwork
Joseph is a numbers-guy and it might not be surprising that metrics are important to him, but he doesn’t just look at the numbers. He considers what’s behind the numbers, and the activity that happened to create them.
“I like being able to track how we’re doing, and when I’m able to look at a really good month that we had or when we’ve hit a new milestone, I know that it’s because our team has really put in that work,” said Joseph.
Accent has always been focused on continuous improvement and utilizes the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). During monthly meetings, each internal team reports on progress with short- and long-term goals. Even through the COVID-19 public health crisis, leadership saw an opportunity to reprioritize work towards objectives that had previously been sitting on the back burner.
Employee Input Turns into Improvement Objectives
Joseph has noticed that leadership doesn’t just say they’re goal-oriented, they really are. There’s always a focus on the next step in improvement and employee input often drives the next set of objectives.
“When we have input or when we bring up issues or concerns, they’re taken seriously,” said Joseph. “More often than not, the changes that we’re recommending will filter to some of the other teams, and within a couple of weeks, we’ll see that there have been changes made and the issue’s no longer an issue because the other teams are responding.”
When Joseph provides suggestions for improvement, he makes sure that his ideas are well thought-out. Thoroughness is a quality that Joseph brings to all he does, as well as a problem-solving mindset, and a willingness to take on new tasks.
“He’s always positive and calm, never agitated. He’s willing to take on new tasks, figure things out and take ownership of them,” said Derek Woolf, Accent’s Chief Operating Officer. “Joseph also has a very personal touch when communicating with clients and his comfortable rapport has allowed him to develop good relationships with them.”
Confidence in Abilities and Freedom to Learn from Mistakes
His eagerness to learn something new doesn’t mean that Joseph never makes mistakes. In fact, he feels that making mistakes is part of learning. What’s different in the work environment at Accent is that he has always felt that leadership trusted him to be able to do his job, whether it was in his early days as an Accounting Clerk, or during his transition to Accounting Supervisor.
“As I was learning my job, Derek checked in with me to make sure that I was comfortable, but he didn’t treat me like I was incompetent or not able to do the job,” said Joseph. “He trusted me to be able to speak up when I needed help. He didn’t scrutinize my work and critique it too much.”
Accountability Leads to Visibility and Appreciation
When you work in Accounting, as Joseph does, it’s easy to become siloed off from what’s going on with the rest of the company. Because of the culture of accountability at Accent, however, he’s gained visibility and appreciation of how the whole company works together.
“When I look at the team of people around here, I like that they’re competent, that they’re professionals, that they want to have a career and they want to keep moving forward,” said Joseph. “They’re also just a lot of great, great people.”
