Is exhausted but loyal truly what high high-performing team means?

The accounting industry has undergone several changes in the past decade, and confusing the above two has become one such negative change.

Accountants who are constantly “saving the day” and becoming “indispensable” are also the ones struggling to plug off. Most firms proudly showcase their rockstars – the people who silently carry the loads on their backs.

But here’s the story that no one says out loud:
If your firm needs heroes to survive, your systems are failing, and your people are paying the price.

Alison Ball is the bridge-builder between accountants, tech companies, and communities of professionals, and the ex-VP of Marketing & Communications of Bookkeep. She has spent years inside the accounting ecosystem, where she has witnessed the same patterns – heroics becoming the operating system. And once that happens, no amount of automation, hiring, or outsourcing can save you.

Her message to the firm owners and the leaders of the profession is clear: Stop glorifying your heroes. Start fixing what forces them to be the heroes in the first place. 

The Hero Culture Problem: When Chaos Becomes “Normal”

Hero culture starts quietly.

A senior on your team knows the one workaround that makes the software “behave.”
A staff accountant keeps a personal spreadsheet — a hidden factory — to correct mistakes the system never handles.
A manager steps in after hours to finish what couldn’t be done during the day.

And everyone smiles through it. Alison calls these hidden factories out directly:
“It’s that Excel spreadsheet that only one person knows how to work.”

Hidden factories create heroes. Heroes create bottlenecks. Bottlenecks create burnout. And burnout becomes culture.

We reward the person who “figures it out,” who “just gets it done,” who “knows the system better than anyone.” But we never stop and ask the real question:

Why did they have to? Why does your firm need, as Alison says, “a Tabitha to keep the whole thing from falling apart?”

Tech Is Not the Solution — Understanding the Problem Is

Most firms buy tech the way people buy treadmills: with hope, not with clarity. Alison says it bluntly, “You fall in love with the problem, not the solution.”

Teams adopt automation because it’s trending. They chase AI because vendors talk about “saving 20 hours a week.” They bring in new apps because another firm said it worked for them. But when the real root problem isn’t understood or named, tech becomes just one more thing for the heroes to handle.

And so the cycle continues:

• New software
• Botched implementation
• No documentation
• One employee who figures it out
• And suddenly… a new hero is born
  

Alison says that technology should reduce the emotional labor of the team — not add another layer of stress. When tech is tied to real problems, the narrative shifts:
“This tool is going to handle these repetitive data entry tasks…and give us back 10 hours a week.”

That’s not innovation. That’s compassion.

Trust: The Opposite of Heroism

One of the key reasons why the Hero culture exists is that there is a lack of trust within the teams. Why is trust missing?

• People don’t speak up about bad processes
• Teams hide inefficiencies because they fear blame
• Managers can’t see reality beneath the surface
• Leaders assume everything is fine because deadlines are met
• Staff suffer quietly, thinking they’re alone
  

With the accounting teams that she has worked with over the years, Alison has witnessed this problem closely.
Heroes protect firms from the truth.
Firms praise heroes and assume the system works.

But here’s the truth Alison wishes every leader understood:

Heroes only exist because your system doesn’t trust your people to be human.

Trust isn’t soft.
Trust is clarity.
Trust is documentation.
Trust is removing fear around mistakes and inefficiencies.

Give Your Team Rest, Not Capes

Meeting deadlines has continued to remain one of the most critical parameters of being good enough in the industry. When a team member is appreciated for “going above and beyond” or “crushing deadlines”, there is a silent cost. 

While appreciation can be good for the teams and can have a positive impact on their performance, a lot depends on what they are being appreciated for.

People don’t want to be heroes. Most of them don’t want to be proven why they are better than the others. They just want to be good at their jobs. They want to feel competent, respected, and calm, and have a life beyond work. 

Here’s what most leaders miss: 

• Accountants are human translators
• They turn clients’ chaos into clarity
• They carry emotional weight beyond numbers
• They absorb a lot of emotions – fear, confusion, shame, and return understanding

But doing all of that requires emotional labor. A burnt-out accountant can’t translate anything. A rested one changes lives.

Let the Accountant’s Voice Replace the Hero Narrative

Alison believes accountants have been conditioned to define themselves by competence, not voice.

By output, not identity.
By being reliable, not being heard.

She pushes firms to flip the script. Accountants should not be silent performers in the background — they should be the storytellers of their own work:

“What was life like before? What is life like now?”

When accountants speak from lived experience,

• Clients finally understand the transformation
• Leaders understand the barriers
• Teams feel seen
• And the firm’s story stops being about services and starts being about people
  

Hero cultures silence the accountant’s voice because heroes don’t have time to reflect.
Human cultures amplify it.

Make Process a Love Language

Alison highlights an important point. Alison believes that documenting processes is not paperwork. It is an act of care, of understanding, of explicitly saying to the team, “we care about you”. 

Documentation means: 

• No one person has to “just know it.” 
• No one has to stay late for days just to explain everything to the new hire
• No one has to save the day.

It means your firm will run even if someone is sick, on vacation, or moving into a new role. And more importantly, it means your people are free.

Free from chaos, free from fear, free from being the only one who can fix something. Fixing processes isn’t just operational hygiene — it is how you return dignity to your team.

Systems That Let Normal People Thrive

Making your team members heroes is unsustainable. Humans cannot work as Flash does, and expecting them to do so does no good to anyone. Alison advocates for a workplace that is built around people who want:

• Clear expectations
• Supportive tools
• Work-life boundaries
• Time to think
• Time to breathe
• Time to care
  

Crisis management and last-minute scrambles should be one-off things and not a daily affair. No single person needs to know where bodies are buried in the general ledger. 

A good system doesn’t create heroes. It creates calm, repeatable excellence. That’s the real goal.

If You Want Scalable Growth, Stop Celebrating Chaos

Firms don’t scale on adrenaline, personalities, or “Tabitha magic.” They scale on trust, clarity, and systems that don’t collapse when one person takes a break. You can’t grow by adding more heroes. You grow by eliminating the need for heroics.

Accounting professionals struggle with a lot of changes – changes in the employable age group, digitalization and automation, extended working hours leading to burnout, and more. To make the industry better for everyone, here’s what Alison suggests:

• Fix the hidden factories
• Document the real process
• Adopt tech to reduce strain, not add complexity
• Build trust through transparency
• Let accountants use their voice
• Prioritize calm over chaos
• Make your team’s life easier so they can make your clients’ lives better
  

A great firm isn’t built on heroes. It’s built on humans who no longer need to be heroic to succeed.

Watch the complete conversation between Alison Ball and Maanoj Shah, offshoring expert and Director & Co-Founder at Finsmart Accounting, here: https://youtu.be/SR3hND9mmss?si=Q-tw2tLqFBl-BPoO