My Garden

In January 1999, I met with the partner in charge of the CPA firm I worked for; Knight, Vale & Greggory (KVG) which is now part of RSM; and told him how well my meeting with the AICPA related to what became XBRL went.  KVG which was a smaller regional CPA firm basically donated my time to create a working proof of concept of an XML-based digital financial report.  In that meeting the partner in charge told me that KVG obviously could not continue underwriting the cost of this endeavor to manifest digital financial reporting.  I told him that I completely understood but I was going to continue to pursue this; and I resigned from KVG to create "my garden".

In his article, What The Garden Is For, Matt Wood (ex-PWC now at AWS) provides an analogy between a system and a garden.  Here is my garden:

For over 25 years now, I have been helping to plant this garden which I call digital financial reporting.  In addition to the planting, there is a lot of organizing, "pulling weeds", pruning, watering, and such.  The attention does not end.

Two characteristics of mine seem to have made my gardening possible: grit and sensemaking skill.

Grit is passion and perseverance for very long term goals. Grit is having stamina.  Grit is sticking with your future not just for the day; not just for the month; but for years and working really hard to make that future a reality.  This is how Angela Lee Duckworth describes grit in her Ted Talk, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. 

I am pretty sure I have grit.  First off, Tacoma, Washington, where I live, is known as Grit City. Secondly, I was an Ironman Triathlete for about 20 years; I even qualified and participated in the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii in 1990.  So I know how to press on even when you have to struggle.

Also, I believe that I have a superpower in my skill of sensemaking.  Sensemaking is the process of determining the deeper meaning or significance or essence of the collective experience for those within an area of knowledge.

As Matt Wood pointed out in his article, "The most ambitious gardeners of all sit inside the most deliberate boundaries." That observation is spot on. Deliberate boundaries matter.  Accounting itself has deliberate boundaries.

Most accountants don't really "see" the garden yet. Again as the article points out, "To see a single plant is to be a beginner.  To see the web is to be a gardener."


The attention never ends.  I don't consider myself a "master gardener" in the realm of digital reporting yet. There is always more to learn.  The "cost of entry" for me was pretty high because I entered early.  But the investment will start paying dividends at some point.  Seems we are getting very close to that point. My garden is maturing nicely!

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