“What separates the good from the great?” — Rob Brown on visibility and finding your champions

In this episode of Resource Revolution, the focus is on leadership visibility, influence, and why doing great work isn’t always enough. How do you build a reputation that gets you noticed, and find the champions who will advocate for you when you’re not in the room?

Host Christine Robinson is joined by Rob Brown, Founder and podcast host of Accounting Voices, author, and industry moderator. Having interviewed more than 1,000 leaders across the accounting profession, Rob brings a unique perspective on what separates the good from the great.

Turning the tables and taking the guest seat, Rob shares practical lessons on building visibility and credibility, finding the champions who can open doors, and navigating the politics of professional services. Along the way, he challenges leaders to think beyond the work itself and consider how they communicate their value across the wider business.

Doing great work matters. But there’s another side to leadership: making your value visible and building influence around it.

Tune in to the full conversation below or continue reading for Rob's insights on reputation, influence, and becoming the person people think of first.

“What separates the good from the great?”

Resource management is critical to how firms manage capacity, deploy skills, and drive performance and growth. Yet Rob describes the profession as something of a “well-kept secret.”

“Resource management is still a well-kept secret. It's a little bit like AI in that it's there, but nobody quite understands it. And it has so much potential, but nobody fully appreciates what it can do.” - Rob Brown

That makes visibility an important part of the job. Not simply being good at what you do, but making the value of that work understood.

For Rob, that's part of what separates the good from the great.

“There are so many great resource management professionals. What separates the good from the great? If somebody needs what you do, why should they come to you first, above and beyond all of their other choices?” - Rob Brown

For resource leaders, making that impact visible means connecting the work of the function to the priorities of the wider firm: the problems it has helped solve, the decisions it has informed and the outcomes that followed.

That's what begins to change perceptions of resource management, from what the function does to the impact it has on the wider business.

“Who could be my champion?”

Making your impact visible is one part of building influence. Having other people recognize and advocate for it is another.

Rob encourages leaders to think deliberately about who those people could be.

“You only need one or two to get alongside you, to lift you up, to shine a light on you when you're not there, and to be that sponsor, that champion.” - Rob Brown

The point isn't to build the biggest network. It's to identify the people across the firm whose support carries weight: those with credibility, decision-making authority, or the ear of senior leadership, and who understand what resource management can contribute.

Those advocates can open doors for individual leaders, but they can also help build credibility for the function itself.

As Rob puts it elsewhere in the conversation, someone else can sometimes, “sell you in a boardroom better than you can sell yourself.” When people outside resource management are willing to make the case for its value, its influence can extend into conversations where the function isn't yet represented.

“Give leaders a reason to bring you into the conversation.”

Resource management is an evolving profession, with its role and remit continuing to expand and mature across professional services firms. But that evolution isn't happening consistently, and Rob points to the very different ways the function is still defined from one firm to another.

“If you ask 100 accounting firm leaders, what is resource management, you'll get 110 different answers.” - Rob Brown

That variation is reflected in the role resource management plays across firms. In some, its influence extends into workforce planning, capacity, skills, financial performance, and growth. In others, it remains more closely associated with solving immediate resourcing needs.

For Rob, that raises an important question:

“What makes an emerging role an established role? What makes it part of the conversation at strategic or board level?” - Rob Brown

Impact and advocacy both matter. But ultimately, credibility comes from demonstrating why resource management belongs in those conversations.

That means moving beyond being brought in when there is an immediate resourcing problem to solve and showing how resource insight can help the firm anticipate what's coming next, make better workforce decisions, and deliver against its wider priorities.

The aim isn't simply a seat at the table. It's showing leaders why they need resource management there, bringing a forward-looking view across people, skills, capacity, and demand that can underpin better decisions about performance and growth.

“Context is the cornerstone of influence.”

Being part of the conversation is important. Being able to influence it is what really matters.

For Rob, context is critical.

“Context is the cornerstone of influence. You're not just saying to people, ‘Here's what's happening.’ You're saying, ‘Here's why it matters. And here's how it fits into everything else.’” - Rob Brown

For resource management, that's the difference between presenting information and using it to influence a business decision.

A capacity gap matters because of the work it could put at risk. A utilization forecast can show where demand and supply are moving out of balance. A skills shortage can expose a gap between the firm's ambitions and its ability to deliver against them.

The value comes from making those connections: taking what resource management can see and putting it in the context of what the business is trying to achieve.

Rob also points to the importance of showing progress. Evidence of what's changed, what's been achieved, and what could happen next can build confidence in both the insight and the function providing it.

Taken together, his advice offers a simple progression:

Show your impact → find your champions → earn your place in the conversation → make your influence count.

And that's what separates the good from the great.