By JC Abusaid, CEO/President as Featured in WealthManagement.com
If RIA leaders can redirect their focus towards cultivating and maintaining a corporate culture that focuses on systematic issue resolution as opposed to mere crisis containment, the prospect of emerging successfully from challenging circumstances becomes more promising.
The wealth management industry has a problem: we’ve fallen into a trap where we’re too short-term focused, when we should be long-term greedy. This mindset has trickled down into essential areas like business development and talent acquisition.
It’s keeping us up at night. A decreased demand for services, pipeline issues, and a cultural misalignment of advisors top the list of management problems to solve.
Yet there is something that is fully within our control. If RIA leaders can realign their focus on creating and sustaining a company culture that values problem solving over firefighting – one that leans into our bread and butter of creating long-term plans over quick fixes – we’ll make it out of the woods.
There is a path forward.
Don’t Gatekeep Your Strategic Plans
Generals would be remiss to send their soldiers into battle without the proper protections or communicating the plan of attack…yet, it happens every single day in our industry.
Having a true strategic plan that is clearly articulated to – and collaborated with – the whole firm is essential. Yet business leaders have fallen into a trap where their strategic plans are kept away from anyone outside of upper management … as if having everyone on the same page is detrimental to the plan’s success.
In fact, the opposite is true. Solid strategic plans built in the best of times should work in the worst of times. The tactics might (and perhaps, should) change, but working together through the crisis to reinvigorate a strategic plan has proven effective at the firm’s ability to meet the goals by year end. It’s shameful how so many advisors throw their plans out the door when a crisis hits.
In reality, these plans also need to be spread far and wide across the company. They should be measured against and reported on so all associates can see how they’re being executed against. Doing so will allow you to isolate the noise around your goals – making way for the “what can we do?” mantra, so a moratorium on in-person client dinners quickly converts into virtual happy hours which create the social bond you’ve been seeking.
