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The pace needed to respond to increased regulation, tech disruption, changing client expectations, and global competition is frenetic and, in our experience, most businesses move too slowly to keep up with the changing landscape. On the flip side, agile financial advisory businesses, that can adapt quickly to change, will thrive.

As a Practice Manager you are typically juggling many tasks and there are many demands on your time. In order to thrive in this role a critical skill to have is the ability to say ‘no’. Yet saying ‘no’ can be one of the most difficult skills to master in business. Whether it’s declining a request from a colleague, a boss, or a client, we often feel guilty, rude, or unprofessional when we say ‘no’. However, saying ‘yes’ to everything can also have negative consequences, such a

Saying goodbye tends to be a bittersweet experience for all involved. How have you communicated to your team and clients about your last leaver? Did you do this in the way that created a positive impact or were you trying to pretend that nothing happened and carry on?

The foundation of all successful relationships and the driving force behind most of our actions is trust. Trust underlies our willingness to spend our hard-earned money on goods and services, to commit our lives to another person through marriage, or to make plans and decisions based on advice given by a professional. Therefore, it’s not surprising that most people look for a financial adviser they can ‘trust’. After all, they will be entrusting their financial security (and

Effective leadership shows not only when things are going well but also, and perhaps even more so, when times get rough. Good leaders are admired (rather than feared) by others, motivating them to work more and make more meaningful contributions to the organisation’s success. Leadership does not imply working alone to achieve a goal. In truth, leadership entails inspiring and motivating others to collaborate toward a common goal. Today’s leaders must possess optimal leadershi

Is there a better way to create a successful financial planning business? The simple answer is yes, use OKRs. Airbnb, Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Uber all use objectives and key results (OKRs) to drive their success. You can too. The good news for financial planning businesses is that OKRs can be easily adopted, regardless of the size of the business, without adding significant new costs or overheads. OKRs were developed in the seventies by Professor Andy Grove at I

We want to help firms build great businesses and sustain them. Being future proof is a critical part of that. Over the last months we focused a lot of our blogs on the topics of people and processes but to build future proof businesses firms need to do a lot more. We see the following areas as critical for success.

In the words of Steve Jobs “innovation is the only way to win” and understanding your clients’ needs and wants is fundamental to creating winning products and services. Design thinking, a customer centric methodology for innovating, asks one fundamental question that you need to answer in order to get this right and that is ‘Who needs a way to do what and why?’. Empathy mapping is a smart way for everyone in a business to get on the same page about who their customer(s) are,

‘Lack of engagement from the team’ is an issue that comes up frequently and there may be a good reason why! Afterall, how often do you truly enable and empower your employees to be part of the ‘decision making’? How often do you create opportunities for solutions to be generated as part of a truly collaborative process? How often do you ask for feedback and take it onboard?