The Gap Between Capable and Committed

Nick [00:00:00] Do you ever feel like that you have the team is capable of following through and creating the results that you want on a consistent basis, but unless you're there pushing it, they're never actually following through and asking what's next question and thinking about the totality of the process and getting to the result?

Nick From that first interaction with that prospect or the review with a client, to the outside money that's coming in, to following up on the applications, to making sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed and the money is being moved and the client's being serviced out to the end when everyone gets paid, everyone feels good.

Nick If you're not doing that, even though you're not doing specific tasks for the process, if you're not doing some of that, at least some of that, you feel like they're not stepping up and following through, right? It's pretty common to, to get to a place where you advisors know, "Okay, I've got this, the big client with a big set of money that's coming in, the five million.

Nick I can-- I know where that is," right? Because you're on top of it, meaning like you're too much into it. [00:01:00] But the other stuff that perhaps is not quite as big as that, "I don't know where it is. I don't know where the client's supposed to be following through right now, or I don't know whether my team's supposed to be doing something.

Nick I just don't know." That lack of clarity is what gets us. And so you might say with the team, "I've seen them be really good. I've seen them create and complete tasks. They understand what they're doing, they understand the concept, they know why it's important. Overall, why can't they consistently follow through?"

Nick The challenge is not their capability, not their skill set, and even not their accountability. It is the fact that the decision-making still lies with you. So we want to think about not having them be accountable to the actions, but then them to have the overall decision to really be thinking about owning the process overall.

Nick And so oftentimes I see in, in, with the planners and advisors that their team is split in terms of their process. So you might have one person on the team who does applications or meeting prep, but you might have one person on the [00:02:00] team that does some me-- that does meeting prep for one advisor, but does partial meeting prep for another.

Nick And that person that does the partial stuff might say, "Okay, I do the ABC, but someone else does the XYZ." It doesn't give them the level of ownership around delivering the entire thing, and therefore it's much easier for things to slip through. So I want to be thinking about how do I make sure that they understand that decisions lie with them in the complete process, ownership of the process, not just accountability for doing the task as well.

Nick So we've really got to think about the overall operating model that you have, for the team. Not-- This is a confusing thing oftentimes to think about roles versus people in the team. It serves well no matter the size of your bu- your business and your practice. May-maybe it's just you, the one planner, and you've got two or three people in a team, maybe even one.

Nick It's still worth thinking about the roles that those people are playing. Oftentimes, you hear people say, "Oh," like [00:03:00] John, "John does this," rather than, "This is the role, and John does this role." We're even part of that because in a small business, there's often many hats that we're wearing and many roles that people are doing overall.

Nick And so you gotta think about, okay, like how am I splitting my business down and who has ownership for what overall function rather than the specificity of the task? So rather than hiring someone to say, "Okay, I want you to do these 10 things," you wanna h-have and hire that person say, "You're in charge of new business applications and everything that goes into that."

Nick And that way we're starting from a position where they own the overall function rather than tasks within the function overall. And that allows us to move towards training. You still have to do training. They're not gonna come in and be able to do a whole thing, another whole thing straight away, but it creates delineation and understanding of who owns what overall.

Nick And that way when we're designing roles, we're not just doing it based on tasks 'cause tasks could be many, many. In fact, if you can think about a system overall, o-oftentimes a [00:04:00] business is talking about systems, talking about processes. A system is just like a collection of processes that all rolls together to get to a specific result.

Nick So if we can take those individual processes, and inside those processes, you've got individual tasks. So one process might have 10 tasks, might have 20 tasks, and together that process might be a col-collection of process to be one particular function. Those functions add up to be the system overall as well.

Nick So depending on the size of the business overall, you might have functions, you might just say process is the system. Again, you can make it complicated if you want to, but you gotta think about which in your team, what roles are they doing? They are not the role. The role is the role. And think about where, what all tasks fit in there.

Nick And you wanna think of it like an inclusion rather than an exclusion. Not, "Oh, I didn't know I was supposed to do that specific task." I own that whole function, so that task actually might be part of that, even if we didn't think about doing it before. It allows us to create a culture where people create ownership [00:05:00] for outcomes rather than accountability for specific tasks.

Nick And so it might be worth thinking about, okay, how do I set up the right cadence in my team for continued updates and success, with how I'm, setting up them? Okay. So this is what typically happens on a day-to-day basis, is that you work with your team and you speak to them all day long, or they speak to each other all day long.

Nick And they do that based on set... Like s- putting out fires and doing what n- must be done for client requests, mostly on the reactive front as well. And so there's detail as to whether that, and we can get to that another time, whether that is, how you successfully set that up or not. That's for another video.

Nick But thinking about just how I, how we make sure we communicate in a different wa- w- way with our team. So you've got to create a distinct communication. I call it the cadence of communication. A rhythm in which you get into with your team, such that you have a space on a regular [00:06:00] basis where you can know and they can know we're working on the bigger picture.

Nick We're zoomed out a little bit. We're not dealing with, "Oh, where did that thing go for that g- that person? And wh- where is... Did that person sign that, that thing for that transfer?" Or, "What happened with, the service center? did you call the service center? Did they call the service center? Like, where are we?

Nick Are we waiting for them?" And rather than doing that, we zoom out and say, "Okay, how did this week look for you? How do we know this week was a success for you?" And what it comes down to is you've got to make sure that the individuals in the team know what a daily success looks like, and that starts to build it.

Nick But the fundamental piece is knowing each and every given week, when do I have the time to continue to make this better? It's working on your business, which is very trite, of course, but it's working on your business with the right people inside of your business. Not just use it, zooming out and thinking, working on my business means I've got to think about my strategy.

Nick That's important as well. Here we're talking about the practical application of how we continue to get better as a team with the right working cadence. So a good question to think about as you're trying to [00:07:00] find these areas in your business right now. Instinctively, I'm sure you've got a place to go, but where does the motion stop without you?

Nick If you don't put yourself into a particular area, where does it stop? And that you might find will be a fantastic place to start