On a recent visit o a financial advisor's office, observation was made of this firm owner typing initial entry data into financial planning software. In calculating the income of this advisor, expressed as an hourly amount, the equivalent hourly wage worked out to $450. So this begged the question of this advisor, "Would you pay an employee $450 per hour to enter names, addresses, phone numbers and the like?" When the answer was an emphatic "No," the observation was that this is exactly what he was doing. So the question for the rest of us is, "What are you doing?"

Actually, there are three key questions that should be asked:
1. What are you doing that you should be doing?
2. What are you not doing that you should be doing?
3. And perhaps most important, what are you doing that you should not be doing?

Finding the answers to these questions goes way beyond simple time management and task delegation and addresses the issues of collaborative endeavor and appropriateness of responsibilities.

One way to diagnose this is to keep a log of all your activities during the course of the typical workday. While at first this might seem to be an annoying exercise, it may force you to realize what it is you really do with your time during the course of a day. And you may only need to do it for a week or so to truly reveal what you are doing with your time.

Another approach is to use mind-mapping software to think through the time management issues that you might have in your work. Figure 1 is a typical example of such a mind map.

Many financial advisors use mind mapping with their clients to help think through issues confronting their financial future. However, mind mapping can be a useful tool to help think through the issues associated with a financial advisor's daily activities.

Similar to the calculations done at the beginning of this article, once the activities have been identified you may wish to apply some financials to drill down to the appropriateness of the person doing the activity, whatever it may be. This can lead to the process of collaborative endeavor.

 

FIG 1

 

Collaborative endeavor is, or should be, a process of questioning to be successful. With having more than one person sharing responsibility, there is first the question of feasibility. Is it feasible to have multiple hands on a project, task or workflow? And how do the assignments of work get done?

Second, there is the question of strategy. How does endeavor compare to other collaborations? What intrinsic value does this endeavor offer distinct from others? What differences will it make to participate in this endeavor that gives it advantages over others or leverage to motivate essential participants?

Finally there is the question of efficiency. How much will get done by the endeavor? How quickly will it get done? How much involvement by how many people will it take to meet those targets? How vulnerable are the collaborative processes to breakdowns, rework and schedule slippage? How many resources need to be tied up-and for how long-by the work getting done?

Once you have figured out the strategic goals of a collaborative endeavor, the next logical step is to develop workflow task sets. A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as the work of a person, a group of persons, an organization or staff, of one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Therefore, having established workflows that consist of a series of established steps (or tasks) that lead to a completion and can be tracked in some way by management is a key way to increase efficiency through a delegated process without loss of control by the financial advisor or manager.

The value of established workflows is the ease with which they can be overseen and managed. If you go to the effort of establishing workflows with task sets, staff assignments and managerial reporting and then micromanage the process, you will have accomplished nothing. Worse, you may do more harm than good. The purpose of a properly designed workflow management system is to relieve the firm owner or manager of overt management, permitting that person to focus on what he does best and/or what he needs to be doing.

Appropriateness of responsibilities is a difficult concept for financial advisors to grasp since many started their careers by doing everything. Delegation of tasks thus becomes difficult even with the growth of a financial practice.

There is a concept called the "revenue ceiling," which is a net profit point beyond which a financial advisor's practice cannot seem to get above, despite his bringing on new employees, buying the latest technology, etc. It is generally because the financial advisor cannot seem to break the habits he/she developed as a single practitioner. In many cases, it boils down to the appropriateness of responsibilities and, to some extent, placing trust in your staff to do the tasks assigned to them accurately, efficiently and without constant monitoring.

The "revenue ceiling" effect can be overcome, but usually not by one advisor alone. It requires a third-party perspective-someone from the outside offering objective solutions to break the bad management habits of the advisor relative to the management of his/her practice.

Passive management is a difficult concept for a hands-on type of person used to overseeing everything. However, passive management techniques must be mastered to optimize a financial practice's operational efficiency.

With respect to workflow task sets, utilizing client relationship management software that has workflow capabilities is a big help. With the typical CRM optimized for financial practices, there may be reporting capabilities that permit the firm owner or manager to surreptitiously view all the tasks and workflow progress throughout the firm, pinpointing overdue tasks, as well as spotting tasks done ahead of schedule. And the beauty of these programs is the ease of obtaining the information without constantly questioning employees on what they may or may not be doing.

Delegation of important tasks to staff is empowering to them. It demonstrates your confidence in their abilities and your trust that the job will get done and done right. Micromanagement has the opposite effect. It tells your staff that you do not trust them to get it done right. And it can lead to higher levels of employee dissatisfaction and staff turnover (which can be expensive to the firm).

To ensure that task delegation is done right, communicating effectively on what is entailed in the task (or set of tasks) is critical. Following up after the fact, pointing out areas of proficiency and improvement needs, is also critical. Most important is to delegate those tasks that you should not be doing. Financially, it is the right thing to do and it will ultimately lead to higher levels of efficiency in a financial advisor's practice.

David L. Lawrence, RFC®, AIF®, is co-founder and president of Global Practice Network, a technology and consulting firm that provides financial practices, broker-dealers and independent firms with comprehensive, profit-driven efficiency consulting, technology solutions and resources. Global also offers Collaborative Data Solutions and support services. For details, visit www.globalpracticenetwork.com