In June 12, our firm is hosting Be Our Guest (www.accredited.com/beourguest), where a $1,000 donation to the Foundation for Financial Planning gives advisors like you a full day with the employees in our firm and a deep dive into how we approach all aspects of running a wealth management firm dedicated to improving the individual and collective lives of those we serve.

The day is hosted by my partner and next generation shareholder Becky Krieger. I was thinking about why we are excited about opening ourselves up to an expensive day of disruption and providing other advisors with access to our firm’s positive attributes as well as its warts. The only reason I could come up with was culture.

Every firm has a culture. Some firms describe it in an aspirational framework that isn’t always honest, leaving co-workers confused and frustrated. Understanding your firm’s culture helps with hiring and retaining the best advisors. Knowing yourself and your partners creates norms about how we treat our clients and each other. It leads to a sustainable business serving both clients and staff. And it is messy trying to stay in alignment when the siren call of temptation regarding business execution conflicts with the desire to do things the right way. Opening up our firm to Be Our Guest also recognizes the importance our culture places on representing the organization through community involvement.

For the last couple of years, we have worked on a cultural constitution developed by a task force charged with describing who we really are and what we value. We ended up breaking things down into our core values for the following areas: Mindset, Clients, Self, Team and Firm. Each of those values has descriptive behaviors and expectations around how we act. Rather than take you through each of these five values, I want to describe one as a way for you to accurately define your own firm culture. Let’s take “Self.”

Conspicuously absent from our final constitution regarding self was anything related to the popular concept of life balance.  “We believe in life balance” was eliminated, and replaced by “Own your personal development.” That is a consequential change and allows us to have meaningful conversations with those we recruit or manage.

We landed here because in a service business, life balance is not realistic. Clients have personal anxieties, perceived needs and expectations. Their needs may not lend themselves naturally to financial advisors with a nine-to-five job. On the other hand, if our advisors’ children are participating in sports activities, we want co-workers to be able to get there. Owning personal development means more than continuous self-improvement, it implies determining how best to create harmony among the competing aspects of our lives. Here are some of the things that we include in owning our personal development.

Challenging myself to lean in to new experiences and exhibiting curiosity to continually learn and experience more. Curiosity means asking more than telling. That is true whether we’re working with clients and interacting with each other. Leaning in to new experiences creates a willingness to explore possibilities and maintain an open mind set.

We recently had difficulty with an outside accountant replacing the previous accountant from the same firm. The new accountant was not collaborative with us because, in part, he needed to be the expert. Rather than creating room to work for the client behind the scenes to come up with the best solution, he pitted us against them. In a situation where a previously happy client has to choose, only the client ends up losing. Had the accountant had a more open mind set, the client would have been better served. And had we noticed the accountant’s behavior earlier, we could have more easily created a way to allow him to shine with the client.

Taking care of myself, including making use of paid time off and flex hours. While perfect balance may not exist, it may not even be desirable. We all go through periods where family takes precedence over work or work may need to be emphasized over family. Taking care of ourselves means that we are choosing to have authority over our lives, even if we don’t have total control.

Conducting myself to be approachable and open to feedback. How do you handle receiving feedback? Is it an affront to your effectiveness or is it a gift of insight that you may otherwise be lacking? The way you answer this question may reveal a lot about your level of personal curiosity. There have been a number of times when I have difficulty with feedback. Usually, though, it wasn’t because the feedback was wrong, but because I felt shame around not being perfect.

My favorite feedback session I had with a co-worker occurred when a client meeting did not go as planned. I thought it went OK, but was not as crisp as I would have liked. I asked him what he thought and he thought he did a way worse job than I thought. Because he was so open to feedback, I didn’t even need to spend time on what happened and we could instead focus completely on things we wanted to do next time to enhance the client experience.

Practicing self-reflection and developing awareness of my strengths and weaknesses. One of the things that has worked well in our firm is that we have moved people into areas where they had the best chance of succeeding. Our chief investment officer was struggling as a wealth manager, but has been incredible in investments. Our chief compliance officer started in the investment area, but it became clear how great she would be in compliance.

We have moved people out of management when their skills in other areas were clearly superior. The key to making them happier was their own self-reflection and the realization that rather than struggle like mad to improve at something that may not have been natural for them, they could be superstars in things that they were gifted in.

But moving people only works if they are able to look at themselves openly enough to accept the change. We also need to create enough paths for people that they can have a challenging and meaningful career if they get moved. Founding partner Wil Heupel and I have had different responsibilities from Day One because we had distinct skill sets. If I tried to do what he does, I would have not only failed, but been miserable while doing it.

Calling out mistakes I’ve made, laying out plans for self-improvement and communicating the experience to the broader firm. Wil and I used to think that if we acknowledged when we did something wrong it would make it easier for others to do so. Good in theory, but the stakes seemed much higher for employees than it did for the owners. Over time, as the firm grew and other people began to share their mistakes, it became a clear firm value. There were two benefits from everyone’s increased willingness to be candid. First, we can create procedures if we need to. Even more importantly, we can fix things before they get too far out of hand. When people communicate their errors to the larger firm, it increases a level of safety for everyone.

Understanding and explicitly spelling out our culture has also helped people understand if they are a fit within the organization. For example, our emphasis on teamwork doesn’t work so well for a lone wolf. The fact that all clients are firm clients may not be appealing to those possessive of their relationships. These are good things to discover early on before it becomes more difficult to unwind them.

If you are able to make it for Be Our Guest, you will clearly see our culture. And anyone who visits your office will probably see yours—even if you haven’t defined it.   
  

Ross Levin, CFP, is the founder and chief executive officer of Accredited Investors in Edina, Minn.