Survey for Success

My work with independent advisory firms over the past 10 years or so has led me to conclude that there are three steps to maximizing employee contributions to their firms through increasing their happiness: identifying the problem; understanding the problem; and, finally, fixing the problem.

I’ve come to realize that the employee’s perspective is so difficult for many owner/advisors to understand because it’s hard for them to relate to. Owner/advisors are a unique combination of both professionals and entrepreneurs in an industry where being either is still a very radical path. Virtually all the independent advisors that I know have sought advanced education to increase the benefits of their advice and launched their own businesses to eliminate many of the traditional conflicts of interest. They are dedicated professionals who have taken on additional risks and often forgo additional income to better serve their clients.

Now, contrast that with the perspective of an advisory firm employee. Even if they are professional employees (i.e. young advisors), they have not chosen to start their own practices (even becoming fledgling brokers or insurance agents and building their books would be more entrepreneurial). They go to work at firms because they want to work for someone. There’s an excellent chance that their reasons for joining your firm are very different from yours for starting it.

This difference between owner and employee perspectives is very important because it means that many of the things that make owners happy with their work are different from those that make employees happy with theirs. I’ve found in my work with advisory firms that happy employees are the key to building successful businesses. For starters, I’ve found that high turnover rates and the many costs associated with them (recruiting, training, initial low productivity, low overall firm morale, etc.) are the biggest factors holding back firms that can’t seem to reach success.

Before you owner/advisors start squirming at the touchy-feely direction this seems to be going, let me state for the record that I’m not talking about cakes and parties for employee birthdays (although I’ve never known that to hurt). Once owner/advisors come to grips with the fact that employees have a different perspective from their own, they can begin to explore what would make their employees happy in their work. The “aha!” moment for many owners typically comes when they realize that what they need to do is to find ways to give their employees the same sense of purpose that drives them to own their own businesses and care for their clients, but within the perspective of an employee rather than an owner.

To do this, I get my clients to ask themselves, “If I didn’t own this firm and these weren’t my clients, what would motivate me to act as if I did and they were?” The answer is much less complex than it sounds. There’s a large body of business research (ranging from Daniel Pink’s “Drive” to Tony Heish’s “Delivering Happiness”) that tells us employees need more than a paycheck and benefits to succeed at their jobs. They need to feel part of something bigger than themselves—a greater purpose. In part, that purpose can be to help their firm succeed and grow, but only if they see their firm as contributing to the greater good.

This is good news for independent advisors because they already have a greater purpose, and their firms are contributing to the greater good by helping their clients achieve financial success: financial success that involves money, but isn’t about money. It’s about sending children to college, providing medical care for families, elderly care for parents, and secure retirements so that people don’t become burdens to their children or other relatives. Owner/advisors already know this. It’s what drives them to do what they do. To get the most out of their employees, they need to communicate this sense of purpose to them, and explain why the advisor does what she or he does and how their firm’s mission is to make that purpose a reality for its clients.