Success is a moving feast.
Many of you reading this can reflect with pride on how successful you have been in the past. Some of you will also be thinking about what success is for you today. The big question though for most financial advice business leaders is “what does success look like for me into the foreseeable future?” (But there’s a bigger question that follows this, which I’ll come to soon.)
And it’s not just your success; it’s your partners’, your stakeholders’, your team’s, and your people’s.
I have spent nearly 30 years working with independent financial advice business owners; more recently assisting them design, build, execute and maintain winning strategies for their firms.
What I have learnt is that the most success-able businesses have leaders who get their people to think by giving them understanding and context, not instruction.
The success pursuit
Success is not a destination, and focussing on success per se, should never be the end goal.
Success is actually the result of a never ending process of thinking, choosing, testing, doing and reviewing those things that matter most to achieving your goals.
There’re the old-school tools of goal setting (remember ‘SMART’ – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based?), business plans (most fail or at the very least, fail to deliver fully), motivation (all the clichés and adages), inspiration and hope that we’ve endured in the past.
Inspiration is fine, as it’s the precursor to aspiration (more on this shortly), but hope? It’s not needed unless you are hopeless. And you’re not hopeless – you have the ability to make impactful choices about the way you, your people and your business progress to win with your clients.
The success-able formula
Success-able firms won’t have to work harder, be more dedicated, act more boldly, or be luckier than their competitors into the future. It’s about having a clear and defined approach to strategy – a thinking process that allows you, your teams and your people to effectively make clearer and harder choices. This process, and the approach to strategy that underpins it, is what will make your firm success-able moving forward.
Strategy is often seen as mysterious – believe me, it isn’t. It’s easily defined as a set of choices about winning. This integrated set of choices will uniquely position your firm in the financial planning profession, so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to your competition.
The big, big question
The bigger question I mentioned earlier is: “how do I make my business success-able in what is an increasingly competitive and uncertain future?”
Well, by answering the following subset of interrelated questions:
- What is the purpose of our firm – its motivating aspiration – based on what it means for us to win? (And yes, this is different to a vision and a mission.)
- What arenas and segments do we choose to compete in, where we know we can achieve our aspiration? (Including, where do we explicitly choose not to compete?)
- How will we win in our chosen arenas and segments? (Our unique right or competitive advantage to win.)
- What is the set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen ways?
- What are the support systems, structures and measures that enable the capabilities and support our choices?
Leaders lead, and a good place to start leading is developing a robust and sustainable strategy to make your business success-able.
Steve Browning is the founder and managing director of The Strategy Institute and works with ambitious business leaders who want to play to win.
