Innovation: The 5 Discovery Skills

Innovation is one of the ten essential components that we, at ClientWise, have observed among top-performing financial advisors. These ten critical elements are the structure of the ClientWise Professional Advisory Model™.

In a recent study of 3000 executives, professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gergesen of Insead identified the five "discovery skills" that are critical abilities of the creative executive:

1. Associating: The cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.
2. Questioning; The ability to ask "what if", "why", and "why not" questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture.
3. Observe details: Especially the details of people's behavior. 
4. The ability to experiment: The executives surveyed were always trying new experiences and exploring new worlds.
5. Networking: Particularly with smart people who have little in common, but who can offer something to learn.

They found that associating is the key skill here...and questioning seems to turbo-charge the others: observing, experimenting, and networking.

When asked to comment on what conditions nurture and inspire innovation and creativity, the professors believe that many of us are far more discovery-driven than we realize...but even the most creative of people won't ask questions for fear of looking stupid, or because that know their organization won't allow it.

Professors Dyer and Gregersen are especially critical of how our schooling and training robs the inquisitiveness that fosters innovation. They note that 4 year-olds constantly ask questions, but 6 year-olds don't...possibly because teachers value the "right answers" more than the provocative question. The observe that high school students have no curiosity whatsoever, and by the time we've reached the corporate setting our curiosity has been squeezed out of us entirely (unless we work for Google or Apple). Finally, they reckon that 80% of executives spend less than 20% of their time on the discovery of new ideas.

Generally, the financial services industry is not an industry widely-known for creativity (unless one considers the invention and marketing of things like "sub-prime mortgages"...Don't get us started.) It is more of an industry of "me-too-iveness".However, given the fact that financial advisors have much flexibility in the business models that they create, as well as how they choose to interact with their current and future clients...one wonders about the possibilities for creativity and innovation?

In a completely different vein, and as our small tribute to creativity, we note that today is the birth anniversary of the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas. One of his most-quoted works, "Do not go gentle into that good night" was written for his dying father...two years before his own tragic death at the age of 39.

His deep, resonant, Welsh voice may be a source of inspiration on this day.

by Chris Holman

Leadership: It's All About Responsibility

“Leadership is any position where you take responsibility for a group with a mission to fulfill.”…Bob Joss

Last month, Bob Joss retired as the dean of the Stanford Business School. From many angles, his 10-year career as dean, 1999-2009, was a raving success. He energized faculty and alumni after a period of extended malaise. In the face of the boom-bust of the dot-com era, he tripled the school's endowment to $1 billion. He launched a new, highly-personalized, MBA curriculum with emphasis on global content and leadership development.

As dean of one of the world’s best business schools, Bob Joss has had access to the thoughts of the world’s most highly-regarded business leaders, e.g. Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Eric Schmidt, etc. As such, Dean Joss has an extraordinary and insightful perspective on leaders and leadership. In a culminating presentation that capped his career at Stanford, entitled, "Leadership Means Responsibility", Bob Joss shares the views from his unique vantage point…that reflect the observations culled from his 40+-year career. Some interesting thoughts include:

“At the top, it’s not about you…it’s about them.”

“Leaders find the words.”

“One can lead with no more than with a question in hand.”

“Transforming through others is the job at any level.”

For financial advisors and sales leaders, leadership is an important (and often overlooked) skill. When one considers the opportunities for advisors to lead, I can identify (at least) five different opportunities for financial advisors to do so: 

• They lead their team (even if it’s a team of two). 
• They lead their clients. 
• They lead their prospective future clients. 
• They lead within their office. 
• They lead within their communities.

In future posts, we will further investigate these Five Leaderships…especially from the perspective of financial leaders and sales leaders. Stay tuned.

Best to you…

by Chris Holman

Email is dead. Long live Email!

The very first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in late 1971. Ray, a recent MIT grad and a 29 year-old programmer for Bolt, Beranek and Newman, was tinkering with finding a way to send messages person-to-person, between  two different computers. He had just started out at BBN, and was supposed to be working on another project entirely when he came up with an email system and address notation in about 5 hours time. (He's the guy responsible for the @ sign in every email address. That's him in the picture.)

Says Ray, "It seemed like a neat idea...there was no directive to go forth and invent email."

Today, 38 years later, more than 220 billion emails are sent daily. (That's 2 million per second)  In other words, in the ten seconds that you have spent reading this post so far...about 24 million more emails have been sent. Oops...there goes another 2 million...

For many financial advisors, email has emerged as their #1 communication tool. It is not unusual that an advisor and his/her team would receive, and send, 100+ emails daily (both internal and external). From a coaching vantage point, how advisors address their email inflow/outflow...from a time and interruption management perspective...is a pressing and problematic issue.

No Longer Effective?
Therefore, we were quite interested in this article the other day in the Wall Street Journal entitled, "Why Email No Longer Rules..." Written by the uber-connected journalist, Jessica Vascellaro, the article declares that the reign of email, as the king of communications, is over. She maintains that the new generation of communication services that have taken root, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc., will rewrite the way we communicate "in ways we can only imagine."


For example:

1. Expectation of Instantaneous Communication. Some of us old-timers may be creaky enough to remember hand-written notes, as well as the frustration of waiting a few days for a much anticipated letter. Today, we get miffed when a text takes an additional few seconds to get through.
2. Communications Less Personal, More Frequent. When 500 or so friends are kept up-to-date on the latest vacation sojourn, how personal is that?
3. TMI. With the constant torrent of communication, where we all seem to be firing off (and receiving) messages will-nilly, it is increasingly difficult to discern what's important, and what's not.

Although this piece didn't quite declare the death of email, it does sound some warning bells. The essential point is that our electronic communications habits are much different today. In the past, we communicated in discrete bursts...after booting up our computer, and signing into our email program, we send out our communications in spurts. Today, many of us are continuously-connected; consequently, our communications are pretty much absorbed into the full spectrum of our daily activities. This "always-on" connectivity is a mindset that is embraced by an increasingly larger portion of the population. In fact, over this past year the users of social-networking sites jumped by more than 31% to more than 300 million people.

The $64,000 question is whether the new communication mediums will save time, or drag us deeper into the vortex. The article concludes with a prescient comment, "...we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn't meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful conversation. Such as, say, talking to someone in person."

Amen! The reality for many advisors is that they can become surprisingly isolated...from their clients, peers and colleagues. Despite the advancement of electronic communication, and the enhanced ability to stay "connected"...there remains a subtle wall of separation between the communicating parties. With regard to meaningful dialogue, few things beat live conversations.

by Chris Holman

Selling is Dead!

I came across an insightful article the other day, entitled, "Sales is Dead." The author, Frank Reed, has 20-years of experience as a salesperson. His contention is that "selling" is destined for extinction, and salespeople are an endangered species. Rather than parapharasing his thoughts, he can speak for himself very ably right here:

"No longer is the “prospect” an unsuspecting, uneducated target who needs convincing that your offering is the ‘best of breed’. Those days are long gone in most industries. Now, if you are in sales you are really in business development. If you are good that is and you truly care about people and have a good solution for  them. The club tie and the firm handshake are no longer instant credibility gainers. No, in fact this kind of approach has produced the image of the slimy sales guy who is always on the prowl and never really cares about anything other than the ‘close’."

His conclusions are interesting:

1. Selling is really a relationship-building process of business development that "leads to a purchase that is based on understanding, education and trust in the product / service / company as well as the business development professional."
2. Client acquisition in business development is the establishment of a long term client due to trust and the ability for the customer to make a decision based more on their comfort level than your ability to sell them.

Although Mr. Reed's career has not taken him into the financial service arena, many of his observations seem to resonate in our industry.  As coaches who work with the top-performing financial advisors, we have observed that the brute-force marketing tactics, that may have worked 20 years ago, are dead and dying. In the 1980's, as a young advisor (we were called stockbrokers back then...another "bad" word) with E.F. Hutton, I recall direct mail campaigns offering free research reports...that garnered 10%+ response rates. Today, with unprecedented levels of skepticism on the part of the investing public, I can't even imagine response rates of 1%, let alone 10%.

 So...what's the alternative?

The obvious answer is to focus on the antithesis of mass prospecting, towards a much more selective approach that is based upon high levels of trust, e.g. introductions and referrals from clients and professionals. Notwithstanding the betrayals of con artists like Bernie Madoff and "Sir" Allen Stanford, high-trust approaches remain one of the most effective methods to establish new relationships. High-trust approaches work because there is a transfer of trust...from an esteemed client, friend or professional...back to the financial advisor.

As coaches, we have found that the most successful, high-performing advisors are those financial advisors who can comfortably take advantage of their high-trust relationships, by leveraging them in a friendly and direct manner. For example, financial advisors who reach out to a trusted (non-client) friend by saying..."We've known each other for some time, and I want you to know that our friendship comes first. So I wanted to ask your permission to have a larger conversation and possibly, to expand our relationship..."

Is this "selling", or is it a non-manipulative, respectful question that could lead to a fruitful, expanded discussion?


by Chris Holman