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Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
Dear Readers,
As 2024 comes to a close, it is a time for reflections on the prior year and turning attention toward what’s next. It’s often a busy time, Not only do firms and teams want to close out the year strong financially, but it is a gift shopping, wrapping and giving season as well. As you look toward the new year, I’ll share an idea you can give yourself and your team as a gift in 2025.
Most individuals, teams and firms focus on goal setting and care about creating clear outcomes for their teams. However, the goals are often focused on the quantifiable pieces. When thinking about goals, make sure you are considering the qualitative piece along with the quantitative one.
In the financial industry, setting quantitative goals is pretty easy – revenue targets, AUM, fees, and so on. The harder part is figuring out what you want the qualitative component to look like. Do you want to increase revenue at any cost to your firm? Or do you want to increase revenue with the same number of team members, with everyone working no more than 50 hours per week, and with the team feeling a strong sense of collaboration? These are not the same paths to success.
In one case, you could work your team to a point where they are miserable and solely focused on the revenue outcome. In the other case, the team will work together well to meet an increased revenue goal in the most effective and efficient way possible. The way you frame the goal will drive the manner in which you work toward it.
Identify outcomes and obstacles
Work with your team to be clear on your quantitative outcomes for 2025, and then align them with three to five non-negotiable qualitative outcomes. Can you identify what matters to your team with regard to how they work together and support each other?
Focusing on the goal is important, and many goal-setting and goal-achievement processes will do just that – focus on the end outcome. Set the goal so you know what you are driving toward, but always allow your team to identify what has been getting in the way, and what might continue to do so. These are the obstacles.
Allowing the team to revisit where they have been stuck and to look ahead to where they might become stuck in the quest to meet goals is critical. Otherwise, they will know the problems that might hinder their success but they won’t share these with you, as the leader.
Identifying obstacles is important because it gives your team a voice about what they are most concerned about. Obstacles fall into three categories – those you can control, those you can influence and those out of your control. Help your team categorize obstacles so they stay focused on what they can control and influence and don’t waste time on the non-controllables. This is a cathartic process. More importantly, it helps your team orient and create a plan that overcomes the obstacles.
Start the year with an “obstacles session.” Outline what your goals are for 2025 (or even better, identify these with your team), and allow the team to surface and collect the obstacles. Then, organize them by type. The more you know about what you can control and influence, the more you will focus attention on these.
Review the human factor
Very importantly, the next step is to review your human factor. Many goal systems will talk about aligning people with the skills they need to the goals, which is, of course, critical. However, be sure you are identifying the human factor around the complexities of strengths, areas of improvement, who has worked well together, who needs support in coming together as a team, and so on. Being honest about the human factor is key, because it often derails clearly set goals.
Know your team, allow them to create ground rules for working together and – rather than simply defining the goals – define how the team will work toward those goals. When I teach Managing Teams in the graduate program at Suffolk University, I spend many sessions on simply helping the team take shape. Jumping into the goal process without this part will make achieving that goal harder than it needs to be.
Finally, be sure to identify your stakeholders. Who inside or outside the company can help you toward the goal, or might hinder your achievement of the goal? It’s stunning to me how often a team will set goals in an insular fashion, without examining everyone around who can play a role.
Allow your team to discuss the most important stakeholders and then put them on the traditional stakeholder power-interest grid. Who has the highest level of power to help you accomplish your goals? Combine this with the person or people with the highest levels of influence or interest. Once you identify these people, engage them!
Define decision-making criteria
Creating a list of criteria for decision-making should be your next most important step. How will you know which alternatives make the most sense for your team to pursue without having some sort of filter to weigh the pros and the cons? Do you want to take the fastest way to the end goal, the least expensive, the one that requires the fewest team members or the one that will raise your profile most quickly in the marketplace? These are examples of the criteria you could be using.
Knowing which path to take to get to your end goal will help everyone stay focused and stay engaged. However, choosing that path requires you to consider the lens through which you will decide the best – and the worst – ways to get there. This discussion can be another way to get team members aligned.
Use different forms of brainstorming to create a list of ways you can reach your end goals. Then, consider the alternatives against the criteria meaningful to your firm.
“Chunk” your goals into steps
Once you determine the path, the most important last step is to clearly define “chunked” steps. This means breaking down what needs to be done into the smallest steps, and assigning steps to each person involved.
Often, a team will develop a goal and assign it to one person to “own.” This can create an environment whereby certain people are in charge of important things that others might want to play a role in achieving. When goals are “chunked” into a many-stepped implementation plan, the entire team has the opportunity to be involved.
A good implementation plan looks something like this:
You can choose whatever columns make the most sense for your team. Each objective should have an owner, but that owner should create the implementation plan that outlines the specifics. Get as granular as possible when creating each step.
Sometimes teams assign one person one major goal per quarter. In the last week of the quarter, that person can often be found scrambling to complete the goal! Rather than tag one person with ownership, have the owner engage and collaborate with their colleagues.
Go(al) forth with confidence
Once you have defined the steps on the path you want to take to get to your 2025 goals, work together to create implementation plans. Ask for volunteers so that teams work in a collaborative fashion. Make sure each step is discreet and chunked so it is small and achievable. This helps the process move along each day, and each week.
If your team really wants to shift this year, consider these important steps based upon The SHIFT Model discussed in my bestselling book: Make the SHIFT: The Five-Step Proven Method to Success for Corporate Teams.
Make 2025 your team’s best year ever!
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
