Articles About Practice Management

Historically, financial advisors have worked with any and every client they could (or at least, any client who was interested in buying their company’s products or could afford to pay their fees), and in turn, advisor websites (and other marketing collateral) were developed to be appealing to anyone and everyone. The caveat, though, is that in an increasingly competitive advisor landscape, it is more and more difficult for advisors to differentiate themselves amongst a sea of sameness, leading to an increasing focus on developing niches and specializations as a way to stand out and attract ideal clients. Except for advisory firms that have already built a broad-based “generalist” clientele, creating a more focused niche offering – and updating the advisor’s website and other marketing materials accordingly – can make existing clients who may not fit the advisor’s more specialized future question their own fit with the firm today. Which raises the question: how exactly can an advisory firm start to focus more on their niche specialization of the future, without alienating existing clients in the process?

The starting point of making a firm’s marketing more niche-focused – without alienating existing clients – is simply to recognize how ineffective most generalist-based advisor marketing is today. Because in practice, most advisory firms struggle to get more than a few hundred visitors to their website each month, and even amongst those visitors, few get more than 1-2 prospects per month from their website (and many get none at all!). Which means, ironically, that by trying to avoid alienating any existing clients or prospects by being so broad-based, the firm is already losing out on most or all prospects who visit their website. By contrast, “just” having a message that connects with a mere 1% of prospects – with several hundred website visitors each month – could actually produce 3 qualified leads every month. Which means the approach doesn’t alienate… it’s actually a significant improvement from the status quo!

In the process of actually becoming more niche with an advisor’s marketing, there are several factors to consider, depending primarily on the size of the existing firm, how many advisors it has, and how focused it already is (or not). For solo advisory firms, the reality is that once the founder/owner/advisor decides to go niche, that’s all the buy-in it takes, and solo advisors who want to get started simply have to choose whether they want to rebuild their current website into their new niche, or alternatively create a “microsite” that is separate from their existing website, target that very specifically to their niche, and over time as their new niche grows, shift to make the new niche-focused site their primary business website over time (while keeping their existing website to avoid making existing clients feel alienated).

When it comes to larger multi-advisor firms going niche, though, determining a niche often requires consensus from multiple advisors willing to narrow their focus and excel in one area. If the multi-advisor firm can come to a consensus, the firm can begin to rebrand accordingly. More often, though, multi-advisor firms end out with multiple niches – rather than choosing just one – which requires the firm to adopt an approach more akin to regional law or accounting firms, which create “Practice Leaders” to lead each niche within the firm, and the firm’s website then highlights its list of specialized “Practice Areas” (not just a list of all types of clients, but a menu of dedicated services each specifically crafted for a particular type of client, with a dedicated Practice Leader with specialized expertise to lead it). Alternatively, for firms that can’t even decide or commit to a particular group of niches – or even whether to niche, because some advisors wish to and others don’t – a multi-microsite approach is more effective, where each advisor specialization creates its own microsite targeted to its own clientele, as a standalone offering “Powered By” the parent firm.

Ultimately, the strategic shift of becoming niche is not an easy or simple one—gaining marketing momentum, experience, and trust takes time. However, transitioning into a niche can – and often is –accomplished incrementally anyway, precisely because it takes time to be known, liked, and trusted in a new area of specialization. And the framework of developing Practice Areas and/or microsites allows advisory firms to make the transition as gradually as they want or need to. Though ironically, the reality is that for firms that already serve their clients well, the risk of alienating existing clients with a new niche focus is low, as in practice it’s more often the clients who are concerned about whether they will be rejected by the firm, and upon being told of the new niche focus, won’t declare they’re leaving and instead will simply ask “will we still be allowed to keep working together, too?”

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To run a healthy business, firm owners need to have a good handle on what aspects of their business are actually working well, and where key parts of the business may be trending negatively, in order to implement improvements to whatever is most critically in need of change. But if business owners don’t have a clear handle on the data and Key Performance Indicators that drive the business forward, making decisions about which areas of the business to improve can become unwittingly arbitrary and unfocused. As a result, good strategic planning isn’t just about trying to create the ideal “One Page Business Plan”… more directly, it’s about advisory firm owners figuring out which are the right things to change, to ensure that the decisions they make really do impact the business in the most positive way.

In this guest post, Angie Herbers – Chief Executive and Senior Consultant at Herbers & Company, an independent management and growth consultancy for financial advisory firms – discusses the Key Performance Indicators to track, and the key questions to ask that focus on three principal business planning phases: Strategy, Management, and Innovation (SMI). By examining each of these key areas in sequence, firm owners can develop workable strategies to tackle the most relevant problems that may be impeding business growth.

The phases of the SMI process begin by examining Strategy, which involves identifying the most relevant – and measurable – problems of the firm and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure the efficacy of the Solution to be implemented. The Strategy phase involves choosing a Solution that will fix or mitigate the selected problem, the Tactics to use to implement the Solution, and the expected Trend of how the KPIs should move to monitor the efficacy of the Solution. (A key point, as many firms implement solutions without a framework to track whether they’re actually working to achieve the desired results!)

When assessing their firm’s Management, financial advisors often consider what is most urgent and important in the present moment, but it’s crucial to also recognize the important-but-not-urgent that may be holding them back from really solving the firm’s challenges, including and especially identifying any broken systems in the company’s infrastructure. By addressing issues that detract from a well-run Management system, the firm will be able to effectively focus on the other phases of the business planning process.

Using Innovation to improve the business begins with identifying the firm’s competitive Advantage in client service, generating Ideas to win with the firm’s main Advantage (as in practice, most advisory firm innovation is about doubling down on what the firm already does well, not creating something entirely fantastical and new!), and then selecting one – and only one – idea to implement. For some ideas that are more complex or potentially expensive, the firm may also need to conduct some degree of market research to choose a Delivery process to execute their ideas most effectively.

Once the firm has reviewed their SMI elements, the next step is to take the information gathered from the process to develop the right goals for the business. Goals for each phase of SMI can be identified and monitored, and once those goals are accomplished, the firm can then revisit the process to reassess their SMI areas to identify further areas of focus.

Ultimately, the key point is that business planning with the SMI model can help financial advisors choose the right problems to target and strategies to implement in order to improve their firms, by guiding them through a systematic process to outline objectives for where they are now, where they are trying to go, and how they are different. And by identifying the most salient problems and establishing the right goals for the firm, advisors can facilitate efficient growth and ensure that their client service continues to operate at a high level!

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Despite the rising popularity of new fee-for-service financial planning service models, remarkably little has actually been published about how financial advisors price their services. Which is an important topic for both consumers – who want to know what a plan might cost – and for financial advisors themselves, who may want to benchmark whether the pricing for their financial plans is “reasonable” relative to their advisor peers and competitors (rather than solely setting the price based on its time-and-labor cost to the advisor), especially in an environment where fees on financial products have been under intense price competition and fee compression!

In our latest 2020 Kitces Research survey on “How Financial Planners Actually Do Financial Planning”, we examined both how financial advisors are charging and how much they are charging their clients for financial planning services. Although there has been concern that the fee compression evident with financial services products would also apply to financial planning advice, we found little evidence that this was the case. On the contrary, our data suggests that the median fees in 2020 significantly increased, relative to 2018 fees, for standalone fees (12.4% increase) for retainer fees (25% increase), and for hourly fee rates (25% increase). Median AUM fees, though, remained relatively steady, with no apparent increase (though there was an 8% increase at the 10th percentile and an 8.7% increase at the 90th percentile for fees charged for a $1 million portfolio).

We also observed pricing trends by industry channel, with advisors in the RIA channel charging higher median fees than those in the B/D channel for work completed on a standalone or retainer basis, as well as for a complete financial plan billed on an hourly basis. Similarly, financial advisors with a CFP designation generally charge higher fees than those who are not CFP professionals.

When it came to team structure, there was not much difference in standalone fees charged by solo advisors, solo advisors with support, and ensemble advisors, although silo advisors do appear to charge lower standalone fees than other team structures. For financial plans completed on an hourly basis, silo teams had the highest median fees and solo advisors the lowest, while there was the opposite trend observed for retainer fees, with the highest median fees charged by solo advisors and the lowest median fees charged by silo teams.

Because advisors provided us with detailed information about their business practices and pricing, we were also able to compute implied hourly rates for advisors using non-hourly billing models, which can be helpful in understanding what "reasonable" rates are for hourly advisors. At median levels, we found that primarily AUM advisors are generating revenue at rates that would imply hourly fees between $350 and $800. This is in stark contrast to the $100 to $300 implied hourly fees generated by advisors operating on a primarily hourly basis, and speaks to the challenge of building an hourly practice that is as financially successful as advisors operating on an AUM basis at common fee levels. Furthermore, when we look at top-earning AUM advisors (defined here as those between the 85th and 95th percentile), we find that these advisors are generating implied hourly fees in the $950 to $1,600 per hour range.

Ultimately, the key point is that there does not appear to be any overall trend of decreasing financial planning fees, despite common claims that fee compression is coming for financial advisors. Rather, the trends we actually see in our financial advisor research are increasing fees. Furthermore, these trends are observed consistently across advisor fee models. Which suggests that, despite strong proclamations to the contrary, financial planning fee compression may be largely a mirage.

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When assessing the suitability of a service provider, from a plumber to an attorney to a financial advisor, prospective clients consider several aspects of the service they anticipate receiving: reliability (will they do what they promised to do?), assurance (can I trust them?), empathy (will I receive individual care and attention?), responsiveness (will they be prompt, or accurately communicate timelines?), and tangibles (the physical experience of the service, from the offices and attire of the professional to the deliverables they provide?). Of these areas, tangible components are often overlooked by most advisory firms – given the otherwise intangible nature of financial planning as a service – yet actually present an interesting opportunity for financial advisors to improve their clients’ experience with the firm and the financial planning process.

Some examples of tangibles that can influence a prospective (or existing) client’s perception about the service they will receive from their financial advisor include the condition and décor of the office space, appearance and attire of employees, and the materials associated with the financial planning service itself (e.g., marketing materials, client statements, the physical financial plan, deliverables at the client review meeting, etc.).

In practice, advisory firms often struggle to create tangible deliverables for clients on an ongoing basis because of their time-consuming nature. But systematizing a firm’s financial planning processes also makes it easier to systematize the deliverables along with them. For example, a meeting surge system can be implemented to help advisors streamline their processes, which can give the team the time they need to prepare appealing, tangible deliverables that are systematically produced for all clients and prospects at specific times throughout the year. Alternatively, a client service calendar can be developed to organize and showcase upcoming deliverables that clients can expect to receive on a monthly basis.

Turnkey resources are also widely available to financial advisors, and can be used to help an advisory firm systematize processes that include tangible elements for existing and prospective clients, from stand-alone planning modules (e.g., Right Capital’s menu of planning report options), to modules that provide more of a comprehensive interactive experience for clients (e.g., MoneyGuidePro’s ‘My Blocks’ modules), and planning tools that provide specific analyses (e.g., Holistiplan’s tax analysis report, Riskalyze’s risk assessment tools, Hidden Levers’ portfolio stress test report, and i65 Medicare planning tools). Further, customizable template tools, such as fpPathfinder’s financial planning checklists, flowcharts, and market commentary messaging services from firms like Clearnomics, Broadridge Forefield Adviser, and Marketing Pro, can be used to send clients informative, tangible deliverables that remind them of the value their advisor provides to them. Advisors can even create investment performance reports and beneficiary summary reports on a regular basis as another simple way to provide their clients with tangible, impactful deliverables that remind them that their advisor keeps them top of mind.

In designing a more tangible client experience, advisors can consider introducing tangible elements throughout the five key stages identified as a client’s most memorable milestones in their relationship with an advisor: 1) Introduction – when first impressions are made and scheduling meetings take place, 2) Interaction – the first opportunity for clients to assess the meeting environment and data collection process, 3) Guidance – where advisors use technology tools to create analyses and recommendations to share through reports, illustrations, and other deliverables, 4) Implementation – the process created by the advisor to make plan implementation easier for clients, and 5) Relationship – the ongoing services and engagement opportunities created by the advisor that can deepen the rapport with clients.

Ultimately, the key point is that there are many resources for advisors to elevate the client experience by incorporating tangible deliverables into the menu of services they provide. And by considering the most memorable stages of the client journey, advisors can strategically implement impactful deliverables that remind clients how valuable they really are!

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The financial advice business is a service business, and a service business is a people business. Which means the ability to attract and retain people to work in the business, and keep them happy and engaged with that work becomes increasingly essential as an advisory business grows and scales. And keeping employees happy is a function of not only having meaningful work to do, but also compensating them appropriately for that work. In recent years, this has led to an ever-growing number of “perks” that firms offer employees to keep them happy, from retirement benefits to health insurance, to education reimbursement to student loan support, and gym memberships, and employer-provided meals. But in the end, employers can’t just pile on a never-ending stream of employee benefits and perks in the hopes that it will help employees to retain; at some point, the question becomes: what are the best “perks” and employee benefits that really, actually help to retain employees?

In this guest post, Angie Herbers – Chief Executive and Senior Consultant at Herbers & Company, an independent management and growth consultancy for financial advisory firms – discusses her four principles that she has determined are most effective at supporting employee happiness. Known as the “P4 Principles”, they include a combination of Preparation (helping all team members achieve success),  Pay (designing satisfying compensation and incentive packages for employees), Perks (offering lifestyle benefits that motivate employees and help them balance their work and personal life), and Productivity (providing the tech tools that allow employees to do their work in the first place). Importantly, though, “P4 Firms” that implement all four P4 principles successfully have shown that offering the right Perks to employees is the most impactful of the four P4 Principles in achieving lower turnover, higher growth, and more successful employees.

Research conducted by Herbers & Co revealed several perks offered by companies that were most effective in increasing employee happiness. Two perks, above all others, that are important for all financial advisory firms to offer to their employees are health insurance and retirement plans (even if the company is unable to contribute on behalf of their employees). Not only are these two perks necessary for financial advisory firms to attract (and retain) top talent, but they are also important to offer employees access to these benefits simply for company morale, especially when the firm teaches its clients that purchasing health insurance and saving for retirement are essential practices for a healthy financial future (which can quickly make employees wonder why they’re not receiving those benefits, too!).

In addition to the essential employee perks of health insurance and access to an employer retirement plan, financial advisory firms can offer a menu of additional optional perks to motivate their employees and help them better manage (and enjoy) their professional and personal lives. In fact, Herbers' research indicates that while there is a wide range of potential perks and benefits that firms might consider offering, including flex time, unrestricted vacation, bereavement time off, family leave, time off for volunteer work, paying for continuing education, time off for continuing or further non-work-related education, group discounts, and sabbatical time off, companies need not offer all (eleven) types of perks; instead, offering at least six of these options (chosen from any of the top eleven) was sufficient to maximize employee happiness (by allowing enough options that all employees could appreciate and benefit from at least some of the available perks).

Furthermore, employees who are given a range of these perks (and the autonomy to choose amongst them) tend to feel that their employer trusts them to balance their lives with doing a good job which further motivates them to manage themselves (and each other). In fact, despite fears from many employers that too many – or too flexible – perks may lead to abuse, in practice, firms with strong positive work cultures typically find that employees still feel accountable to each other… and consequently generally do not abuse the privileges the perks afford (e.g., if offered unlimited vacation time, P4 Firm employees still end out taking only what they really need). In fact, P4 Firm employees were found to take less vacation (14.5 days per year) when compared to non-P4 Firm employees (who took an average of 19 days per year), despite having more flexibility and often “unlimited” vacation access!

Ultimately, the key point is that financial advisory firms that focus on a P4 culture by implementing good Preparation, Pay, Perks, and Productivity practices, with an emphasis on providing the right Perks for their employees to support their happiness, will generally have great employees with high morale and the motivation to manage the company responsibly and effectively, which can help the company grow into a truly great business!

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In the early days of the Registered Investment Adviser (RIA), financial advisors who didn’t affiliate with a broker-dealer had no way to actually manage investment accounts on behalf of their clients… short of having clients open “retail” investment accounts with direct-to-consumer “retail” brokerage platforms, and grant their advisor a limited power of attorney to call in (pre-internet!) and place trades on their behalf, which was a win for the client (who had their portfolio managed), the advisor (who had a platform to manage their client portfolios), and the brokerage firm itself (that generated trading commissions every time an advisor traded on behalf of their clients). In the decades since, the nature of RIA platforms has evolved tremendously, from advisors phoning in trades to an entire ecosystem of RIA custodians providing trading, billing, and supporting technology for RIAs to use… but still all predicated on a model where the brokerage-firm-as-RIA-custodian profits from advisors at the expense of their clients.

In this guest post, Yang Xu –  CEO of TradingFront which competes for RIA custody services in partnership with Interactive Brokers – explores how the RIA custodian business model continues to evolve, why the recent onset of zero-commission trading has merely shifted how (but usually not whether) clients are paying for trading, and how advisors can do their due diligence to understand the real investment costs that clients may face (and revenue sources that RIA custodians still generate) through the platforms that RIAs purportedly use for “free” (as in the end, “free” rarely ever is).

“Pay-to-play shelf-space agreements” are one way that RIA custodians offer No-Transaction-Fee (NTF) funds, which effectively embed trading costs within the mutual funds themselves (with little way for advisors or their clients to identify what the exact breakdown of what those 12b-1 and sub-TA costs may be). And with the shift to ETFs, that have their own unique rules regarding revenue-sharing to RIA custodians, new “data agreement” flat fees (potentially up to $650,000 per agreement from each asset manager to each advisor platform!) are now emerging as a way for RIA custodians to generate revenue in exchange for providing data that shows asset managers how their products are really being used.

Another major indirect cost of RIA custodial platforms is found in interest earned (or rather, not earned) on client cash holdings. Because when cash is maintained in a client account, it is often by default “swept” into a proprietary mutual fund of the RIA custodian, or even a bank deposit account of a subsidiary bank owned by the RIA custodian, yielding net interest income – the difference between what the cash position actually earns, and the lesser amount that is paid to the client – that is collected by the RIA custodian. Which for some RIA custodians is so large, that net interest from client cash actually forms the majority of the entire RIA custodian’s revenue and profits!

In recent years, another growing source of revenue for RIA custodians to generate from advisors and their clients is Payments For Order Flow (PFOFs), which custodians receive for selling the placement of client trade orders to high-frequency trading firms. And while directed trading to high-frequency trading firms can potentially improve trading efficiency (even with the drag of PFOFs), RIAs generally have very limited means to assess the actual quality of execution (which is actually becoming more difficult because rising PFOF and a rising volume of trades occurring off the traditional exchanges actually makes it systemically harder to benchmark good trade execution in the first place!).

Of course, the reality is that RIA custodians are businesses that can and should be able to generate revenue and profit from the services they provide. Still, though, the current model of RIA custodians generating such ‘indirect’ revenue from the clients of advisors, coupled with a dearth of any requirements to disclose financial statements and pricing (at least for non-publically-traded RIA custodians) make it difficult to research what RIA custodians are truly charging and whether it is a fair and competitive price to the available alternatives. Which, ironically, raises the question of whether advisors may soon even seek out RIA custodians that require RIAs to openly pay (fully disclosed) trading commissions and platform fees, if only to ensure full disclosure and a clear understanding of all expenses for the advisory firm and its clients (and an opportunity to price-shop for other RIA custodians that may offer advisors and their clients a better deal)?

The bottom line, though, is simply to understand that ‘free’ services rarely (if ever) exist when those services entail work, which certainly includes the business of brokerage and RIA custodial firms. And for financial advisors who aim to provide full disclosure of all expenses in the interests of their clients, and want to make good decisions on behalf of their clients regarding which platforms to affiliate with, it’s crucial to peel the layers of the onion and gain an understanding of the underlying costs that clients are incurring with their platform of choice… a due diligence process that applies to not only selecting investments for client portfolios but also where those portfolios are custodied and traded, too.

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Financial planning advisory firms have traditionally operated as brick-and-mortar establishments, with clients coming to the office to meet with their advisors in person, and where all employees would generally be available on-site every day during normal business hours.  However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, ‘business as usual’ took a dramatic shift to a more ‘virtual’ reality. Businesses around the world were required to shift gears to comply with social distancing requirements to mitigate the impact of the spreading disease. For financial advisors in particular, this meant quickly developing a strategy to implement processes that would accommodate virtual meetings with clients, as well as work-from-home systems in place for employees to continue servicing clients and to maintain everyday business operations. With no immediate end in sight of the current pandemic condition being resolved, however, business owners are now looking to create more permanent workplace solutions that will accommodate social distancing practices.

Sustaining a successful future advisory firm model will require several changes to leadership strategies, including a shift in focus from a ‘presence-based’ management style, in which the key metric to assessing employee productivity is by the very fact that they show up for work in the office, to more of an ‘output-based’ management style, in which productivity is measured more by attainment of company goals and the deliverables required of employees to achieve those goals. Critical to this shift in management style is a clearly communicated career progression strategy, to convey to employees the importance of their role in the organization and how those roles are designed to meet company goals. Another leadership strategy to adapt a successful future model is the cultivation of ‘Team-Based’ (versus ‘Boss-Based’) accountability systems, in which team members themselves have more freedom and autonomy in conducting work as a means to manage their own accountability, instead of relying on bosses to guide the direction of individual workloads. Finally, allowing employees to choose between working environments (e.g., virtually or onsite with other team members) can enhance employee satisfaction and help them work more effectively.

Also important in cultivating a sustainable future advisory firm is the creation of a cohesive culture that includes all employees – including those team members who work remotely. Open and frequent communication is important in reminding employees about the core values and company goals of their organization. It is also important for management to ensure that employees know that they are valued members of the company, intentionally reminding them of this from time to time, allowing for flexible work hours to accommodate personal priorities, supporting employees in setting up comfortable and functional work environments (whether at home or in the office), and finding team-building activities to engage employees while at the same time emphasizing that the workplace can be considered a source of personal support.

Finally, infrastructure must be thoughtfully designed to support firm growth. Functional technology systems are a crucial infrastructure component and are essential for good communication across the organization, especially when employees are working remotely in different locations. Being able to assess all processes and identify the specific steps that employees are working on through the use of a well-designed workflow task management platform can help all team members to determine whether their workloads are being managed effectively (and to tweak processes as needed), and additional channels of communication (e.g., instant messaging applications) can help minimize email inbox overload. Team structures may need to be reassessed as well, such as limiting the number of a manager’s direct reports so that sufficient resources are available to support employees.

Ultimately, the key point is that as financial advisory firms evolve their organizations to accommodate a more remotely based workforce, there are many decisions for enhancing their success. Critical to this process is for firms to self-assess the needs of their individual employees, to decide how best to reshape the practices followed by leadership and management, and to maintain their culture regardless of where employees may be situated.

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In the early days of the financial advice industry, an advisor’s career track was relatively straightforward. Either they met their insurance policy or investment product sales quota to qualify their contract, or they found some other way to make a living. However, amid the ongoing shift towards the recurring revenue AUM model, and the concomitant rising need for ongoing client advice and servicing, various new roles within firms began to emerge, including client service associates, paraplanners, and (not-responsible-for-business-development) lead advisors.

Along the way, advisory firms generally followed a traditional “performance review” model for determining why and when this new crop of employee advisor roles would progress (or not) on to the next level. Yet in practice, most of corporate America has shifted away from this traditional performance review approach, and towards leadership-based programs to develop and retain talent… while many advisory firms remain mired in the now-outdated management-heavy performance model.

In this guest post, Angie Herbers – Chief Executive and Senior Consultant at Herbers & Company, an independent management and growth consultancy for financial advisory firms – explains why advisory firms still favor the performance model (they’re in the advice business after all, and tend to tell employees what they should be doing instead of providing training, development, and leadership), and how those firms can instead create a stronger culture and ensure that employees are collectively striving towards the same end-goal with a different approach to employee management.

The key distinction is that there is a fine line between telling an employee what they should be doing (and how), and influencing them to go in a direction that helps advance everyone involved. And a first step towards aligning expectations with a more influencing-oriented approach is by developing well-defined career tracks that show (rather than tell) firm employees the path that’s ahead of them… so they know where they’re expected to go (and can see what it takes to get there)!

In the process, though, it’s key to avoid creating a one-size-fits-all, linear path that ignores employees’ strengths and training. Instead, advisory firm owners should recognize at least four baseline career tracks that emerge in a prototypical independent advisory firm. Each track may cater to a particular employee’s strengths and goals, including Financial Planning (for big-picture, strategic thinkers), Advisory (for relationship-driven individuals that like to make things happen), Investment Management (for aspiring CFAs who like research), and Client Services And Operations (for organizers who love to serve others).

Ultimately, implementing a variety of career tracks will provide employees clear paths to travel along as they progress through the firm (and give managers a roadmap they can use to proactively lead their teams rather than reactively telling them how to improve their performance). But first, the leadership team must also have the right mindset, expectations, and plan in place. Once that’s done, and career tracks are established, advisory firms can foster continuous communication and develop talent far more efficiently, by showing them where they can go and letting them step up to the desired challenge and opportunity.

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