Journal of Financial Planning: July 2013
Rick Adkins, CFP®, ChFC®, CLU®, is president and CEO of The Arkansas Financial Group Inc. in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served as the 2003 chair of the Board of Governors of Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. (ricka@ARfinancial.com)
I just returned from one of my favorite meetings of the year, Fidelity’s Executive Forum. Instead of mind-numbing topics like GRITS, CRATS, CRUTS, AMT, IRS, and all the other acronyms that we often hear about at our meetings, this one focused on innovation. My head is still spinning, in more of a Yogi Bear way than an Exorcist way.
The timing was interesting because I just started a book that a client encouraged me to read called Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet by Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon. I mistakenly thought the book was about philanthropy, but quickly realized that it is about professions from the perspective of three psychologists; one cognitive, one social, and one developmental. Their disparate research had a commonality; the relationship between high-level performance and social responsibility, between excellence and ethics. Their collaboration progressed from a theoretical level of “humane creativity” to the practical aspects of how professions deliver expert quality that benefits broader society. In other words, how do professions and professionals balance service to society with their own self-interests?
What Is Good Work?
If someone asked you, “Do you do good work?” on what would you base your answer? Would your answer be different if asked by a professional, peer, or competitor than if asked by a prospective client? Would your answer be based on self-interest or societal interests? How would your answer change over time? Would technological innovation and cultural changes alter how you perceive good work from mediocre work or even abusive work? The authors suggested that our answer shouldn’t be subjective, but based on three key elements: mission (our purpose in society; our raison d’être), standards (the established best practices of our profession), and identity (our individual integrity, values, and purpose for doing what we do).
With these thoughts and questions as a backdrop, I spent the next two days having my own view of “good work” challenged. First, Bill Taylor, creator of Fast Company magazine, asked the question, “What is there about your firm that is special, compelling, or distinctive?”
We recently went through the exercise of overhauling our website. One of my partners reviewed the websites of dozens of firms around the country and came to the conclusion that they all said the same boring stuff, using similar language. After weeks of working on the copy for our site, what did we have? A newer version of the same boring stuff, using similar language. Fortunately, we were working with a developer who had the courage to tell us that our copy stunk and point us in a different direction.
The concept Taylor shared that helped me most was an idea he took from the great philosopher, George Carlin, who talked about the concept of vuja de in one of his monologues. We’re all familiar with déjà vu, where we have the distinct feeling that an unfamiliar person or situation is eerily familiar. Taylor talked about the need to examine our systems, processes, personnel, and motivations that are highly familiar as if they are eerily unfamiliar—vuja de. This would help us more objectively examine our good work.
Engage Clients with Gamification
The presentation I will likely remember years from now was on gamification, by Gabe Zichermann, who owns a company with the fascinating name of Dopamine (http://dopa.mn). Gamification is the process of using game thinking and game dynamics to engage audiences and solve problems. The best example I can give is Starbucks’ star system. If you register your card, you get a star for each purchase. After you collect 12 stars, you get a free drink. You become conditioned to quit thinking about the fact that you just spent $5.73 on something that costs $2.50 elsewhere; you just think about needing four more stars to get your free drink. Other companies are using the gathering of badges to accomplish the same thing.
Essentially, gamification is the idea of taking the mundane and making it fun and challenging. You might wonder how this idea relates to our profession. Zichermann made the interesting observation: “Getting people to spend less and save more isn’t a fun or easy thing to do. What if you could find ways to make it so?”
After giving numerous examples of how behavior changes had been affected in interesting ways by reframing “the game,” his challenge to the audience was to “become architects of a system that moves people from A to B to C in a way that leads them to their goals.” His ideas were a new twist on Richard Thaler’s behavioral finance ideas espoused in his book Nudge.
Gamification may well become the holy grail for helping us alter the behavior of not just GenXers and Millennials, but also our baby boomer clients who desperately need to alter their glide path to retirement. I would suggest that this is one of our greatest challenges today—not to just get a higher rate of return on client portfolios, but to get a higher percentage of contributions toward their long-term goals. If you want to learn more, search for Zichermann’s TED talk on YouTube. Your brain will start spinning on the solutions that will work in your practice.
What Inhibits Positive Innovation?
The next day Walter Isaacson’s presentation offered a historical look on innovation. You may have read his biography on Steve Jobs, but he also wrote biographies on two other innovators, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. What did they have in common (beyond some unflattering personal failings)? An inordinate attention to detail, and an insatiable curiosity that lasted up until the very end of their lives.
In Isaacson’s view, not only were these characteristics the seeds of innovation, these were qualities shared by professionals who exhibited excellence in their fields (those who did good work).
Here’s what I encourage you to consider. What is it in our profession that should remain firm and solid? What are the missions, standards, and identities that should move like an iceberg? What is it that the public should have extreme confidence that they will receive now and forever more from engaging our services?
Then, flip the perspective over. What are the sacred cows about how we do what we do that inhibit positive innovation? What do we promise that others can’t promise and what more could we promise? What do we deliver that others can’t deliver, and how could that be improved? What do we have the most of that no one else has, and how do we keep our edge? How might financial planning be delivered to your children, your grandchildren, or to future generations?
To grow and survive as a profession, we must continue to innovate and improve without innovating just to innovate. We must also stay clear on what must not change: the values, standards, and behavior that place the interest of others ahead of our own; that help our clients make smart decisions that serve them well for the long-run—not just focusing on a mere transaction; that give them good cause to say to themselves and others, “I’m glad you and your firm are in my life; I can’t imagine life without you.” In other words, we must strive to really do good work.