The Fact: Eighty three per cent of financial advisors indicate that they have defined roles and responsibilities on their teams, compared to 92% for top producing advisors.

The Implications: Advisors are clearly making progress in this area of team management. One of the challenges, however, is that we often define roles and hire staff in order to meet current demand. As a result, we are structuring teams while looking in a rear-view mirror. Going forward, advisors will need to think about the roles they will need to establish to support their practice in future and those roles may look different than today.

The Idea: It is helpful to create an organizational chart for your practice, even if there are only one or two people fulfilling all roles. The organizational chart will allow you to ensure that you are, in fact, focusing on the key areas of the practice and will help you map out a plan to hire for the future. A typical organizational chart will include five top level roles: the CEO, the Business Manager, the VP of Client Service, the VP of New Business Development and the VP of Investment Management. Administration and operations tend to fall beneath each of these categories. Start structuring your team by looking at the responsibilities for each of these top categories and be as specific as possible in your definitions. From there you can identify the tasks that fall below each box and then delegate those tasks more effectively.

The Next Step: The Business Success Kit provides you with the tips, tools and templates that you’ll need to enhance practice productivity and profitability. It’s the most practical and comprehensive guidebook available for financial advisors. For more information, visit www.AdvocisStore.ca and click on the Business Success Kit.