Broccoli With Your Ice Cream Sir?

FINANCIAL PLANNERS – “You can’t build a process for Financial Planning.”

As told to me by Financial Planners who believe that what they do is:

• Unique
• Human
• Free-flowing️

And that by trying to constrain it into a process, you will somehow kill it.

But with all due respect to my fellow Financial Planners – that is tosh.

There are many things in life which are unique, human and seem to be free flowing…

Songs, stories, art.

But they’re all underpinned by a process.

• Songs have a verse, bridge, chorus and middle eight.
• Books have a beginning, a middle and an end.
• Art has structure and perspective.

If they didn’t have a process, they would look, read, and sound like a bag of spanners.

When you go to a Michelin-starred restaurant ran by the genius head chef….90% of what they do is process.

That’s why everything runs like clockwork—you get a starter, then a main, followed by dessert. It’s all served hot, to the right table, and cooked properly so it doesn’t kill you.️

You wouldn’t want the commis chef ‘free-flowing’ the cooking time on your chicken breast, would you?

But over time, working with those Financial Planners who decry process I began to realise that they either:

• Don’t REALISE what they do is underpinned by a process, they genuinely believe they make it up as they go along every time.
• Don’t LIKE to think that it is underpinned by a process – because that dilutes the idea of their individual genius.
• Don’t WANT to acknowledge that it’s underpinned by a process – because they don’t envy the hard work of extracting it from their head, writing it down and training it to others.

But you can’t just transfer your perceived free-flowing genius through osmosis.

So, if you want consistent quality, repeatable communications, efficient workflows and be able to train the next generation of fantastic Financial Planners to scale your business then you need a documented and trained process.️

Creating a great process that lives in your head, needs talent.

But to document and structure it so that other people can access it, needs discipline.

And if you want to grow your business, that is where the hard work really begins.