Your plan on a page

At one time or another, most advice principals have felt the overwhelming inertia that comes from considering growth planning – especially when the day-to-day business already takes up so much time. 

Chances are that there will always be a reason why you don’t feel 100% ready to embark on the change required for a growth program. But that shouldn’t hold you back.

The reality is that there is no “perfect time” to start planning for growth. In fact, you could start today: analyse where the business currently stands, work on your goals and draw up a plan to keep you accountable – preferably a one pager. 

So what should it look like?

Assess where your business is at today

If you plan to scale up, your first step should always be an honest and objective assessment of where your business is at today. Where are you strong? Where are you weak? What are your areas of inefficiency? One option for easily assessing inefficiencies is the Advisely Index benchmarking tool.

Identify practical steps in five key areas 

Advisely expert Rod Bertino, director at Business Health, identifies five key areas businesses must address when planning for growth and efficiency: people, operational compliance/back-office efficiencies, tech, cybersecurity and leadership.  

“Within these, you need to pick out two or three key action items based on what you need to stop doing, what you need to start doing, and how each action will get you closer to where you want to be,” Bertino says.

Drawing on tips from our team of Advisely experts, these key actions could include the following.

Operational compliance 

• Map out every step in your processes, especially the review process
  
  
• Clearly document the roles and responsibilities of the team
  
  
• Identify instances of bottlenecks and double-handling 

Technology

• Examine your workflow and all the manual processes involved
   
• Explore the potential for Xplan to automate at each step
  
  
• Discover which communications you could be automatically triggering, e.g. emails and texts

People

• Develop an employee value proposition 
  
  
• Have a clear plan for onboarding new staff: what does their first six months look like?
  
  
• Communicate the benefits you provide to all staff, and remind them regularly 

Cyber security

• Review (or implement) your cyber security incident response plan and conduct regular “cyber drills”
  
  
• Set up ongoing training sessions to educate staff on safe behaviours
  
  
• Regularly communicate the importance of security to your clients

Leadership

• Spend time aligning on a clear set of goals, both business and personal goals
  
  
• Put goals down on paper and communicate to all staff
  
  
• Initiate open and respectful conversations between leaders on a regular basis

Your plan across these areas shouldn’t focus on the “nuts and bolts” of the process. Given the enormous opportunity out there to serve 11.8 million Australians with unmet advice needs, clear, big-picture goals are essential. According to Bertino, a big-picture view helps businesses “decide what opportunities they’re going to progress and stop them going down rabbit holes that don't get them closer to the end goal.”

Living by your “plan on a page”

According to Iress general manager of APAC customer wealth Kerry Ong, “When you have your steps identified in a simple plan, driven by broad, clear goals from leadership, it keeps business partners accountable for implementing change within the entire business, not just in processes.”

“It becomes your ‘north star,’” Bertino adds, “and a framework to evaluate the processes you need to tweak, rolled out across the whole business.” 

As Bertino notes, any efficiencies gained – like winning back time in the business or in individual roles  – need to be measured against that framework. It’s never about reviewing processes in isolation or growth at any cost. 

“It can’t be at the expense of quality service, for instance,” Bertino says.

Ensuring review and relevance, post-plan

Bringing your goals and action plan to life across key areas of your business is just the starting point. 

After that, you’ll need to review, refine and repeat. Regularly ask questions like: are you delivering the results you'd hoped? Do you need to change the strategy to reflect current market conditions?

“There’s no shame in changing your strategy,” Bertino continues.  “The plans we put in place today, based on what we know today, may not deliver the results we’re aiming for.”

Making the changes required to execute the plan relies on more than a push from the top. Leaders will need to get buy-in from the whole team to keep commitment and momentum for change going.

As Twomeys principal Matt Coman says, “You need to sit down with your team and listen to them and discuss any potential changes. For me, being open and even a little bit vulnerable at times and explaining that you don't have all the answers is a really good starting point.”

Finding the time

Throughout all this change and growth work, there will be the constant challenge of ensuring people at all levels of the business find the time to work “on” the business, on top of servicing clients and admin duties. 

It takes more than one or two individuals to do all the implementation and review. Key people need to be driving it in their areas and keeping the leadership team accountable. Accountability may be reinforced through a monthly or fortnightly meeting, reviewing the numbers and asking the team collectively what you’re doing next. 

As Ong says, “It's really important to think about efficiency as a journey, rather than a destination, with firms taking those daily bite-sized chunks along the way.”