How to Become the Advisory Firm of the Future

She has worked with the "core" groups at her firm to develop work plans that worked best for each of them based on their degree of interactions with each other and the outside world. "It's all about how do they serve each other and our clients well," she said, noting her firm will try this as an experiment for three months and see how it works out and then "iterate" and see if there may be a better system.

2. Do whatever you can to "empower each person to do their part in the organization."

Helping each person in your organization to "understand the role they play and how valued it is is really important," she said.

3. Learn to delegate.

"Often the challenge in firms like ours or any entrepreneur in any industry is that the thing that got them where they are isn't the thing that will get them to the next step," she said. So don't try to do all jobs well. Instead, learn to delegate and give control and decision-making abilities to others at your firm.

4. Start thinking about your clients' entire families if you aren't now.

"Firms that are dealing with higher-net-worth families, like we are, really need to think of their clients as families, not one person, and they need to figure out how to serve that family," she said. Advisors should teach their clients about wealth and "what it enables" because, "if we can't do that proactively and well, not just sort of on the side or when it comes up or when they have a kid who's treating the money badly or acting spoiled … we won't get and keep clients."

5. Manage to results.

"It's your job as the manager to communicate what" the results you want to be, she said. Shifting her mindset this way even before the pandemic had a "huge impact on how younger workers, especially millennial and younger, feel empowered to do their job when and where they want to," she noted. You do not need to see employees all the time to manage them, which is more like babysitting. "You need to move on from that style" if you are still managing employees like that, she suggested.

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