Eighty feet underwater off the coast of Australia, diving the Great Barrier Reef, financial advisor coach Ray Sclafani watched the largest octopus he had ever seen move slowly across the reef. No urgency. No wasted motion. Just complete awareness. And as it moved, it changed color instantly and seamlessly blending into coral, rock, sand, and fish in real time. It was not reacting late. It was adapting continuously. In this episode of Building the Billion Dollar Business, Ray connects that moment to a Harvard Business Review article "Become an Octopus Organization" and makes the case that the most adaptive firms in wealth management are the ones that will sense and respond in real time while others are still waiting for direction. The world most advisory firms were built for is long gone. The model that replaces it is already here.

What you will learn in this episode

Why most organizations are still built like machines and why that model is failing in today's environment
What the Harvard Business Review's octopus organization model means for wealth management firms and their leaders
The difference between a complicated world and a complex one and why you cannot script your way through the latter
Why only 12% of businesses produce sustained results after transformation efforts and what the systemic miss actually is
How moving decision-making closer to the client transforms how people think, act, and contribute inside a firm
Why organizations deeply focused on creating client value are three times more likely to lead in revenue growth
How the leader's role must shift from directing work to shaping the system by removing friction, creating clarity, and making ownership visible
What the octopus model teaches about coordination over control and fluidity over rigidity

Key insight from this episode

The firms that learn how to adapt inside this environment in real time are the ones that will grow, scale, and ultimately endure. The rest will keep trying to push harder on systems that were built for a different world. And that rarely ends well.

Resources and references mentioned

Harvard Business Review — Become an Octopus Organization
The Octopus Organization — book by Jaina Werner and Phil LeBrun, executives in residence of Enterprise Strategy at Amazon Web Services, London

Coaching questions for reflection

As your firm grows over the next three years, where will you need to shift decision making closer to the client so your team can respond in real time instead of waiting for direction?
If you stepped back and redesigned your organization to better adapt to change, what would you stop doing first so your team can take more ownership and think more interdependently?

Building the Billion Dollar Business is hosted by Ray Sclafani, founder and CEO of ClientWise, the financial services industry's leading executive coaching and team development firm for elite advisors and wealth management teams.

Find Ray and the ClientWise Team on the ClientWise website or LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube