← Managing Your Practice
Managing Your Practice
How Leaders Can Map Career Journeys to Drive Growth and Innovation
00:44:23
Jennifer Climo, CEO of Milestone Financial Planning, and Martine Lellis, chief talent officer at Mercer Advisors, work in advisory firms that are vastly different in but have the common goal of creating an environment that fosters growth in...
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- [00:00]
Jennifer Klimo
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Welcome to Dimensional Fund Advisors Managing youg Practice Podcast. This podcast series is dedicated to helping financial professionals make the critical business decisions successful firms face every day in key areas such as driving growth, building enterprise value, and the client experience.
- [00:25]
Kathryn Williams
Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Kathryn Williams and I am the head of Practice Management here at Dimensional. And I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. We spend a lot of our time. In fact, almost every conversation we have with clients involves, in some fashion, human capital. It is your most expensive asset. It's an area that most organizations, no matter how big or small they are, if you've got one employee, you have to think about what that experience looks like and how does it inform the business you're running. And we definitely do see in our Global Advisor study that with high performing firms in particular, this is an area that they have paid very close attention to over time. No matter how big they are, they're thinking about the talent, how to keep them, how to move them through the organization, and of course also reward the behavior that they're looking to see in their people. And so it's my pleasure to have two fantastic guests here with us today who spend voluntary and maybe a little bit of involuntary, this one there, all their time thinking about the people in the organization, how to lead them, how to care for them. It's my pleasure to introduce first Jennifer Klimo, who's the CEO and senior advisor for Milestone Financial Planning. Jen, it's great to have you with us today.
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Jennifer Klimo
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
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Kathryn Williams
We're going to have a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to this. And Martine Lellis, who is the Chief Talent Officer for Mercer, a fantastic organization, a big organization. So I love to hear your perspective about all of the work that you've done to, to really bring talent forward, think about their development, how to retain them. Martine, it's great to have you with us today.
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Martine Lellis
Thank you. I'm very excited to talk about this topic.
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Kathryn Williams
So I would love for our audience just to first and foremost get a sense of your organizations. When we talk about people, as I mentioned, it's very easy to say, well, I've got one or two or five employees, I don't really need to think about this or I probably should. But certainly as organizations continue to evolve, it takes on a lot of different shapes and forms and both of you have spent time working on this in your organization. So, Jen, would you start and just give our audience a sense of what is the size and scale of milestone.
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Jennifer Klimo
Sure. Milestone Financial planning. We have about 430 million under management. We have 13 employees, three offices, three interns, and 235 clients.
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Kathryn Williams
Gotta account for those interns. They're super.
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Jennifer Klimo
Intern program is part of the human capital. Very important part.
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Kathryn Williams
I love that. And Martine, what does the scope and scale of Mercer look like for you?
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Martine Lellis
Yeah, so we are a larger organization nationwide, about 90 offices across the U.S. we have 56 billion of assets under management and serving many thousands of clients. We have 1100 employees spread across those offices. And I am very proud to say that we have an internship program as well. We're recruiting for 25 interns for this summer.
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Kathryn Williams
That's fantastic. As a former COO, I'm a huge fan of interns. Not just necessary, not just for that opportunity, potentially for new talent to bring into your organization, but they can just. They can get a lot of work done if you really set it up right.
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Jennifer Klimo
Absolutely.
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Kathryn Williams
It can be really powerful for your teams if they're dealing with capacity or challenges like that. So, Jen, I'd love to start and ask you, given where you're at currently as CEO, senior advisor, the size of the team you had, Was there a moment in your career and your time in the business where you realized, wow, we really need to get purposeful about our people and what that career journey is going to look like for them?
- [03:50]
Jennifer Klimo
Absolutely. I mean, we've been working on this for a few years, but it really came to light last year. We had a lot of turnover and a very small organization size that makes it really tricky to move forward. So we had to say, hey, what we're doing to hire and recruit talent is not working. So we need to completely rehaul this program. And we did, and hopefully have now fix that problem as we've hired some really great people.
- [04:14]
Kathryn Williams
I can't wait to talk a little bit more about that, because I know it's been a process. Martine, Chief Talent Officer, large organization. You're in multiple offices, but as you think about kind of your journey and stepping into this role, what propels you? What really drives you in terms of being the very best cto?
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Martine Lellis
Well, I think it's all about creating opportunities for people. So, you know, a lot of people have come into this business because they want to help clients. And of course, that was my first motivator when I came into this business back in 2002. But my motivations over time changed. They really pivoted to thinking about, how do I take care of the people and providing opportunities for those people to advance their careers, provide for their families and really develop internally and have those opportunities to continue to learn and grow and learn and grow in their everyday lives. So it's something that I wake up thinking about every single day. How can I make Mercer Advisors the employer of choice? Out in that marketplace we're competing every single day for talent. We know that that is very challenging. We're just not producing enough talent, you know, in the marketplace to continue to provide. This is a highly competitive profession. And so we want to continue to see how we can attract and retain that talent. And Jen brought that up, making sure that also when we have turnover, which turnover exists and the larger you get, the more and more you see that the more and more you can also combat that as well by continuing to put programs in place that assist with making sure that you're continuing to have the talent stay and be loyal to the organization.
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Kathryn Williams
You know, this is an area that we look at in our Global Advisor study every year. We want to understand not only what your current headcount is, but what's been some of the changes to that headcount. And in particular we differentiate the results across our high performing firms, which is a very specific criteria, and the other firms in our study. And when we look at turnover of employees of talent in the business, it was really interesting for us last year to see that for the other firms in our study, the number one reason cited, and I think we'd all agree, sometimes you don't really know why someone is leaving, but hopefully you're working hard to figure that out. But their number one cited reason was that the employee identified a career advancement opportunity elsewhere and that's what propelled them to leave the business. However, with high performing firms, the number one reason for departure was actually they chose to exit the employee. And for sure there's probably a little bit of M and A activity fallout in that we see certainly M and A continues to be an area of focus for many organizations. But really when I talk with these high performing firms and they've had that kind of turnover, a lot of it is just making some really hard decisions about what the kind of folks they need in their business. I think making sure you've got A players, taking the time to coach and turn folks into a players if you can, but if not, if it's just not a fit, being willing, as painful as it can be, and maybe even a little bit of a crunch on the remaining team for a temporary period of time, but willing to walk away and I think that's a sign actually of a very healthy organization that's willing to look at that in a very candid. Hopefully you get the hiring right going forward, which, as Jen, as you mentioned, we're going to talk about that, but we do see that in our study and it shows up for sure. Gonna focus mostly on the career journey today. So you've got your talent pipeline, you're thinking about the people that you're bringing into the organization. I'd love to hear from both of you when I say career pathing or the career journey, what does that mean to each of you? Jen, what does that mean when I say that? What stands out to you?
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Jennifer Klimo
It's the step from the very beginning. When you come in from that entry level position all the way through to the end, what is that going to look like? And to me, you want to be as very clear as possible. The more decisions you can take off the table, the easier it is for people to understand how they're going to move through the process, where they're going to be. It gives a lot of clarity, which can really help you hire and retain people.
- [08:17]
Martine Lellis
Yeah, I'm reflecting on this because a career journey is so personal, right. And as I have gone through, you know, my career, as I've watched other people go through, through their careers, it's such a cycle, it's such a road. It can be windy, it can be straight, it can go in lots of different pathways. And I've always said, like, you know, when I was younger and I tried many different things, my viewpoint was you gotta try a lot of different things and you're like throwing things at a wall and you're sort of seeing what sticks. Because if you're not curious and you're not trying a lot of different things, you really don't know what it is that your heart really desires. And if you're not doing something that your heart really desires, the longer you stay in that, the greater challenges you have and the greater disconnect there then becomes in that position, then it becomes actually a position and a job and not a career. And that becomes incredibly challenging for the employee and for the employer. So what I always encourage people is that when they're younger in their career journey is that they really have to explore. I'm an explorer at heart. People who know me know I love to travel, I love adventure, I love doing lots of different things just to try them out. But that's what's really critical in this early part of that journey and early part of the arc. And so if you're too prescriptive, if you put too much pressure on, you have to go one way or the highway, then people tend to get stuck. And what I encourage organizations to think about is how do you think creatively about allowing people to explore, especially early in that journey, to make decisions whether they stay on the ramp, maybe they go off the ramp, maybe it's okay for the organization to have some turnover because finding that long term fit is actually critically important to overall organizational success and therefore that will provide for better outcomes for both the employee, the employer and the organism that is the organization. That's really how I think about it. And I love helping people create those pathways for themselves and I love helping the organization create the optionality and the opportunities for the employees to then. And when it's an opt in, it becomes so much better for that employee. Giving the employee the options creates the opportunity for the better outcome.
- [10:54]
Jennifer Klimo
So just to piggyback on that, one of the things, with a much smaller organization, we have a lot more flexibility in terms of jobs and what people are doing. And we're a big believer in putting people in the right seats on the bus, the Jim Collins concept. And in fact, once people come in and they start working the job that they're hired for, often we'll see that they have skills in this other area, be it technology or operations or marketing. And then we just let them say, hey, well, what is it that you love to do? And then how can we affect that change here at Milestone? So you can really help Milestone grow because you put them into that ideal job of theirs and they just take off. They own it, they love it, they're really able to do the right job. You can always hire another planning associate. Like you can hire more of those. Right. And train new people and again, find people to build your business by moving them around.
- [11:44]
Kathryn Williams
I appreciated your comment, Jen, about clarity. Right. Role clarity. And of course, when you're in an interview situation, you want them to have incredible clarity on what the job on day one is sort of expecting of them. Right. And I love job descriptions that include things such as when the position is fully optimized, here are some of the things that are in play. Here's what we want clients to feel. Lots of different things like that that can really create that clarity. But you also want folks, hopefully that are also putting their hand in the air fairly quickly to say, hey, I want a shot at that. Right, Martinez? So how do you navigate that? And be candid about this, is the role you want to do that mapping, as you mentioned, Jen, but you also, you actually want to create some space for some of that flex and some of that creativity. How do you strike that balance? I'm curious.
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Martine Lellis
Yeah, kind of the key things in employee engagement, if you're familiar with like that employee engagement pyramid, the baseline of the pyramid is I understand what's required of me. It's like the food, air, water of I understand what's required of me in my job. It's the table stakes of I'm going to be an engaged employee if I know what's expected of me at work. I think that's question number one in the Gallup survey. But question number 12 or 11 or 12 is I have the opportunities to learn and grow. So as you go up that pyramid of questions, you really are looking for the engagement of the employee. So employee engagement is all about going from the baseline of what an employee actually needs to understand about the clarity of the job that they're doing up to. I have opportunities to learn and grow. So when you are getting to that, giving them the stretch, and that's what you were asking, how do you continue to give employees the opportunities to stretch themselves? And that's really the critical thing of getting the full engagement. It's moving from the baseline of you know exactly what's expected of you every single day when you walk through that door to the stretch of moving up in the organization, getting those stretch opportunities and being able to grow in your current role or grow into a new role. And that's actually how you expand.
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Jennifer Klimo
And from the small firm perspective, what's important to understand is the people that got you here aren't necessarily the ones to get you there. Part of our turnover we had were folks that really wanted to work for a four or five person company. And we grew really fast, very quickly. And so they didn't necessarily like that we were now a 12 or 13 person company. They were great and we wished them well, but that's just not where they wanted to be. And so you have to be able to graciously let them go do their own thing. And you get the right people in that want to work for that 13 person company. But then again, also, as you mentioned, Martine, want to grow and succeed that cap and stretch themselves.
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Kathryn Williams
I love that. And we're gonna come back in a moment and talk a little bit more about that actual mapping, but I'd love to take a moment. And in the spirit of what I think all of us, all three of us are in agreement that A career pathing doesn't happen in a vacuum. Obviously you're part of an organization. Every job career pathing I've ever done mapped out. It always started with based on the needs of the organization, which is I think really important. There can be lots of variables. We often talk about it in the context of the three Cs. So in addition to that career journey, you have the culture and you have compensation. What else do you think about? Or do you make sure comes very purposely alongside that career journey piece or that career pathing piece for each of your organizations? Martine, I'll start with you.
- [15:21]
Martine Lellis
Yeah. When you start thinking about career paths, you first have to think about sort of the org design as a whole. And your organization could be smaller. You know that Jen's talking about a structure that may have a dozen people. The organization could be extensively larger. Our organization has 1100. But first you have to think about where's your org, where the people need to sit in the org, where do the people need to be in the seats on the bus. And that kind of starts there. Then it's about what are the roles that you need inside of those departments, those divisions, what are then the stair steps, those rungs on the ladder inside those divisions? What are then the job descriptions, those roles and responsibilities, how do you progress inside those different roles? And then it would come to, to your point, compensation banding for those different types of roles. And perhaps maybe if you're in different geographies, how then are those geographies different for how you need to certainly pay your people. And then you have to think about how do you recruit and put people into those types of jobs. Is there different recruiting capabilities dependent upon where you're trying to get people located?
- [16:33]
Kathryn Williams
And have you something we've seen, I'm curious if you've seen this as well, starting at more than mid sized organizations in terms of number of people. But that traditional career pathing, you can't see me, but I'm using air quotes here. Career pathing that starts with let's talk about that advisor career path for example. It's a super easy one. It's probably has gotten the most attention in our industry. But you know, maybe you start out as could even be a client service associate, but then you can go to an associate advisor, then you go to service advisor, then you go to lead advisor. And we're actually seeing organizations get more purposeful about having a career track that is very distinct client services, very distinct at that service advisor. And it doesn't have to be at an automatic stepping stone that you can in fact have forks in the road, so to speak, for some of these roles over time. Is that something that both of you have seen as well? Is that.
- [17:20]
Jennifer Klimo
Oh yeah.
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Kathryn Williams
In play?
- [17:21]
Jennifer Klimo
Absolutely. We do the same thing. We've had people that want to cross between being service operations oriented and advisor oriented. And going back to your prior question, we like to start with core beliefs. You know, especially when hiring into a very small organization, you know, our focus, one person can. Right. One person can really make a big difference on the culture. So we're all about trying to help people, whether that's the clients and the employees, the community. We're also a B corporation, so that's part of our charter. And so starting with. Even before you get to the job description, what are your core beliefs? These are ours. Are you going to fit in? Are you going to be really happy here? We're also very academic focused, so we put a lot of pressure on academics and understanding of all of the calculations and everything. So if you're not really into those that spreadsheets and calculations and stuff, that might not be the place for you and that's okay.
- [18:13]
Kathryn Williams
Good to know that up front, right? Yeah, yeah.
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Martine Lellis
An emphasis on the technical skills. Like it's important in your company. And I can speak from Mercer Advisors. There's multiple career journeys and pathways. We want to make sure that we have multiple entry points for people to come into the organization. I think we've found that that's critically important. So there's starting points for employees now to come in to the organization, whether they're coming in to service and operations, whether they're coming into financial planning, whether they're coming into portfolio areas so that we can recruit now into those different areas. Those different areas could all lead to a road to becoming a wealth advisor. But they don't have to. So having a technical track as well in each of those areas, you can now move into management in client services. That is its own division has its own pathway to become a very astute person who leads service and operations, to lead client services. We have director level positions in that area because we have a large enough organization that requires management and structure there. We have the ability for people to become incredibly astute technicians in the areas of financial planning, portfolio consulting and those areas. But if people want to move out of that heavy technical training and move into the advisory area, they can. They can go stay on the ramp or go off the ramp, so to say. And those pathways are very clearly defined in the organization and we have the ability to coach people to do that. And we're constantly developing new areas for our employees to have those types of ventures.
- [19:55]
Kathryn Williams
I love that. I love that.
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Jennifer Klimo
And we're aspiring to be like that.
- [19:59]
Kathryn Williams
When we talk about the mapping that career pathing and thinking about what you put down in front of people, what are the components or characteristics that you outline as you do, think about the migration of roles or the migration of people within your organization.
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Jennifer Klimo
The career path mapping we've developed so far is primarily focused on the advisor path from planning associate right out of school. And right then, we're just looking at being a sponge learning, being in the meetings with clients to get some of that experience. And then as time moves on, you might be able to take on some small clients of yourselves. The advisor is still involved, but you're doing most of the servicing yourself, developing that relationship. And then as you move throughout the organization, you're just developing more critical skills, helping more clients. And then, as I think Martine does, we have metrics for number of clients that you're serving, revenue that you have. It's not just about number of clients. And then also, are you able to convert a prospect? That's obviously a big skill. It doesn't mean that you can't progress if you can't. That's not everybody's cup of tea. And we need people to do the work as well as convert the prospects. And that's not the same skill set. Usually we're still early in this process. We're really still working through some of the kinks and the bugs, which is why I really like listening to what Martine has to say on this topic, because again, that's where we need to go.
- [21:18]
Martine Lellis
And retention is also critically important. Right after you've converted that prospect, the ability to retain your existing clients becomes absolutely critical, because that's your client base that provides that ongoing revenue and ability to add additional assets and expand that ongoing revenue is also critically important.
- [21:38]
Jennifer Klimo
Agreed.
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Kathryn Williams
And, Jenna, I think our big majority of our listeners today will actually feel really good about the fact that they're still figuring it out. And even at Mercer, it's still. It's an evolutionary never done. Absolutely. So even size and scale doesn't automatically punch that particular car. It's definitely evolving, for sure. Martine, for you as well, when we do think about the components or the characteristics of that career journey mapping, what are some of the pieces that you think about or that you look for?
- [22:07]
Martine Lellis
Obviously, we want to have really smart talent. We want to have talent that is hitting Certain metrics, as the organization grows, you have to become more metric based. Revenue is obviously a big metric that we look at in the organization. Jen alluded to that. It's not just about number of clients, but it's also about the revenue generation. Because that is what from a. You're trying to create a successful business. Revenue actually drives the business. It drives the growth of the business, it drives the profitability, the productivity of the business. It drives your ability to add more talent to the organization. So when you're able to add more talent to the organization, that creates that flywheel effect of just being able to create more growth. Those types of revenue based metrics that you can hold people accountable to and accountability has to start at the top and then it has to then move through the organization. But I also think there's just those other characteristics that you have to look for in your employees. Are they able to work on a team? Are they able to be collaborative? Are they able to have that curiosity to explore? Are they working on behalf of the client first? All those things that we continue to talk about, you know, those types of characteristics are critically important to maintain and preserve the culture. Especially when you're growing as fast as we are and when you're bringing in continued partners through our partner development process, merging other firms into our company, it's a rapid expansion. We have to make sure that those values are aligned. And so we look for those values in people that we're promoting and moving around the organization.
- [23:43]
Jennifer Klimo
I just want to piggyback on that for a second, which is. I totally agree. Actually, part of our bonus pool is distributed not only just based on relative performance, but also based on your success of the team. How are you promoting your teammates and helping them out? That is a key component because we didn't want to lose sight of that as a small organization. It's not all just out for yourself and maximizing your own revenue. It's how are you building up your teammates.
- [24:10]
Kathryn Williams
Although I love that and we would consider that to be a best practice. A really strong characteristic of the high performing firms that we work with, the ones that seem to really feel pretty good about this. But we definitely do see business owners that shy away from that. The metrics, particularly on that advisor track. And I do want to talk about what we might call the roles that are sort of on the house side or as I affectionately sometimes refer to them as the revenue preservation side of the business. But those are critical roles as well. But with that said, I can't tell you over the years how many times I've heard someone say, great producer brings clients in. People can't stand working with that person and I'm about ready to sell them more equity or I'm about ready to promote them. So it can be hard. Well, I don't think it's harder to have some of those more subjective pieces in play, but that's where we will sometimes see business owners shy away a little bit because it is easier to just say, hey, if you just make this number, then we'll pay you. If you make this number, you get an opportunity to advance. And as both of you are saying, there's obviously some really significant other pieces that have to be in play as well too.
- [25:13]
Martine Lellis
Absolutely. We all have to get along. We all have to be able to work together. This is not a one person show and it never will be if you want to continue to grow and move an organization forward.
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Kathryn Williams
Yeah. And so, Jen, being a somewhat smaller organization, what has been some of the bigger challenges as it relates to developing a career path and having those conversations with your people?
- [25:36]
Jennifer Klimo
Well, I'd say the biggest challenge was developing a written career path and then having almost 40% of the organization leave. That was definitely a challenge.
- [25:45]
Kathryn Williams
That would be a challenge. I think we would both agree with that for sure.
- [25:47]
Jennifer Klimo
We had to completely overhaul how we were doing hiring and again, I want to bring it back to the core values again, which helps to that because we tell people right from the get go is we're going to evaluate you partially and how you contribute to the success of the team. So that's, that's a big step for us. And so then that combined with an employment survey, started using that in our hiring process which is a two part survey and it really was a game changer for us. It really helped us get right the culture fitting correct people. Because as you know, when you interview everyone's a culture fit. You describe the culture like, oh yeah, that's what I want. But if you can get a little deeper than that, if you can go deeper on some testing, then you can really find out. I'm not sure they're going to be happy here. And then after they go through that process and then the interview process, you continue to hammer your culture and then they will self select out. So we've had that and since we implemented that process, we've made some really great hires. I think we hired five people this year and they're really terrific and I am so excited for how Milestone is going to grow.
- [26:48]
Kathryn Williams
That's awesome. That's awesome. Martina I would love to ask you. I think something that I have noticed has gone through a little bit of an evolution when it comes to career pathing. And just having that conversation is the area of time and this idea that as part of the career pathing we often see you're in this role for two years and then you're in this role for four years. And it's a stake in the ground for a lot of folks in terms of what they believe to be a successful career path matrix, if you will. What are your thoughts on that?
- [27:21]
Martine Lellis
Two years at Mercer is like a decade somewhere else, right? Our place flies so fast. So the beautiful thing about when you have growth is it creates such amazing amounts of opportunity and we have erased the type of requirement of you have to be here for two years before you can go and do something else. Our viewpoint is you have to be here until you've proven you can go and do the next level or you can go and try something different until you've developed those skills. Because we are able to throw so many different projects and opportunities to people's way, they can learn and grow very, very fast. That is the beauty of when you have lots of projects, lots of interesting things to develop and learn. It does provide people that opportunity to try a lot of different challenges. And so it does allow people to have lots of upward mobility, lots of progression. New divisions form. So we need new people. And a lot of that opportunity is to recruit internally for people to join that new division. Because we have good internal talent. The ability for us to use our partner development when we are looking for adding talent through the talent acquisition process of purchasing other companies, that's huge. That is some of the most loyal talent that we can find because often they have been inside those organizations for very extended periods of time. So rather than having to grow organically through hiring a whole bunch of people every single year, we. We can go and acquire talent through that process and we get very, very loyal talent. So it's very fascinating to see how that can work. But yeah, I think those are some points that I would make there.
- [29:06]
Kathryn Williams
Have both of you had opportunity? Or maybe it's a question of what's a ratio between people are putting their hand in the air and saying, hey, you know, I would love a new opportunity, I'd love to do something. Versus you all are tapping them on the shoulder and saying, I think you might actually be an interesting fit for this. Like we have this thing. Does that make sense? The difference of the volunteering versus you used the word recruiting. A moment ago. Is that mix and play, or do you find that it leans one way or the other? I'll start with you, Martine, and then I'd love to hear Jen's perspective.
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Martine Lellis
Yeah, you know, I'll give you just a basic stat. We have about 1100 people in the organization that has grown by probably a couple hundred people from last year. But last year alone, we did over 350 promotions or internal moves. So when you think about that's a third of your employee population that had an opportunity to either be promoted or moved inside the organization to a different role. So whether those people raised their hands or whether we tap them on the shoulder to recruit them to do something different, that's a pretty large opportunity for upward mobility, progression. I just can't exclaim how proud I am of what we've been able to create. That is only created because of growth. It's only created because we have a focus on how do we continue to provide those opportunities for our talent. And it is a discussion between management and employee. Employee has to advocate as well for themselves. Jen and I were talking about that at lunch earlier today. It is a conversation. The employee has to take that responsibility, the manager has to take that responsibility, and executive layers and other layers within the organization have to assess their talent across the organization and say, who do we think is ready? I didn't get the opportunities in my career 100% because I was pushing. I got opportunities because someone else was also looking out for me. And they sometimes came to me and said, martine, we think you're ready for this. And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm too busy over here doing xyz. And I kind of had to be pushed and prodded just that little extra bit to experiment and take something else on. And I think it's a collective, collaborative responsibility between mentors, leaders looking to extract that talent, and the person internally saying, I'm ready for this as well. Look at me, pick me. Notice what I'm capable of.
- [31:44]
Jennifer Klimo
I am also so proud of our company because there's the people that have been there for more than three years. Not many now, but those people all in the past six months were in my office saying, you know what? I'd really like to do this. And I talked a little bit about there was one woman who really wanted to be the culture liaison for new hires because we had so many new people. How do you integrate them into the culture? How do you answer their questions so they don't feel like they have to Go talk to me about that. So they have an advocate and that was great. Somebody else came in and said they want to be in charge of financial planner training. And this was all on their own. And I can't explain how important that is because as we grow to this next step, it can't all be the owners, right? The managers. There's only a few of us. We can only do so much. If we're really going to grow, it has to come organically from everybody in the organization.
- [32:34]
Kathryn Williams
So how do you handle if you have someone who really, really wants to do something or be something and it's just not in their wheelhouse, nor will it maybe ever be, for lack of a better way to put it. I mean, I think we know the obvious answer to that, but sort of the practice of it, I'm curious.
- [32:55]
Martine Lellis
Well, the practice of it is to ingrain a culture of being able to give honest feedback. So you know, we actually have training on delivering and receiving feedback. So just as important as to being able to deliver feedback is training someone on how to actually receive feedback. Such a good point because feedback can feel obviously like criticism, but if you're open to it, it's also one of the best learning opportunities that you can receive in your career, in your life. And so you have to make the feedback process part of your culture as well. So it can't just be reserved for that. Once or twice a year that you're doing your formal performance evaluations and you're surprising the person and you're saying, oh, by the way, you're not ready for this or you never were ready for this or you failed, you have to make it so that after you're in a client meeting and the person shadowing you and they did a presentation and maybe there were a couple points of refinement that you need them to make. After the meeting you have to actually have a pre scheduled debrief time where then it is the sit down time that is scheduled for the feedback session so that the person is able to give the feedback and the person is prepared to receive the feedback. And you have to put that into your culture, into the life cycle of the manager and employee process. I think that's critically important to put that through your organization.
- [34:21]
Jennifer Klimo
I completely agree with that. That is as partly where we don't do it. Probably every meeting we have probably should. But we did put into place the quarterly meetings with the supervisors to try to go over things, to have real time feedback. So there should be no surprises when it comes to different things. And sometimes people don't realize what they're going to be great at and they think they want X. And then you can come in and say what you're really good at is.
- [34:44]
Martine Lellis
Yeah.
- [34:44]
Jennifer Klimo
Have you considered why? And sometimes that can lead them in that. In that direction.
- [34:49]
Kathryn Williams
Absolutely. Craig Wortman introduced the two by two feedback framework that we use here at Dimensional and he was kind enough to actually be on this podcast series. And the spirit of that is just as you said, Jen, aligning the feedback and the behavior as close as possible, really important. As you were saying, Martine, as well, you know, getting people comfortable with not only giving feedback. The first person that I use that two by two framework for is an executive leader of the organization and I'm not easily intimidated. So sometimes you're giving that feedback up into an organization as well, but getting comfortable with giving that. And absolutely, as you said, Martine, comfortable with receiving it as well too. And such a cultural piece as well. Absolutely.
- [35:28]
Jennifer Klimo
I think it also starts at the top. People, are they comfortable receiving the feedback? Because if at the top you're not comfortable receiving the feedback, then people are going to learn from you as they watch you.
- [35:39]
Martine Lellis
That's a great point. I mean, you have to be able to have those open and honest conversations and those start with making sure that this is a relationship based business. So we should all be able to have those great relationships with our peers, with our superiors, with the people that report to us. So we have to first develop that. We have to have a layer of trust. And so we have to be able to have those open and honest conversations and feel like it's all for the purpose of getting better. It's all for the purpose of doing what's best for the client. It's all for the purpose of making sure that we are all doing a better job. And it's all for the purpose of advancing our ability to have a better career. And I think if all those things are in alignment, then we can be open and ready to receive that.
- [36:24]
Kathryn Williams
That's such a good point. So in our remaining moments here we have listeners with us today that maybe are just beginning to get purposeful around the career pathing piece. And as we've all talked about, it absolutely has to happen. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are other components for sure. But just really thinking about that in a more purposeful way, what would you suggest? Since both of you are well into this journey for your respective organizations? What's a good place to start? What would be something that someone listening today that is realizing. Look, I really need to start mapping this out. I do not want to lose people. I want to keep the people I've got or I need to also kind of know where. I need more people, too. That's part of that career pathing. What would be your recommendation, Jen? I'll start with you.
- [37:08]
Jennifer Klimo
So I'm a big fan of Philip Pavli's G2 book, so I would start there. We do recommend all our next gen leaders. Read that book also. Local masterminds are great people who are in the same position as you are in other firms. And my favorite is people who are in the next position where you want to be in other firms. A mastermind group of those folks can really challenge you and help you put together those pieces. That's how I've learned where we need to go to the next step. How did we get to this next step? Is you listen to, to people in those next groups. And I will say, Martine, you're many groups ahead of us, but I do listen a lot to what you're saying to see. Okay, these are the things that we're going to need to put in place to be able to move along that path.
- [37:49]
Kathryn Williams
Yeah, that's great. Find your people. Yes.
- [37:52]
Martine Lellis
Find your people.
- [37:52]
Kathryn Williams
Right. That's what we say, too.
- [37:54]
Martine Lellis
I'm going to give a kind of like, real practical piece of advice, and that's that you don't have to tackle it all tomorrow. Right. Because that gets overwhelming if you think, oh, my God, I have to have a career path, I have to have compounds. I have to have everything figured out. What that often does is it creates paralysis. Right, agreed. And you do nothing.
- [38:15]
Kathryn Williams
Yes.
- [38:16]
Martine Lellis
So if you're going to do something, let's start with that. What we talked about earlier, which was like food, air, water.
- [38:24]
Kathryn Williams
Right.
- [38:24]
Martine Lellis
I know what's expected of me at work. Do you have job descriptions for every single person in your organization, including yourself? Including yourself. Right. Good point. But I think if you're going to start somewhere, start there first.
- [38:39]
Kathryn Williams
Yeah.
- [38:39]
Martine Lellis
And look at that and make sure that you have a very clear job description for what everybody does. That is kind of the first step of cataloging and making sure that you understand what is expected of every single person. That's the first step of actually creating a career journey. Once you have that, that becomes then a natural stepping stone of how you then progress to what might be expected, of how you would promote a person to the next stage. And then you can build on those building blocks. But just start with the basic first step. And that will get you out of the paralysis of, I have to tackle this whole big, scary thing, and hopefully then you can move from there. I love it.
- [39:25]
Jennifer Klimo
I completely agree what she said.
- [39:29]
Kathryn Williams
I agree as well. And I think we do, as business leaders, business owners, we sort of put it off to the side because it can be tough to start on it. By the way, I think there's also an opportunity to include your current team members in the process, too. Have a conversation. They're sitting in these jobs right now.
- [39:46]
Martine Lellis
Let them write it down.
- [39:47]
Kathryn Williams
Right. And so encourage them to be a part of that exercise. And then, of course, map it. What I will say is a beautiful career journey, in my opinion, will not guarantee that you're going to keep all the talent you have, that they will be beautiful, happy employees forever. As we've talked about, there's a lot of other components, but I would say over time, the absence of that, the inability to speak clearly about not only the role you're in today, its influence on the business, but where you could potentially be heading. Just take that off the table as a barrier. Right? Just do what you can to be candid, honest, clear with your people and not wait until they're in your office saying, I have been doing this job. I don't want to do this job anymore, and so I'm going to go somewhere else and do it.
- [40:28]
Jennifer Klimo
Right. Don't wait till it's an emergency.
- [40:30]
Kathryn Williams
Just wait till it's an emergency. Exactly.
- [40:31]
Jennifer Klimo
Yeah. We don't have it all figured out. And I love what Martine said, which is just pick one thing and focus on that. To say, this is going to be my focus for the next three months. If we can solve this one problem and then take either your business partner or a couple of key employees into a room for a day off site and just say, okay, how do we solve this problem? So many things can be worked out. We are all very smart people. You have a very smart team. You can solve anything you put your mind to.
- [40:59]
Kathryn Williams
And by the way, for those listening, when you show up next week or a couple days after hearing this and you say to your team, we're gonna get purposeful about the career journey, people are gonna panic. They're gonna say, why are we doing this? All of a sudden? I thought everything was fine. So really think about that communication and why you're doing it, as you've said, Jen, and being purposeful about it. But I love Martine, what you said, you just start with the basics, and it doesn't have to be fully baked in a day or a year even. But the absence of it, I think is really where organizations start to struggle and based on our experience, so really, really important there. Any final thoughts before we close out our time?
- [41:34]
Martine Lellis
Be a mentor to someone. It's the best way that you can help someone progress in their career, in their learning, and how they can be a good citizen for the organization and for others around them. And so that's what I would recommend. And if you are not ready to be a mentor, be that mentee.
- [41:52]
Kathryn Williams
Mentee.
- [41:53]
Martine Lellis
Yeah. Yeah.
- [41:54]
Kathryn Williams
And that relationship can be of that really powerful as you do. Think about what is the next stage of my career and how can I talk through that with someone. Or maybe they see something in me, as you were saying, Jen, that I'm not yet seeing in myself. And that mentor mentee dynamic can be really powerful that way as well.
- [42:08]
Jennifer Klimo
Yes. Take some of the experiences you've received and pay it forward for somebody else.
- [42:12]
Kathryn Williams
Such great advice. Thank you both for joining me today. It was a pleasure to talk with you. We know organizations are really trying to figure out this human capital quotient in their business and figure out how to keep their people engaged and on board. You've shared some really fantastic ideas to help businesses. So thank you very much and we'll look forward to seeing you again.
- [42:32]
Martine Lellis
Thanks for having us.
- [42:33]
Jennifer Klimo
Thanks for having us.
- [42:33]
Kathryn Williams
Thanks for listening today. If you absolutely want to connect with Martine or Jen, you can find them on LinkedIn. For sure they're both there. You can reach out to Dimensional as well, and if you want to know more about about how Dimensional works with advisors, you can find us@dimensional.com this is Kathryn Williams with Dimensional Fund Advisors and we will catch you next time. Thank you.
- [42:52]
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