Blog - Page 3 of 14 - The Certior Group

Strengthening Families by Putting People First

December 7, 2019 by Avi Kantor

Happy Holidays! In the spirit of the season, I thought it would be appropriate to reprise a post from 2018 that speaks to the value of Gratitude. May this be a time of Peace and Goodwill for you and your family.

Much of what I’ve learned about Gratitude has come from personal experience. When I look back, every personal crisis I’ve had has ultimately led to me to Gratitude. Whether it’s a serious illness, or a major setback in business or an unexpected accident, I now see the positives in those events and feel grateful for what I’ve learned from them. I’ve learned that adversity can be a great teacher, if you pay attention to the lessons. It wasn’t always that way.

I’ve learned a lot about Gratitude from my colleagues and friends at Empowered Wealth. Many have had personal or family health issues. We have all learned to appreciate and not take good health for granted. We’ve all learned the value of having family members who get along and care about each other. I think we share the value of friendship and being part of a community where we feel like we belong. It’s one of the reasons why I love living here in Jackson.

Most of all, my experiences have taught me the value of Gratitude is a lifestyle, a practice that starts with self-respect and respect for others, grows into appreciation for the many blessings we all have, and inspires the spirit of generosity that gives fulfillment and meaning to the way we live our lives.

Is Life About the Ascent or the Summit?

November 3, 2019 by Avi Kantor

I like to hike. Because Jackson Hole is surrounded by mountains, I have many opportunities to hike with my family, friends, colleagues, and out-of-town visitors. For quite a while, I was single-minded about hiking; it was all about getting to the top of the mountain. Yes, there’s scenery, conversation, and opportunities for contemplation but what really mattered was getting to the top.

Recently, I was introduced to some articles, videos, and a book titled “The Second Mountain” by New York Times columnist David Brooks. In each instance, hiking and climbing mountains became a metaphor for living and life. “The Second Mountain” and its two-mountain metaphor in particular, caused me to view hiking and the work that we do from a different perspective.

A few years ago, Brooks suffered some personally devastating setbacks. He had metaphorically climbed his “first mountain”. He was an acclaimed, best-selling author and political commentator; he was financially secure; he had raised a family. He had achieved. He was famous. He was wealthy. He was, what most people would consider to be “successful”. But when his marriage ended and he was forced to confront his life at that time, he experienced depression, emptiness, and a lack of purpose and meaning that caused him to explore what was missing in his life and ultimately to write “The Second Mountain”.

Like the work that we do, Brooks’ Second Mountain is a metaphorical journey, an exploration of what matters most. Very much akin to one of our defining principles “True Wealth”, Brooks focuses on deep relationships, meaningful work, building and contributing to communities, and core values, especially faith, in order to live a good and moral life. The climb up the metaphorical second mountain, then, is an aspirational pursuit of fulfillment, meaning, and joy; it’s an ongoing process of optimizing True Wealth.

Brooks’ relentless, single-minded climb up his first mountain was much like the way I hiked; get to the top, that’s what matters. I realized that it’s good to know first of all what our destination is; that in each phase of our lives the destination might be different. It’s also good to realize that there are two mountains, to be aware of which mountain we’re climbing, and especially why. Regardless, it’s really about the journey; about enjoying it and finding meaning and fulfillment in the process. It’s about optimizing True Wealth and, in our case, about helping others to optimize their True Wealth in every phase of their lives.

Experiential Learning Breeds Collaboration

October 7, 2019 by Avi Kantor

I often speak about collaboration as an important, often overlooked, element in the work that professionals do. Recently, my colleagues and I had an experience that suggested what collaboration looks like in action and how to create the conditions for great collaboration to occur.

Below is a picture of a climbing wall in Chaska, MN. At a conference at this site, a group individuals from various professions including myself and Certior Group colleagues Hal Hershgordon and Patty Totaro were tasked with scaling this wall in random teams of three.

We were supplied with safety equipment – helmets, harnesses, ropes, etc. – and organized in a manner that minimized the risk of a fall or accident. But there were several constraints that made the climb unique: each threesome was tethered together and the middle climber was blindfolded. Patty Totaro is the blindfolded climber in the picture below.

Below, I’m beginning the climb blindfolded, guided by my two teammates.

Below is a picture of the teams of supporters controlling the safety ropes.

The people on the ground did much more than just provide rope support. They also gave the climbers verbal encouragement and often, verbal suggestions about the next critical move to make.

The unblindfolded climbers were highly focused on assisting and guiding their blindfolded co-climber. Hal Hershgordon is the climber on the left literally helping the blindfolded woman move her left foot to her next foothold.

(If you look closely, you noticed raindrops in the picture above. The downpour that occurred during the event made for slippery conditions, adding to the difficulty and complexity of the activity).

Ultimately, most of the groups succeeded in reaching the top. But in some ways, that wasn’t the main takeaway from the experience. In fact, while the experience itself was exhilarating, climbing the wall blindfolded with teammates and supporters has for me become a metaphor for collaboration in business and in life.

There are so many parallels, analogies, and lessons embedded in the wall climbing experience. For this article, I’ll focus on just three. First, as advisors, we’re tethered to our clients, guiding them, and helping them take the next small step – the next critical move – along their metaphorical climbs in business and in life. Certainly there are others giving encouragement, making suggestions, and “holding the ropes” from time to time. But we’re there with them, helping them steward their True Wealth.

Second, sometimes it’s raining, the wall is slippery, the situation seems overwhelming, and the next move is unclear. We use the acronym V.U.C.A. (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) to describe these conditions and, by analogy, the world we live in. Yet, the learning is in the struggle to move up the wall (or forward in business and life). It helps to have guidance and support.

Finally, after climbing we all got a chance to celebrate not only our own accomplishments but those of others.

We often don’t allow ourselves to fully experience and celebrate the positive moments in our lives. A motto that came out in the aftermath of the wall climbing experience was “Savor the Good”. It’s something that I hope we can all adopt and grow into.

Striving Together: The Intersection of Competition and Collaboration

September 7, 2019 by Avi Kantor

“…in jazz we share, we listen to each other, we respect each other, we are creating in the moment…”¹ – Herbie Hancock, Grammy award winning jazz musician

At first glance, competition and collaboration seem diametrically opposed. Competition conjures up images of winning and losing; triumph and failure. Collaboration suggests camaraderie, working side-by-side. If we’re competitors, we’re not collaborating; if we’re collaborating, we’re not competing.

But did you know that “compete” originally meant “to strive together?” It’s true. The word “compete” was originally derived from the Latin root “com” which means “with, and “petere” which means “to strive, seek, fall upon, rush at, attack”. In Late Latin “competere” came to mean “strive in common, strive after something in company with or together”². Doesn’t that sound a lot like “collaboration?”

It turns out that as the French adopted and used the word in the Middle Ages, “compete” gradually took on the meaning “to enter or be put into rivalry with.”³ Today, it seems that there’s “friendly” competition – as in some sports or business situations – and “cutthroat competition” for scarce resources, opportunities, and “winning” in sports, business, and many other situations in life.

“I’m a fighter. That’s my culture…The longer I own this team, they’re gonna pick up more of my culture. We had ’em. We should have stepped on their throats the other night and cut their throats.” – Tilman Fertitta, owner of the Houston Rockets NBA basketball team, commenting after being eliminated in the recent NBA playoffs. ⁴

Rather than cutthroat competition, The Certior Group embraces the original notion of competing; that is, “to strive together” with our co-collaborators and clients to optimize wealth and wellbeing. In fact, we’ve identified collaboration as one of our core values. For us, collaboration isn’t just a nice sounding word that goes on our website and into our company literature. Collaboration is fundamental to the work that we do. Without collaboration, we can’t do the work and provide the value that we promise our stakeholders. Rather than relying solely on our own internal domain expertise, – which we certainly have in several areas – we’re invested in a process that combines not only our own expertise but also that of others. It is our belief that by striving together with other professionals, like well-performed jazz, we can best serve our clients, collaborators, and team members.

(1) Brainyquote.com/quotes/herbie_hancock_592363

(2) Origin and etymology of compete, Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com

(3) Ibid.

(4) Rockets owner goes on epic rant after Warriors’ clinching Game 6, Ali Thanawalla, NBCsports.com

How to Navigate in a VUCA World?

August 7, 2019 by Avi Kantor

In the late 1980’s the United States Army War College developed the acronym VUCA to describe the conditions that would exist at the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. VUCA stands for “volatile”, “uncertain”, “complex”, and “ambiguous”. In hindsight, that did accurately describe what the world was like when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Since then, the business world has adopted the VUCA acronym to suggest the many challenges that business owners, executives, and managers face. For The Certior Group, because of rapidly changing conditions in the world – for example, in politics, economics, law, technology, social norms, etc. – we’ve adopted the notion that we all live in a VUCA world.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frank¹

Some people don’t fully appreciate the profundity of Frankl’s statement. Much of what’s VUCA in our world is beyond our individual control. We don’t control large technology companies or how they gather data about all of us. We don’t control the way government operates. We can’t control the way politics unfolds, or how the natural environment might be changing, or how social media may be changing how we experience our lives. Yet, as Viktor Frankl suggested, we have a choice; we can at least choose our attitude.

Our firm has taken this idea of choosing one’s attitude and artificially divided the VUCA world into two attitudes: personal reactions that are “not Gratitude” or responses that are “Gratitude”. This is clearly an artificial, abstract “map”² of the VUCA world that we live in, not the actual world of politics, Google, the internet, Facebook, Instagram, mobile devices, climate change, pollution, fake news, etc. But, as Viktor Frankl said, by choosing our way, we’re finding that following this “map”, leads to practicing Gratitude.

What does it mean to practice Gratitude? From our perspective, it means to respect, appreciate, and be generous in spirit with others and oneself. It is the ongoing practice of Gratitude that we’ve found to be one of the keys to thriving in a VUCA world. A growing body of research supports the idea that we can become more resilient, despite VUCA in our lives, when we become more grateful. How to practice Gratitude is the focus of our public events, workshops, and client work. Please join us in making Gratitude part of the antidote to a VUCA world.

(1) Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl, 2006.

(2) In 1932, Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski published an article in which he stated that “the map is not the territory”, meaning that abstract concepts help us understand reality but should not be confused with reality.

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