Leadership Archives - The Certior Group

Remaining Hopeful in the New Year with Leadership

December 30, 2020 by Avi Kantor

Prior to 2020, we would begin our presentations with the statement, “We live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world.” We would then ask people for examples of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in their personal lives. They were often slow to come up with any examples, as if VUCA was an abstract idea that applied mostly to others. 2020 has changed that.

First, it was a virus that might (we didn’t know for sure) kill us.

Sanitize everything. Stay home and stay away from people.

Businesses and schools shutdown…

Stimulus money…

Masks…

Elections…

Protests…

Cyber attacks…

Vaccines…herd immunity?

What hasn’t changed is our view that healthy mindsets, practices, and supportive communities are what counteract VUCA. In 2020, we’ve learned that whatever is happening in our lives, we can choose to be grateful. Despite adversity and things not going the way we’d like them to, we can still notice what’s good in our lives, even if they’re small things. Perhaps 2020 has made you more aware of what matters most to you and to those around you. Optimizing True Wealth – what matters most to us – in every phase of our clients’ lives, has always been the primary vision for our work. We may all look back on 2020 and realize that this year gave us deeper insights and clarity into what True Wealth means to each of us. Perhaps 2021 will be a year where we plan and reorganize our lives around what truly matters most.

With this year’s VUCA have come widespread challenges to our individual mental health and sense of wellbeing. Instances of anxiety, depression, addictive behaviors, domestic violence, and suicidal thoughts have spiked as basic safety, security, and human needs have been threatened. To counteract the mental health and wellbeing threats we face, our approach is to develop and nurture the practices and habits that support our True Wealth. Specifically, the work of James Clear and his book Atomic Habits provide guidance on how we might form and sustain the habits of an anti-VUCA, True Wealth lifestyle. We’ll have more to say on this in 2021. Finally, 2020 has made it clear to most of us that human beings are social creatures. It’s never been more apparent that we flourish when we’re around others who bring out the best in us. Certainly, the trend towards more remote, technology-enabled work will continue. But whether it’s virtual or in person, our families, groups, and communities are and will be a big part of how we can make 2021 and beyond better for us all.

A New Model of Leadership

September 1, 2018 by Avi Kantor

Starting in the 1960’s, professional football began to see the rise of the star quarterback as the key to winning championships. Quarterbacks like Bart Starr of the Green Bay Packers, Terry Bradshaw of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Joe Montana of the San Francisco Forty-Niners, and currently Tom Brady of the New England Patriots have become legendary sports figures, largely because of the many championships each has won.

New England Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady

What the era of the quarterback brought to professional football was a highly structured and – most importantly – hierarchical approach to organizing football teams that has subsequently carried forward, metaphorically, in business and culture today. The quarterback of the team calls the plays and leads with authority and control.

The quarterback model has come to represent a common, perhaps prevailing model for the way effective estate planning should be done. Led by a dominant advisor – the one who has the closest relationship with the client – a team of advisors develops and executes a plan focused on tax-minimization, asset protection, and efficient distributions. Respect for this unspoken hierarchy and cooperation among advisors represents best practices in this approach to estate planning.

Miles Davis

In 1958, Miles Davis released an album “Kind of Blue” that revolutionized the way that jazz was played and performed. The music that Miles Davis inspired and modeled is now called “cool jazz”; it was a major departure from the music of the past because it created a new freedom of expression, of human emotion and spirit through music.

Another giant of jazz John Coltrane was a member of the ensemble that recorded that album. American culture has for many years been built upon competition – at times cutthroat competition – for money, power, and recognition. Jazz musicians are part of this culture. Yet, somehow the conditions that were created in the preparation and execution of this album, allowed many talented musicians to perform in collaboration like never before. The result of their efforts is now legendary.

By analogy, multi-generational planning and wealth management could be conducted like a jazz ensemble; that is, with a collaborative team of advisors working to bring out the best in their individual and collective efforts. We suggest that the way to improve our prospective success as a multi-disciplinary profession is to become more like a jazz combo than a football team; that the future of multi-generational planning is not about vying for dominance and control but rather more about collaboration.

Growth Through Experiential Learning

June 16, 2018 by Avi Kantor

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (Winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1937)

In May, David Quinn and I attended an Empowered Wealth event that featured this experience led by our colleague Erik Gabrielson:

One of the things that we realized from participating in this experience is that we can help people here in Jackson by creating unique, shared, learning experiences. Done thoughtfully, these experiences can become powerful growth and connection opportunities for members of our Wealth and Wellbeing community and their families, friends, and business colleagues.

Multi-generational Family Leadership

May 1, 2018 by Avi Kantor

Recently, one of our Certior Group co-collaborators Erik Gabrielson conducted a multi-generation family meeting in Minnesota. Another co-collaborator Ron Nakamoto, assisted Erik and participated as an observer. After reflecting upon the meeting, Ron shared the following thought-provoking observations about family leadership:

It is essential that a multi-generational family come to a collective understanding that sustaining the family, the wellbeing of its members, and its wealth requires leadership and leadership development;
It is advantageous to have a leadership development process; having an outside facilitator can greatly accelerate progress;
Learning specific business skills is important and should be pursued but family members mentoring future family leaders is perhaps more important;
There is a society-wide shift from autocratic to more collaborative family leadership taking place. This shift presents an opportunity to create a form of meritocracy that balances traditional hierarchical organizational leadership with more modern egalitarian ideas. That is, there can be a way to get input from many but still rely on the wisdom and judgement of those who are best-suited to lead to make informed decisions on important matters;
Families must communicate, communicate, communicate if they are to prosper in the future;
It’s important to adopt an entrepreneurial, learn-from-mistakes mindset to address the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world we live in.

These thoughts and ideas will undoubtedly inform the ongoing work that we’re doing here at The Certior Group. In addition, Erik plays an integral part in our ongoing Wealth and Wellbeing Community. I’m grateful for the progress we’re making in our efforts to help our colleagues, clients, and community optimize True Wealth.

It’s About True Wealth, not Just Money…and Why “Collaboration” is More Than a Buzzword

September 1, 2017 by Avi Kantor

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we as professionals can provide more timely and relevant services to more people. Personally, I know that I don’t have all of the answers and solutions to everyone’s problems or opportunities. But I do know that in our area of True Wealth stewardship services and Wyoming’s unique advantages, we have much to offer.

Then I came across the following article from Forbes. The article describes a typical approach that I’ve seen for years: advisors focus on minimizing taxes, maximizing returns, and mitigating risk through legal and insurance strategies. As the article suggests, most advisors believe they should communicate with other advisors. But here’s the challenge that I see: they’re communicating in order to save the maximum amount in taxes, seize investment opportunities, and address financial risks ONLY. To me, this perspective, while common, is short-sighted, self-serving, and misses the mark when it comes to what people really want and need.

Forbes Article “Why Your Financial Planner, Lawyer, and Accountant Should Talk”

I am far from a legal or tax expert. But I can say one thing: advisors would be well-served to ask their clients what they value more than money. In so doing, they may discover that their clients have values, concerns, aspirations, and unfulfilled dreams that saving taxes, maximizing returns, or mitigating financial risks don’t address.

Recently, I attended the The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) Conference here in Jackson. STEP is a large international organization focused on the trust and estate planning issues of families from all over the world who have significant financial wealth. Here again, my sense is that most of the advisors in attendance concentrate on minimizing taxes, maximizing returns, and mitigating risk through legal and insurance strategies. They generally are not thinking about what really matters most to their clients.

I also noticed while attending the STEP conference that collaboration is the new industry buzz word. Just as in the Forbes article above, most advisors seem to view collaboration as talking to each other, cooperating amiably with each other, or being agreeable and tolerant with each other.

I would juxtapose this “business as usual” approach with Avi Kantor’s panel presentation at the recent Empowered Wealth Summit.

Avi knows that if we truly collaborate with our professional colleagues and hold each other accountable for serving our client families well, we can provide more timely and relevant services than what the world has experienced historically.

Responsive Menu