Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Luke Sonnen: Hi, I'm Luke Sonnen. Welcome to The COO Roundtable, powered by PFI Advisors. Here's your host, Matt Sonnen.
[00:00:24] Matt Sonnen: Hi, everyone. We're doing something a bit different this month. Instead of focusing on all the amazing things that operations folks can do for their firms and how they can do those things better and more efficiently, we're actually going to look inward, and we're going to focus on how all of you can get more from your careers and how you can feel more fulfilled in your job.
Stacey McKinnon, who many of you know, is the COO, CMO, and partner at Morton Wealth here in Southern California. She's just up the road from me, but I'm too lazy to ever leave my desk. We're conducting this interview via Zoom, but we're not that far from one another. Stacey appeared on Episode 4 of The COO Roundtable podcast, one of our very first ones.
She was also kind enough to join me for the outside interview in our employee development course inside The COO Society. She's one of the true leaders in our industry. She's really fighting for the voice of the COO, and just like me, she's very passionate about promoting the need for professional management in our industry. I am delighted to have her back. With that long introduction, Stacey, thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:33] Stacey McKinnon: Well, thank you, Matt. That was quite the introduction. I feel like my cheeks are red a little bit. I'm so happy to be here. You and I have built a collaborative relationship over the last few years, and I learn so much from you, too. It'll be a fun discussion today.
[00:01:51] Matt Sonnen: Perfect. Well, let me explain that this is such a great conversation and such an important message that we want to share with everyone. We're actually doing double time here. We're going to record this, both as Episode 46 of the podcast, as well as this is going to act as one of the courses inside the human resources learning path of The COO Society.
We're filming via video for the course, and then we're going to just strip the audio for the podcast. We're doing double time, but let's jump in. As the basis for our discussion today, it's going to be this incredible paper Stacey wrote. It's titled, Your Career Is Up to You. It includes a few pages, also written by Philip Palaveev of The Ensemble Practice. We're going to link to the paper as part of the episode notes for the podcast. It's also going to be inside COO Society.
Stacey, let me first just ask, what prompted you to write this paper in the first place?
[00:02:44] Stacey McKinnon: It was a product of a lot of reflection. Over the last two years, I feel like the world has gotten tricky. We've started to question ourselves more and more. We're not sure if we like the career we've chosen, if we want to continue down the same path. At the end of the day, these questions are really good to become reflective.
I worry that sometimes we ask ourselves so many questions that it actually holds us back from achieving the things we really want to achieve. If we just depend on other people to achieve our goals, we may not get what we want from life as we would if we really took ownership over our career. I wanted to write the paper and share just stories of things that I learned in my life, the different jobs I've had, what eventually led me to be at Morton Wealth and then become the COO and CMO and a partner.
The road wasn't easy. I thought it would be really nice to share that with our industry and even colleagues, friends outside of the industry, and just give a different perspective on what we can actually do to gain control back of our lives and our career. It's been a few years of feeling out of control and uncertain, and getting that control back just feels like the right thing to do now. I want people to have some of the tools, resources, and lessons I've learned to be able to do that.
[00:04:07] Matt Sonnen: Great. Well, I'm going to give away a little bit of the punchline right here in the beginning, because I want people to come into this conversation with the right mindset. I'm going to tell everyone, right off the bat, this conversation is not going down the path of if you want more from your career, your employer has to give you more stuff. That is not where we are headed with this discussion.
I'll point out the very first page of Stacey's article, it has some pullout quotes on it. It states, "To build your career, you have to be trustworthy, collaborative, accountable. You have to be a good teammate, productive, dependable. You must achieve results, and you need to be an excellent communicator." Stacey, talk to us about that list. I love it.
[00:04:52] Stacey McKinnon: There's a lot of competencies on the list. It's a little overwhelming potentially. As I reflect upon what's really gotten me to the place in my career that I am today, it didn't come from waiting for someone else to tell me what to do. It came because I proactively took the steps that I needed to take to take ownership over my career.
I think sometimes we get confused. We think we need to just put our head down and work really hard, and eventually, things will come our way.
The truth of the matter is, if you want to grow in your career, you want to sit at the leadership table one day, you actually have to put in the hard work and achieve the results necessary to get yourself that spot at the table.
I was actually talking to a coworker recently about the struggles they're having getting to the next stage in their career, and they're like, "Oh, I just don't have time for projects," or, "I don't have time to do the big things because my inbox is just exploding. I'm just in reactive answering email mode every single day, and that's all I can do." I asked them the question, which is, "Do you think that will get you to the next stage? Do you think just responding to emails is the thing that will progress you further?"
They sheepishly said, "No, probably not." I'm like, "No, it's not," because to truly have a seat at the leadership table, to make decisions, to be a strategic partner for your organization or firm, you must achieve results, which means you must gain control over your inbox. Not think of that as the most important thing that you're doing for the organization but moving the firm forward in whatever initiatives you have is actually the things that are most important.
I list all those competencies because I think they're all good, but at the end of the day, we need to make sure we're not trading working hard for career progression, because working hard could look like answering emails, but answering emails doesn't achieve results.
[00:06:51] Matt Sonnen: We all love the concept of remote work, but the challenge there is it really is all about results now. It's not because they don't see you, "Hey, I got in early, and I stayed late. I was sitting here. I was playing Solitaire. I love the office." Every time they showed someone's computer screen, they were playing Solitaire. It's not about the time put in. It's got to be about the results.
[00:07:14] Stacey McKinnon: I think the remote work has confused that, too, because what we end up doing, which is a whole other issue, is we end up being on a phone call, on a Zoom call, all of us have our inbox open, and we're seeing emails come through, and we're trying to listen to a person, and we quickly respond to an email, and then we forget what they say, and then we're embarrassed, and we can't walk it back and be like, "What did you just say again? I wasn't listening."
Then we're multitasking, which is just making our brain tired. I think about when I first started working, I used to put multitasking as one of my competencies. I've quickly realized that that's not a good competency actually. That's a distraction, too, actually focusing on what you need to achieve and being fully present and engaged in everything that you're doing.
I feel like the last few years have caused us to have some bad multitasking habits that we really have to get out of if we're really going to achieve those results.
[00:08:08] Matt Sonnen: You opened your paper with a story of your very first job, washing cars in Lake Tahoe. You assumed, and I would've, too, you assumed that that was going to be a fun and carefree experience playing in the sun, but it didn't exactly turn out that way. Tell us about that experience.
[00:08:30] Stacey McKinnon: I was a part of the generation that started working at a very young age. I'm not sure that that always happens anymore, but my parents had a deal with me. The deal was if I got a job, I was allowed to save all the money that I made. If I wanted to pay for some extra stuff, if it was above and beyond, that would be fine. They were still willing to pay for me to go to the movies or have a meal out with friends at 16, 17 years old as long as I saved the money.
I reflect back on it. It was actually probably one of my first experiences in financial planning because I had to make those decisions, how was I going to save, and should I spend anything on extras? I ended up saving probably 75% of the money I made, and 25% went to some of the fun things that I did in life. What I realized was that this was the lesson in goal setting.
Because I had this job at a car wash, in the winter, it was brutal. It was 15 degrees outside. There was mud, there was slush, it was gross, but people tipped really well. I worked really hard. Reflecting back on it, I got to college with a savings account, with money to spend. I got to enjoy my life and have that cushion that allowed me to do it. It truly was a blessing in disguise at that point. It also told me to work hard. I got to, immediately at a young age, see the fruits of my labor.
It was a pretty good experience. Although I probably am glad that I'm not doing that now. That sounds a little brutal. Today, maybe just as you get older, you have less resiliency for 15-degree weather. I was so grateful that I had that experience. Actually, I'm really grateful for all of the jobs I've had. Every single one taught me a lesson, and that lesson has created my mindset in how I approach my work today.
[00:10:24] Matt Sonnen: Well, I feel guilty because my first job at 16 was a fun and carefree experience.
[00:10:30] Stacey McKinnon: [chuckles] Lucky.
[00:10:31] Matt Sonnen: I don't know how I swung it, but I was an usher at a minor league baseball stadium, the San Bernardino Spirit. They were a Single-A baseball team. The stadium only held about 8,000 people, and I somehow finagled my section, that I was the usher for, was a directly behind home plate. I basically would get everyone in their seats before the game started. Then I would just sit there and watch a baseball game right behind the plate. I'm so old, the minimum wage back then was $4.25.
[00:11:03] Stacey McKinnon: Oh, my God.
[00:11:04] Matt Sonnen: I made a maximum of $17 per game. Many nights, the stadium was empty, and they would send me home early, so I wouldn't even get to the full $17, but at 16, getting paid to watch baseball, and then in the best part, in the seventh inning, they would allow us to take a break. I got a free hot dog, I got a free soda, and I'd go sit in the bleachers and have my dinner.
I was thinking about this. It's been 31 years now since I had that experience. It was my very first job, but to this day, it was the single best work experience that I've ever had. I think that fits well into our conversation today because I was making minimum wage. It wasn't about the money. It was just about the work environment, and it was about everything that came along with the job.
[00:11:49] Stacey McKinnon: Well, probably taught you that you wanted to do work that you could also enjoy, that you had a passion towards or felt somehow connected to, which is very fun. Also very lucky. I feel like I would've traded you for that.
[chuckles]
[00:12:03] Matt Sonnen: Compared to what you were doing, yes, this was a piece of cake.
[00:12:07] Stacey McKinnon: That's great.
[00:12:09] Matt Sonnen: Let's talk about career ownership. The notion of quiet quitting, it's all over the press right now, and you touched on this a little bit. Coming out of COVID, I think a lot of people are reevaluating their careers and their work-life balance. As I mentioned in the intro, you've taken a different angle with your paper.
You've said, "Hey, if you want to be fulfilled in your career, the responsibility lies on your shoulders." They need to take control of their career and look for opportunities, to raise their hand wherever possible, to take on projects, and prove themselves as they work their way up the career ladder. It's something we talk about on the podcast all the time. Why do you feel so strongly that people should have an ownership mindset when it comes to building their career?
[00:12:54] Stacey McKinnon: I find that people who are disappointed in where their career has come to are people who are overly dependent upon other people. I think, at the end of the day, 90% of the time, it's going to leave you unfulfilled if you just wait for someone else to give you an opportunity. I don't think that that's a good recipe for success.
It ends up making people fall into a victim mentality, where they're saying that they're held back by others as opposed to an empowered mentality, where you say to yourself, "I can do it because I have the drive, and I have the passion, and I have the power to do it." Now that being said, you can't do it without other people. There's a difference, in my mind, between depending on other people to get what you want and seeking other people out to mentor you, collaborate with you, sponsor you, coach you to get to where you want to go.
I couldn't do anything that I was doing in my life without the collaboration from my husband and us deciding that this is the thing that we're going to pursue and pursue together in many ways. Even though I'm the one that's showing up every day and doing the work at Morton, he's always there supporting me every step of the way. My friends, my colleagues, our CEO, Jeff Sarti, and my partner, Meghan Pinchuk, all of us, together, help one another to create the careers that we want to have.
When I say that your career is up to you, I'm not saying that other people don't play a significant role in it. I'm saying it's up to you to find those people that are going to play the role that they need to play to help you to get to where you want to go. That's why I'm so passionate about it. I guess when I hear about people who are unhappy and sad, it truly is because they feel like they don't have that control, and they don't have those people, and they don't have those resources.
In writing the paper, I wanted to suggest that then just go find those people and just go do it. You can do it. You can find them. I have people reach out to me on LinkedIn all of the time for just one-on-one conversations because they're stuck, and they just want someone to collaborate with and pass ideas by. I'm happy to do that, too. There's a lot of people out there, and they're willing to help.
[00:15:17] Matt Sonnen: The ownership mentality, whenever I hear that, I think of Eric Hehman from Austin Asset, when he was on our podcast, he used a plant analogy. It was just an analogy, but he said, "Walk around the office and find plants that need watering. Raise your hand and say, 'Well, I'll water that. I'll be the one that does that."
He went from an unpaid intern to the CEO slowly over years, but just by taking on more and more responsibility and proving that he was someone that the firm could depend on, he was able to move himself up. Whenever I hear that ownership mentality, I always think about the plant analogy.
[00:15:55] Stacey McKinnon: That's so true. I was reflecting on this the other day, the difference between a contributor and a doer. A contributor is someone who notices that the plants need servicing and goes and helps because they know that's going to bring forward the company or enhance the client experience or support their career growth. A doer waits for someone else. He probably made it to that level of his organization by being a contributor, not a doer.
Sometimes we have to ask ourselves the question of how are we showing up. Are we showing up as a contributor or a doer?
[00:16:27] Matt Sonnen: You talked about the importance of having that community around you. The problem, for a lot of people, I think some of our listeners, they don't feel that they're at a workplace where they are empowered to grow. In your paper, you talked about finding that workplace with endless possibilities. What questions do you think someone should ask during the interview process? Everyone's always on their best behavior in an interview, but what can they do to see if the firm is truly going to offer career opportunities for them?
[00:17:00] Stacey McKinnon: The interview process is challenging because you don't want to come off entitled, or you have all of these requests for them. That's not necessarily a good way to get a job, but you have to be able to ask the questions that would give you a viewpoint into how they operate. Potentially, you could ask a question like, "How do you strategically plan for openings? What's your process to think through career advancement opportunities? Do you have an application process?
When you post jobs, do you consider internal hires? If I were to create goals for myself and work towards achieving those goals, will you collaborate with me on those goals so that we have clarity in what we want to achieve?" I think the more you can find out how a firm thinks through their hiring, recruiting, job opening process, the better you're going to know if they're a place that's going to actually give you those endless opportunities.
Then make sure in the interview process that you're reinforcing your willingness to own it, your willingness to be curious and learn and engage and invest into the organization, to mentor other people, to be a team player. All of these are incredibly good attributes of any candidate, but at the end of the day, you're wanting to make sure that in the interview process that there are opportunities ahead and that there's a lot of transparency within the organization on what those opportunities are and what it takes to get there.
[00:18:34] Matt Sonnen: It's too strong of a word, but the switcheroo that happens in interviews, it's a real problem for COOs. We've written about this in the past. David Canter, when he was on the podcast, he pegged the failure rate of COOs to be something around 50%. Not because the COO was incapable or did something wrong, but many times, during the interview, the CEO says all the right things.
"Hey, I need someone to come in here and run the business for me. I need to focus my time and energy on client service business development." That all sounds great. Then once the COO is hired, they're undermined by the owner over and over again. The owner doesn't want to change how the firm has done things. The employees will figure out very quickly that the COO doesn't have the authority to do anything. They can go right around the COO.
The CEO had the right intentions, but when the rubber hits the road, they just don't want to change.
[00:19:34] Stacey McKinnon: That's probably something, at least, if you're interviewing for a COO position where you have the opportunity to meet the CEO in advance, you can ask some curiosity questions. You can better understand what their opinions are on partnership. How do they show up together? What do they really want from the role of COO? If the answer is, "I want you to do all the stuff I don't want to do," you're probably not going to want that job.
That's not what you want. You don't want to just do all the stuff that someone else doesn't want to do. You need someone who's asking you to strategically move the company forward and partner with you to do so. I think that's probably something you could glean from the interview process if you're looking for a place where there's true opportunity.
[00:20:16] Matt Sonnen: No, that's great. I mentioned Philip Palaveev added to your paper. In the section that he wrote, he said something that really resonated with me. He said, "My career didn't follow a plan, but I always had a very strong sense that I wanted to have a career, meaning that I wanted to learn. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to solve difficult problems. I wanted to be one of the best in my field. I wanted to have the recognition of my peers."
That one, that last little piece is what really resonated with me, the recognition of the peers. How can we change our mindset to have the same perspective that Philip has?
[00:20:54] Stacey McKinnon: Very good question. I do love the part that you just said, the recognition of the peers, but I also love the part where he says that he wanted to be the best in his field. I think something's happened in our society over the last few years, where we choose humility over courage and bravery. Sometimes that works, and sometimes that actually holds us back, because to be one of the best in your field, you can't quite take a humble approach to that.
You have to actually say, "I'm here, and I'm showing up, and I'm going to do it, and I'm going to be good at it, and I'm going to add value to you, and I'm going to contribute to the company, but I'm also going to be proud of the work that I'm doing, and I'm going to be confident in the work that we're doing." Every once in a while, I find that we hold ourselves back by not wanting to come off boasting or saying that we're somebody that people should listen to or that are so important.
The reality is that when we're not confident, and we don't take control over our career in that way, we don't actually get to make the impact that we want to make. What I loved about the whole section of the paper that he wrote was that he truly focused on the impact that he gets to make through the work that he's doing.
I think if we, just as humans, approach everything with the eye line of impact, so like, "How is this going to achieve the impact or align with my personal life," I think we'll be much happier, and we'll go into situations with the right mindset and the perspective that Philip has instead of going into situations and feeling like we have to defend ourselves or becoming a victim to our circumstances.
I think what Philip was really saying is that you have to learn, you have to grow, you have to solve problems, and all of those things will get you what you want out of your career.
[00:22:48] Matt Sonnen: I remember, very vividly, during my senior year of college trying to figure out what I wanted from my career. It was the weirdest dream, but I kept thinking, "I just want people to rely on me." I literally said to myself, "I want my boss to have to call me after hours or on weekends to ask me how to do stuff. I want him relying on me." It's a really odd goal for a 21-year-old, but for some reason, I never really viewed it as "just a job."
I don't think I knew the terminology, but I always wanted a career, not just a job. Then once I got the job, I started way below the lowest man on the totem pole. I was below the person that was ordering lunch every day for the team. I remember bringing work home one night, and I sat at my little-- I was 21 years old. I had my little Ikea kitchen table. [laughs]
I remember sitting there, and I don't know where this mentality came from, but I said, "Man, this is a great opportunity. If I can just put my head down and really impress my bosses, I can make something of this opportunity that they've given me." I don't know how to train for that, but I have no idea where that mentality came from. That really has been the secret to my success.
[00:23:58] Stacey McKinnon: I love it that you were excited to get that phone call. There's some times where I hear people that are so strict on the boundaries they set up, that they would be mad that they got that phone call and saw it as a violation of their personal boundary versus an opportunity to showcase what they had and what they could bring to the table. Now you don't want phone calls every weekend all the time.
Periodically, if you have to put in a little bit of extra work, if you have to take that phone call, if you get the opportunity to be reliable, I guess playing off what you just shared, those are the needle movers. I think we need to make sure that as we're considering balance, we're considering burnout, we're considering boundaries, that we don't go overboard to the point at which we stop actually allowing those opportunities to come our way.
[00:24:52] Matt Sonnen: The pendulum can't swing too far. Philip also talked about responsibility of leadership. I'm going to read one more quote from him. He said, "The responsibility of the firm is to put you in the ring to give you the opportunity. The responsibility of your coach is to give you the skills that you need to succeed, but what actually happens in the ring is up to you." We'll come at it not from the employee's perspective here, but let's come at it from the perspective of the firm itself.
As a leader of an organization, Stacey, how do you give opportunities to the team but then empower them to own it from there?
[00:25:32] Stacey McKinnon: We have an equation at our company that we use, even for our clients. We say that the right mindset plus the right strategy equals a better investor. For our clients, that looks like the way that we work with them on setting their values, doing financial planning, investing with them, but for our team, we use the same equation. The right mindset plus the right strategy equals a better investor in your career.
It all starts with mindset from our standpoint. It's the mindset of the leadership team. I think there's actually a lack of data knowledge writings in our industry when it comes to the perspective a leadership team should take in running an organization. We have books like Vivid Vision we read. We have Traction or OKRs that keep us strategically on point, and those are all right strategy-oriented, but what's the mindset of a leadership team?
I believe that the best leadership team believes their role is to make other people better. That they're there to make other people better and empower their team members so that they can build departments and build initiatives, build goals that will eventually align with the strategic side of the equation, and move the company forward.
The question becomes, how can we create the best possible team? We've always had the perspective, as an organization, that we want to be employee-first. That doesn't mean that we don't put our client's best interest first. From a fiduciary standpoint, that's incredibly important to us. We believe that the best way to build a winning organization is to focus on the team.
I actually liken it to any sports team. They wouldn't just focus on how pretty the arena looks or the field looks or the stadium looks in order to bring fans there. Most fans come to the stadium because of the team. As leaders, we should take that perspective as well. We should invest into our team, then they're going to take care of our clients in a way that we never could do just as a single person. It's really how you scale an organization.
A simple example of how we invest into our team, we started doing education sessions every Thursday at 10:00 AM five years ago. It's been five years now. We have over 50 team members, and it's required for everyone. Advisors, too. Every Thursday at 10:00 AM, we rotate through different types of educational pieces. We're actually booked out for four months right now in our calendar.
It could be a junior person presenting on a case study. They could hone in their presentation skills but then also teach financial planning strategy to the rest of the organization. We have fund managers come in. I did a session a few weeks ago on storytelling and how to be a better storyteller when you're working with clients or prospects.
If you are able to invest into your team in this very simple way where we just have a one-hour session once a week that's dedicated to people investing in themselves, I think the ROI on that has been tremendous. Our whole organization now understands storytelling principles. Our whole organization is getting financial planning education on a regular basis. These types of things are really meaningful for any company.
I guess to the question you're asking, as an organization, I think what your responsibility is, is to make sure that you're giving your team members the tools, resources, and education they need to be successful, and then you're helping them to stay accountable to goals they set for themselves to get them to the next level and grow and invest into themselves in the same way.
[00:29:15] Matt Sonnen: Someone said to me once, "You have to give your employees the opportunity to fail. You have to let them figure it out and possibly fall on their face, and then course correct from there. You can't micromanage through the entire process. Let them figure it out for themselves." When I was at Focus Financial, Rudy Adolf used to always say to me-- I'd be worried about, "I don't know if I should go this direction, Rudy."
He'd say, "Look, it's impossible for you to bankrupt the company. Whatever you do, it is not going to put us out of business." He is an incredible leader. He really lets his employees own their jobs, gives him the freedom to innovate and try new things. It's the only way you're going to scale the organization. If you feel, as the leader, that you have to have your hand in everything and make every decision, it's just not going to grow. It's the only way that you can encourage growth in the team as well.
[00:30:05] Stacey McKinnon: I love that. It's a super good point. Giving people the opportunity to fail or succeed, what that actually does is it helps them to build confidence in themselves. It helps them to know, hey, that was a bad decision. Wait, this was a good decision. I'm going to continue making those good decisions in that way.
As leaders of an organization, sometimes we get stuck in a mindset that we just need to tell people what to do when, oftentimes, what we need to do is give team members objectives or goals or set strategy and then leave it up to them to do the how, like, how are you going to get to this point? That process of being creative is not only fulfilling, but it also leads to them building more confidence in themselves, and ultimately, you have better contributors in your company.
[00:30:50] Matt Sonnen: Exactly. For COOs, especially, you hear people say that the technology choices are easy, but it's getting the people to use the technology that's the hard part. I say all the time, I believe 75% of a COO's job is HR. It's all about interacting with human beings and working as teammates, et cetera. Let's dig into some questions around interacting with others and setting the right expectations.
When a COO is first handed the job, many firms will expect everything to magically work the very next day. They say, "Hey, we've hired the COO. All of our data issues inside our performance reporting system are now gone," or, "The COO is here. All of our systems now are magically integrating with one another." The truth is there's no quick fixes.
Inside the COO Society, we always talk about the easy button, and I say a lot, "This isn't the easy button that everyone thinks it is." My question for you, Stacey, as a COO, how do you balance the quick wins with the other projects that are going to take a lot longer to accomplish?
[00:31:57] Stacey McKinnon: This is an interesting question because I feel like I still haven't quite figured it out, so there's a caveat there. About a year and a half ago, I started evaluating how I was spending my time. I dug a little bit deeper. As a COO, I still do love data. I started thinking through, "Where's my time going? Am I using time as an excuse, meaning I can't do it cause I don't have enough time? Am I balancing my time correctly in the different strategic priorities I had?"
What I found is that it goes back to multitasking. I was just doing too much at the same time, and I wasn't compartmentalizing and focusing on the things that I needed to that were the most important aspects of my job. Two things I think are very important in any role as a COO, one is you have to strategically plan for the organization and do projects that take time and thought in order to do so. The other big piece of my job is just managing and leading people.
If I have to manage and lead people at one point in my day, and I have to strategically plan and put thought into projects in another point in my day, I'm going to start breaking up my day. I adopted a schedule where I wake up at 5:30 every morning, and from 5:45 to 7:00, that's when I do strategic planning. That's when I put thought into my work. That's when I organize my day. I clear my inbox to zero every morning. I set tasks for myself. I schedule meetings. I put meeting agendas on the calendar.
Then from 7:00 to 10:00, I do family time. I exercise. I have breakfast. I take the dog for a walk. I do all of the things that are really meaningful in my family life. Then from 10:00 to 4:00 every day, I just dedicate it to other people. From 10:00 to 4:00 every day, I'm in meetings with my team. I'm leading my team. I'm giving them those quick wins, the things that they need to move forward in their career or to make the decisions in their department.
I'm fully dedicated to my team from 10:00 to 4:00 every day. Then I go back to family time. I found that compartmentalizing really works for me. That schedule's not going to work for everyone. I know people who have kids. That's much more complicated. I would challenge you to consider where is your time going, and is there a way to compartmentalize it, where you're giving your whole presence and being in one aspect in a certain period of time, then really, safeguarding that other period of time.
The reason 6:00 to 7:00 AM works for me is because no one else is awake, and I'm not getting any emails or phone calls or interrupted. I think, at some point, we have to make these decisions to take back control of our time.
[00:34:38] Matt Sonnen: We had David Canter and Scott Slater from Fidelity, when David Canter was at Fidelity, they joined us for Episode 8 of the podcast. David Canter identified four specific action items that every COO should perform almost immediately after accepting a job. This goes to that short term versus long term.
He said, "Aim to take a full 360-day review of the entire organization. Really get the perspective of everyone beyond just the leadership team." That was number one. Then he said, this is an important one that we've already talked about, "Get clarity in writing from the founders on what the COO role will entail in their mind. Don't be afraid to ask, 'Hey, how is success defined for this role?" Then number three, he said, "Play the long game, not the short game."
He says, "The first 90 to a hundred days should be filled with just listening and absorbing and getting an understanding of how the firm works and where the COO can make an impact because," he said, "you have to pick your spots wisely of what you're going to tackle first, second, third, et cetera." Then the last one, he said, "Make the entire first year about small incremental steps that can pave the way for those larger future successes. Don't come into the new firm with massive change immediately because it's just going to freak everyone out."
[00:36:00] Stacey McKinnon: Yes, 100%.
[00:36:00] Matt Sonnen: Then Scott Slater jumped in, and he said, which I thought was interesting, "The COO position," he said, "is a political position." He said, "When you're doing that listening to her for the first 90 to a hundred days, look for problems in the organization that the entire organization is frustrated with and see if you can solve those problems and add value to create some of that political support behind your thoughts. Then build on that momentum."
I always think about that conversation because I thought that was good advice.
[00:36:30] Stacey McKinnon: Very good advice.
[00:36:32] Matt Sonnen: Also, for those of you that watch Ted Lasso, I always think of one of the first scenes. For those of you that haven't watched it, the big joke here is he's a college football coach, an American football coach. He goes to Europe. He's now coaching a European soccer team. He knows nothing about soccer, but the first thing he does, he can't tell these guys how to play soccer. He says, "I'm going to put a suggestion box, and anything you're frustrated with, let me know."
They're all looking at him like he's crazy. He goes, "Come on, anything can go in the box. How's the water pressure in the showers?" "You know what? Now that you mention it, our water pressure's awful." He says, "I'm going to fix that," because he didn't have anything else he could fix. He fixed the water pressure, and he won all this, to Scott Slater's point, the political capital. They trusted him a little bit more.
Reese and I are watching it and I said, "Man that was a COO move right there, fixing the water pressure, but I just think that the whole thing is such great advice.
[00:37:29] Stacey McKinnon: The whole Ted Lasso series should be watched by everybody in leadership because there's gems throughout. They can teach you how to be a better leader. You know what I love? I loved everything you said. I totally agree with what they had shared. It reminds me of a saying that I've heard before, which is, seek to understand before being understood.
That always really worked well for me as a COO, is to approach situations or challenges to better understand them before my perspective is understood. On the quick wins, one thing that I think leaders don't always do is try to give their team members quick wins as part of their one-on-ones if you're having regular check-ins with team members.
There's something that they're challenged by. It's so powerful when a leader takes that challenge and says, "I'll take care of it for you. I'm on your team. I want to make your job easier. I want to make your life easier. I want to go ahead and solve this problem for you." It's really important that we do that so that we even build rapport and trust with our team members so that they know that we're on their side, that we want to be there in support.
I think not only quick wins in how the company is run but also if you can give quick wins to people on a one-on-one individual level, that's really powerful, too.
[00:38:41] Matt Sonnen: Absolutely. Another question that comes up for COOs quite often is how they can manage that dynamic between the CEO and the COO. As you've grown your career, how do you set clear expectations with your CEO?
[00:38:57] Stacey McKinnon: I feel I'm lucky. This is a little bit of cheating. That was a question for me. I have a CEO that treats me like a partner. He doesn't think about running an organization and dictating down to me what the vision is and then have an expectation for me that I just need to go and execute his vision.
He treats me as somebody who he wants to build a vision with together and then support me and give me the tools, the resources, the people, the talent, the technology to actually execute that vision. That being said, I'm in a fortunate position, where I do have that partnership, and I'm not just dictated down to.
I would probably suggest that when you're doing those interviews we talked about earlier that you make sure your CEO wants to treat you as a partner, and they want to collaborate together. That they don't see their ultimate goal of determining a vision as the number one thing that happens in an organization they see the collective whole of what it takes to actually implement and execute that vision as the most important thing that happens in an organization and they're willing to do the strategic planning with you, to make sure you're aligned and on the same page. That being said, I'm in a lot of study groups and I participate in a lot of different industry conferences and other things throughout the financial services industry.
There's a lot of not-great CEOs out there. There's a lot of CEOs that are sometimes the cultural disruptor of the organization. They're the ones that are dictating, they're treating people badly. They don't think about the implication of their decisions. They just go and make all of those different decisions and then they don't actually understand how the results are not going to be what they want because they're not actually thinking through the bigger picture.
If you're in one of those situations, you got to address it. You have to be able to pull the CEO aside and say, "Hey, I want to partner with you. I want to be a part of this. I believe in what you are doing and you're incredibly talented. I know we want to grow this thing together but we have to grow differently. We have to communicate differently. Are you willing to partner with me and do this?" I think that's a very important part of the process and if you are a COO that can't have that conversation with your CEO, then I would suggest you either get coaching so that you can get to a place of having that conversation or ask yourself if that's the right place for you.
It's part of owning your career to be brave enough to have the difficult conversations with the people that are the key stakeholders in your life. I was chatting with someone and they framed this in a really great way. They said whenever you have to have a difficult conversation, think about the problem as separate than the person. I'm the COO going to the CEO and saying we have this problem. You run around this organization, throwing out ideas and distracting everyone in the organization.
Maybe we don't see you. You say we have this issue where there's all these ideas and they're distracting the organization and I'm trying to implement ideas, but I'm not sure that the clear strategic direction on how to go about doing that. Can you partner with me to solve this issue we're having in our organization where people really don't have clarity on what needs to happen? Versus I hate working with you and this is not fun. You can't say that. I think that we need to make sure that when we're approaching difficult conversations we really try to separate the problem from the person and ask people to partner with us to solve that problem.
[00:42:34] Matt Sonnen: Mike Reid from Dakota Wealth, he was on the podcast, he said day one he sat down with CEO Peter Remondi and he said, draw a line down the middle of the page. Write down everything that you love doing on one side, on the other side write down the stuff you don't like doing. He said the right side of the page basically became my job description. You were good to point out hey that you don't really want that job or let me just dump this stuff on you but he made a good point.
He said, I needed to get that off of his plate so either I needed to do certain of those tasks myself or I needed to find someone that was going to do it. It was clear in black and white on that page what the CEO's responsibilities were and what the COO's responsibilities were. He was able to just say my job is to make sure that you're excited to come to work every day, focused on what you love doing. He said he didn't come over to my side of the page very often because that was the stuff he didn't want to do anyway.
I can't ever have one of these conversations without some Eddie Van Halen story. The dynamic that worked for Eddie Van Halen and whether it was David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar the dynamic that they agreed to was Eddie would write the music and then he would just hand the music over to the singer and say, "Hey, you put the lyrics to this." They just stayed in their own lanes. Eddie was quoted as saying. "We were several albums into our career before I even bothered to look at what the lyrics were. I never even knew what Dave was singing all those years."
When things went sideways with Sammy Hagar years later and Sammy actually just talked about this in Rolling Stone just recently. He said all of a sudden Eddie started opining on the lyrics and saying, "Why don't you try this word here? Why don't you try this lyric?" He says, "Dude, this is not the relationship that we agreed to. I'm not going to tell you what to do on guitar." You should not be coming over to my lane. They needed to stay in their own lanes and that's where things kind of went sideways and Sammy finally just left the band.
[00:44:41] Stacy McKinnon: Oh, that's a good story and probably very relevant to this discussion. Setting those clear expectations of what you're each accountable to at the very onset is such an important part of collaborating and working well together. We can idea share together but then ultimately the decision and how it works, the COO is responsible generally speaking for integrating big strategic decisions into the organization. I think the best CEOs know that and delegate that power well.
[00:45:12] Matt Sonnen: We were talking about it as the COO talking to the rest of the team but it works at the CEO level too. They've got to just give direction so people figure this out rather than tell them exactly how to do it micromanage. We've heard feedback that some COOs have a hard time getting the rest of the leadership team to buy into their strategic priorities. How do you present new initiatives to the leadership team?
[00:45:39] Stacy McKinnon: The most important thing to do when you have an idea or an initiative that you want to implement is to make sure that you tie it back to what's most important to the people you're speaking to. This is like important communication skills 101. What does the person across from me need or want? What does the company need or want and how is the thing that I'm offering going to align with that? If your goal is to grow and you need another operations hire, you can't just go in there and say, "Hey, based on the statistics and benchmarking studies, firms our size have four operations professionals per thousand clients whatever the statistic is. We need another operations professional."
People are going to be like where'd you get that statistic? What's that firm like? Who filled out the benchmarking studies? How did that work? That's not a good way to prove your point and that's not going to actually get you what you want. Instead, you have to say, "Hey, I know our goal is growth and I've been noticing that our advisors are frustrated with the turnaround time and documents getting processed and sent out to clients.
In order to make the client experience better and to have faster turnaround time so that we can get those referrals because I know that most referrals are given in the first year of a client onboarding and that onboarding experience has to be incredibly good, I think that we need another operations professional so that we can better spread out capacity across our team and give our advisors that turnaround time that ultimately will lead to growth. How do you feel about that?" That's a better way to frame your operations hiring need than just using a bunch of statistics and data and analysis that may or may not be relevant to the people at the leadership team.
I would say that it's really important to make sure you're tying it to the strategic initiatives of the firm but the second thing is a follow-up. If you get a yes or an okay, take a few hours and build out a plan. "Hey, based on you saying yes, I can hire another operations professional, I would to start the interview process now I'd to hire by this date. Once we onboard these are the things that I think are most important to train on. This is what the other team members are going to be doing once we have it done. This is my game plan and how I'm going to actually institute and implement it. Do you guys all agree with that?"
I think sometimes we forget about the plan, the milestones, the markers how we're going to stay on track. Sometimes we get the buy-in and then you go off and do your own thing. Then the leadership team's like what are we doing? How are we doing it? What's going on here? What's the goal? Is there an ROI? Are we measuring it? Is there KPI for this? They're asking all these questions whereas if you just did a little bit of pre-planning and not only pitch the idea, got approval idea, pitch the plan, get approval on a plan, I think that plan actually builds a lot of trust and rapport with your leadership team and it makes it so that they will be more likely to approve your ideas in the future.
[00:48:30] Matt Sonnen: The only thing I would add to that I think that's spot on. The only thing I would add and we touched on a little bit earlier just try not to overwhelm with too much all at once.
[00:48:41] Stacy McKinnon: Get the approval first, plan second. Don't get the approval with the plan.
[00:48:47] Matt Sonnen: You're right. Everyone wants to improve the organization wants to see everything evolve but at the same time, everyone is so stressed about what's on their plate. If it comes off as I want to do all this and it's going to require a lot of work on your part, people go into that turtle shell and they just reject the ideas. I always tell COOs, divide your suggestions into here's some early wins. We can do these short term, here's some intermediate-term maybe six months from now, and then here's one year from now. You got to know that you can't tackle it all at one time.
[00:49:23] Stacy McKinnon: If you're going to bring an idea to the table be ready to own that idea. Don't put on somebody else. Don't bring an idea and be like oh, but can you do it? You got to own it. If you're bringing it to the table you got to own it.
[00:49:34] Matt Sonnen: Very good. Now let's tackle some common obstacles that employees need to overcome in their careers. We've talked about taking control of their career and raising your hand as much as possible to be a real go-getter. The reality is you aren't going to wake up every single day wanting to slay the dragon and take on the world. I wanted to talk about some strategies that we can take on those days that we just aren't feeling totally motivated. For most professionals, they hit a ceiling at some point in their career and they don't feel like they're growing in their current position they feel like they're just going through the motion. What are some tips that you have to make work feel engaging again?
[00:50:18] Stacy McKinnon: Have a few different tips to give, but I would say even back to the equation I shared earlier right, mindset plus right strategy equals a better investor. On the mindset side, I do think it's important for people to understand what their personal why is. Simon Sinek has a book called Find Your Why different than Starts With Why. Find Your Why is more about the individual in the person. He challenges you in the book to come up with a why statement that's not family or spiritual-related where if you woke up every day and you were excited to do the thing that you were excited to do what would that thing be?
Even as I've been reflecting on that and when I defined my why statement a few years ago, I realize that I really love making plans where the ultimate thing that happens after I make that plan is we all enjoy more life together. Whether that's planning cycling trips with my husband who's an avid cyclist, I don't actually cycle I drive the car. It's really fun going to the Italian Alps and he's cycling and I'm driving the car, but the experience is so fun and to see the joy on his face I love that.
Even at work though when I get to do career pathing for my team members or we're achieving a strategic initiative or we really nail the client experience putting that time and energy into planning it and then seeing the result, super meaningful to me. My why statement is to create meaningful experiences so that we the collective can achieve greater impact. I think to myself if I wake up every day and I create meaningful experiences and the result of that is that me and whoever I'm working with achieve greater impact that's going to be really fulfilling to me.
If I have that mindset going into my work then it's going to be harder for my work to be disappointing to me if I'm doing the thing that I've defined as my why so I'd say that's one aspect of it. I want to share another aspect which is I think that our industry undervalues the importance of creativity. We tend to go into our work and into our job and say I got to get this many tasks done and get this much work done and these are the things that I'm going to be doing and these are the things I'm going to be achieving.
We don't always think about how important it's to spend time investing into our own creative nature and we're in an analytical business and so we tend to be like numbers people, right? Not artsy people, but at the end of the day, I don't think that we should separate those two personas anymore. I actually think the best way to stay engaged in your own career in the work that you're doing on a day-to-day basis is to make sure that you're leaving space for creativity. That's what my 6:00 to 7:00 AM hour is, sometimes I'm getting creative about the meeting agendas that I'm putting together, and sometimes I'm building a presentation or writing a paper.
Spending time actually investing into yourself in that way is incredibly important to continue to be engaged. I would even recommend if you have something challenging you want to do write a white paper about it, you can publish it or not publish it, but just go through the process of writing it, it will actually help you build confidence in the decisions that we're making. My two pieces of advice are make sure you understand your why so that you're aligned to it when you go to work every day and that you can make sure that the activities you're doing lead to the impact that you want to make. Then number two, reflect on whether or not you spend enough time being creative because I think creativity really does boost confidence and energy.
[00:53:35] Matt Sonnen: I think this happens to COOs a lot because again the thought is the COO's job is to take stuff off of the CEO's plate, I think the COOs forget that they're allowed to delegate. EOS has the concepts delegate and elevate and so they say delegate some of your responsibilities and elevate yourself to operate in your highest and best use. The responsibilities that you delegate to other people have to be the tasks that you feel that you've outgrown so just by the nature of doing this process you're going to feel more challenged and more empowered, et cetera.
It can be tough I've struggled with this because we always feel bad about passing off jobs that aren't as much fun as others. If you're going to grow your career you have to get comfortable doing it and you have to understand there's people who have those skills and have enthusiasm for doing those tasks. It's important to realize that if you're experiencing personal growth in that COO role, the entire company is going to grow under you.
[00:54:45] Stacy McKinnon: By not delegating those tasks you're holding yourself back and you're probably holding them back too. That's important to note is that it hits on both sides of not only your career, it's not doing well for you and not doing well for your team.
[00:55:00] Matt Sonnen: Yes. Well, separate from hitting the ceiling where you feel you aren't growing some people just straight up get burned out. A lot of people we're dealing with this now, a lot of people have left the industry. We're all growing our RIAs, but there's fewer people that are helping us. We're juggling so many responsibilities and people feel like they're just required to go 200 miles per hour every day so how do you manage burnout?
[00:55:29] Stacy McKinnon: I might have some less popular comments to make here. I think that burnout it's getting overused and we're misunderstanding it, there's a difference between burnout and stress. I feel that oftentimes when we think we're feeling burnout we're actually feeling stress. There's a lot of interesting charts on this, but as I've actually dug into this topic a little bit more in research to just for my own team when I hear people say, "Oh, I'm burnt out." The solution is usually, okay, do less, go on a vacation, do something different.
I think we have to actually evaluate that a little bit deeper because generally speaking burnout is feelings of depression, dissatisfaction, I'm going to call it stress without a why meaning you're stressed out, but you don't have a thing that you're trying to achieve you're just going through emotions every single day. If that's a place that you're in I think you have to ask yourself a few questions and say am I doing things that are no longer aligning with my goals? What is my why? Do I actually feel that I come to work every day and achieve our why? Do I feel burnt out because I'm not communicating to the people most important to me? What my priorities are?
I feel this pressure to be home when I'm at work and to be at work when I'm at home and these things are all convoluted together and clustering our head and making us feel like we're just not ourselves, that is a little different than stress. If you're in a C-suite position, stress is part of the game and I think sometimes we just have to accept that. It's very difficult to be at the highest level of an organization and not periodically feel stressed. We shouldn't feel stressed all the time, it's probably a toxic work environment if you feel that way.
There is a period of time where you feel a lot of stress and that's okay because that's also part of the level of responsibility you have as a leader of an organization. That is different than the burnout circle and so the reason I say that is that I would encourage everyone to ask themselves do I feel burnt out or do I feel stressed? If I feel burnt out am I not aligning with the things that are most important or do the key stakeholders in my life, my spouse, my kids, my family, my parents, my boss, my colleagues not understand my priorities and I'm feeling pressure from all of those angles?
In that situation, you have to use communication to solve the problem. You have to make sure that everybody knows what you're trying to achieve and feels aligned to it. Once all of those things that are in place I think burnout slowly fades away because you're focused on alignment with your why, your people understand it, and everything matters.
The best way in my opinion to get out of a state of burnout is to ask yourself those questions and then proactively communicate to try to elevate yourself out of it. Now the other thing is you might just be stressed and that might just go away at some point too so maybe don't overthink it and overanalyze it. Understanding the difference between burnout and stress is really important.
[00:58:37] Matt Sonnen: As you're talking someone shared this on social media yesterday, I can't give him credit because I don't remember who it was, but it was a pie chart and it said what I thought I needed for success and the first pie was 100% just said hard work. Then below that, it says what I've realized I need for success and the second pie is divided it says get enough sleep, eat well, exercise, and then 25% to 33% was that hard work. I think as a society we're getting better about talking about self-care, I know for myself I'm horrible at it, but I don't know if we're getting great at implementing all of these changes, but it's important that we're at least having these conversations now.
[00:59:24] Stacy McKinnon: Just communicate, understand what you want to achieve, pursue those goals, set them, and make sure key stakeholders have buy-in to them. I think actually what we do too often is we set the goals and then we don't tell anyone that we have this goal and then we're just running a up trying to do this thing and everyone's like what are you doing? Our spouses aren't mindreaders, our employers are not mindreaders we have to share what's most important to us. Even this last weekend I was up in Mammoth, if people are familiar with it, it's in Central California and I knew I needed an extra day in Mammoth with my husband, we just needed to spend another day together. I reached out to my CEO and I said, "I'm going to be in Mammoth another day," This is now husband time versus work time, and his response to me was, "That's great." If you have the right people in your life, if you have the right stakeholders, they are going to align with the things that are most important to you.
We had a good meeting Monday morning that I had to miss because I had to make the decision to spend time with my spouse. He was fine with it because he knew the reason why and he knew that it was important to me. I do the opposite often, my husband and he'll be home at seven and this is what I'm working on, we have to be able to have those honest conversations with the people most important to us.
[01:00:45] Matt Sonnen: I love it. One of the biggest obstacles that employees face, especially COOs, is just the simple law of inertia. Newton's law of inertia literally says every object will remain at rest or in a uniform motion in a straight line, unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force and that external force often is the COO, the COO will come into an organization and say, "Hey, you guys are doing great. I'm so lucky to be here, but I do have some recommendations."
They try to institute some change in the firm, but they run into that famous, we've always done it this way. Why would we need to change? I know you're at a pretty forward-looking and progressive firm, so hopefully. You haven't run into this too much at Morton Wealth, but I know you mentioned all your study groups. I know you talk to a lot of people. What advice do you give to people when they bring this up?
[01:01:41] Stacy McKinnon: Oh, I did run into this at Moron Wealth in the earlier years. I don't run into it today, but I think we've evolved quite a bit as an organization and really built the trust and the foundation that we need. If somebody's saying no to you on something that you want to do as a COO or a goal or an initiative, you have to ask yourself the question of is it aligning with the goals of the organization, which we talked about earlier but the second thing you have to ask yourself is, do does the person I'm talking to understand the benefit because oftentimes when people say no, it's because they don't understand what the benefit is, either to themselves or to the business. Digging into that concept with whoever the key stake rulers are that are not quite giving you what you need is a really important part of the process.
Asking the question of, "You've said no to this and I just am curious, do you understand what the benefits would be?" Or, Hey, can you share with me why you don't think this is beneficial to the organization? AMaybe can I share with you some of the benefits that I see." Understanding that reward benefit spectrum is incredibly important when you're getting key stakeholders to buy into something. The other thing that we should remember as COOs is that as much as we probably became a coo, because we didn't want to become a salesperson, we actually are a salesperson. You are selling your internal goals, your ideas, how you're driving the organization and you have to be thoughtful to how you do it.
Take sales training courses, take communications courses, keep working through the issues, ask people if they understand the benefits, and be willing to share the benefits or the value of the things that you're doing. I think we need to come from that mindset and you're not selling a salesperson has a bad rap, actually, I think you think about like whatever bad salespeople that are knocking door to door selling you junk. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is being a good communicator in a way that you can help people to see the benefit of the thing that you're trying to accomplish and that it will ultimately make a positive impact for them or the company.
[01:03:49] Matt Sonnen: I think talking about that selling I think coaches or therapists when they're confronted by someone that just refusing to change, I think the phrase they always like to use is, "How's that working for you?" Someone hires a coach because they're not getting the results they want, but then when the coach says, "Okay, let's adjust your swing or whatever it may be," the prince says, "Oh no, don't touch my swing, I don't want to change that," and then the coach has to politely say, "Well, how many tournaments have you won this year?"
They have to remind him, "You came to me, you wanted to improve your performance," and they said, "Yes, yes, but I didn't know you were going to change anything," and they say, "Well, how is your current swing working for you?" You just have to throw it out there. You got to be careful how you say it. Depending on your relationship with the person, you can be a little more aggressive. How's that working for you? I think that's an important one.
[01:04:41] Stacy McKinnon: We are change managers also as well as salespeople and understanding how to manage change is really important but I love that. How is it working for you because another way that I've said it before is we have the option of trying this or staying the same. Which one's more risky and oftentimes we think trying something new is more risky, but that's not generally the case. It's probably 50-50. Staying the same is more risky. We also have to make sure that we're clearly articulating that when we're trying to get buy-in.
[01:05:12] Matt Sonnen: For this last section of questions, I wanted to touch on a few topics around advancing your career. That's what this whole thing's been about. What can people do to really elevate themselves within the organization? Stand out from their coworkers. At the outset of the conversation. I read off that list of words. I'm going to say it again.
To build your career, you have to be trustworthy, collaborative, accountable, a good teammate, productive, dependable. You must achieve results and you must be an excellent communicator but I think the one that we can add to that we've touched on, we've said the word a few times, is you have to be curious. Stacy, why do you think curiosity is such a vital quality for a good COO?
[01:05:57] Stacy McKinnon: Before I answer that question, you brought up Ted Lasso earlier. I feel like I have to bring Ted Lasso backor this one, because there's a scene in this show where he's challenged to a darts match and the person starts playing darts with him and he starts telling this story about when he was a little boy, every Sunday his dad would take him to a bar and they would play darts together from ages.
I think you said like five to 16 when his dad passed away and on the way to the bar, there was a poster outside that said, be curious, not judgmental. In the scene, if many of you have seen it, he goes on to win the darts match and he says to his opponent-- I think it's Rupert is the name of the character, "If you would've just asked me if I knew how to play darts, you wouldn't have challenged me to this match."
I think about it so much, how often do we make assumptions? Are we just go a hundred miles per hour? When if we would've taken a few seconds to be curious and not judgmental, we would've gotten to the problems a lot faster. One of my other fellow leadership team members and I talk about this a lot, whenever we have a challenge we're facing, we ask ourselves curiosity questions because we want to make sure we're not diagnosing the symptom, we're diagnosing the cause. Sometimes it's easy to diagnose the symptom of something, oh, this person just is rude, so they spoke that way.
Were they having a bad day? Generally speaking, that person doesn't show up as rude. What else was happening? Do they feel insecure about something happening to them? Do they need to clarify another aspect? Instead of addressing the issue and going to them being like, you need to not be rude. You go to them and you say, "Hey, like you showed up in a different version of yourself, can you share with me what's going on, is there something happening in your life or is there something you're frustrated by at work? Can we talk through any issues, can we solve this together?" I think if we're more curious, we'll tend to diagnose the causes within our organization and not just the symptoms.
[01:08:07] Matt Sonnen: I love it. Everybody listens to Michael Kit's podcast. It's so good. I listened to it often. It was episode 282. I looked it up. Allison Felix of Cassidy and Company. I don't know Allison personally, but her story was fascinating. She started out as the executive assistant to the CEO and she was so good at taking things off of his plate and learning the business so well over time.
She's now the COO of a $4 billion firm and his podcast interviews are very long but the quote that jumped out at me during this long hour and a half of conversation with her. She said if you aren't interested in all facets of the business, then you really shouldn't be a COO because as the COO you're responsible for so many different elements of the organization.
You have to be willing like Eric Haman said, you have to be willing to say, no one's watering that plant over there. I think his example was QuickBooks. No one at the firm really knew QuickBooks. He says, "I'm going to go get trained on QuickBooks,"or you hear the advisors complaining in client meetings, they keep getting bogged down because clients are looking at the performance of one individual security.
Then say, maybe we should get rid of individuals. Let's just do asset classes on our performance report. You got to think about different ways to improve the organization. The COO is the anti. That's not my job position. All of it is your job. Your job is to make stuff work better and to Allison's point, you have to be curious and interested in everything at the firm if you're going to be successful in your position.
[01:09:49] Stacy McKinnon: I love that. I'm stuck on that. It's not my job role, because I think that's so true and I've never really thought about it that way, but you can't say that you have to-- Even if it isn't your job, Hey, I'm going to find the right person to do this job.
[01:10:06] Matt Sonnen: Yes. Well, if someone is an operations manager or a director of operations, what advice can you give them? What opportunities should they take on that could lead them to eventually holding the COO title?
[01:10:23] Stacy McKinnon: I guess the first thing that I would suggest to somebody is to take a moment and ask themselves if I was in the position above me if I was in the position that I wanted to be in, what decisions would I make? What strategies would I implement? How would I make a positive impact on the company? How would I align our strategic vision and start working through that idea?
I think what happens too often, and I mentioned this earlier, is we put our head down and we work hard and we hope that somebody will notice one day but that is what a doer does. That's not what a contributor does. If you are looking to get to the next level in your company, if you want to have a seat at the leadership table, if you want to become a COO, you have to start asking yourself the question, what would I do if I was there already and then bring those ideas to the table and be willing to do the hard work to make those ideas a reality.
The best way to move forward and to gain a good reputation with the leadership team or with the senior people in the organization to make sure that they understand who you'll be as a contributor as a person at that leadership table is to start acting like one today.
[01:11:36] Matt Sonnen: Yes. I'm thinking of the famous Steve Martin quote, "Be so good, they can't ignore you." [laughs]
[01:11:42] Stacy McKinnon: Exactly, but don't just do a ton of work. Make sure that you're doing things that achieve results and have that alignment.
[01:11:49] Matt Sonnen: Right. Absolutely. Exactly. The last question, I'm going to-- It's a very broad one so if you were to give one piece of advice to people building a career at an RIA, what would it be?
[01:12:06] Stacy McKinnon: I think you have to prioritize communication skills above all else. You can have all the technical knowledge in the world, but if you can't communicate it well, it's not going to matter. We're tempted to move forward in our careers by getting more letters behind our names and diving into technical expertise and education.
While you need that to be able to strategically implement in your organization and bring some ideas to the table, the ideas aren't ever going to make it to the table if you can't communicate well so when we think about growing, whether it's growing as an advisor and wanting to be client facing one day, growing in operations, having a seat at the leadership table, the most important thing for us to reflect on is how are we communicating to the key stakeholders in our life. At the end of the day, to be an empowering leader, you have to communicate often. You have to inspire your team. You have to be somebody that other people want to follow and if you communicate those things well, I think the sky's the limit.
[01:13:09] Matt Sonnen: I love it. I think that yours is better than mine. I like the communication skills. The one I was going to say is for RIAs, they're small businesses, 10 people, 12 people, whatever it is. I think where people run into problems, my advice is be an artist, not a scientist. You have to be comfortable with that wishy-washy. I think a lot of people want the step-by-step.
They want to sit back. They want people to tell them what to do. You do that at an RIA and you have to be comfortable with-- It's not paint by numbers. It's not this red goes here, green goes here, it's mix some colors together and see what you think. Put a cloud there. If we don't like it, we'll just paint over it but you've got to be comfortable with that. It's definitely more art than science.
[01:14:00] Stacy McKinnon: I actually think that's probably the same thing as I'm saying, and around communication skills versus technical. You need to understand how you're going to get to where you want to go and who you're speaking with, knowing your audience, being a good storyteller, understanding the impact you're going to be making, communicate often, all of these things, those are more artistic skills than not so we're probably saying the same thing.
[01:14:26] Matt Sonnen: Yes. Well, Stacy, you never fail to impress. As I said at the outset, you're one of the more thoughtful leaders in our industry. You really mix the people side, that emotional side with the technical aspects. This is what we were just talking about. It makes you an incredible leader. Thank you for writing this amazing paper and thank you for spending some time with us today to discuss it.
[01:14:48] Stacy McKinnon: Oh, I appreciate that so much. Thanks, Matt.
