Dear Ryan,
My title is Head of Practice Management and Advisor Experience at a broker-dealer I can’t name. Which means, in plain terms, my job is to make sure our advisors are happy, productive and not taking calls from recruiters at competing firms.
I’m currently failing at all three.
We have an affiliated advisor who’s a rainmaker. If he’s not our top-producing advisor this year, he’ll be number two or three. He’s been at our broker-dealer for eleven years and generates somewhere north of $2 million in advisory fees and GDC (gross dealer concession) annually. He knows exactly what that number means. So does everyone above me.
He doesn’t use our CRM. He has never once submitted a compliant client communication through our approved system. His OSJ has flagged him four times in the last two years for client documentation gaps that would make our chief compliance officer’s hair stand up if she ever actually saw them. (She hasn’t.) That’s because somehow those flags keep getting quietly resolved before they travel upward. He’s abrasive and rude to our team, but wise enough to stay just on the right side of the line.
He’s abrasive and rude to our team, but wise enough to stay just on the right side of the line.
He sends pictures of his family, asking if we “want them to starve” if a piece of his business gets rejected. He writes paragraphs of complaints in our customer satisfaction surveys, often for foot-faults on his side of the aisle. His branch admin is exhausted. Two very good people on my team have asked me privately whether the rules apply to everyone or just the advisors who don’t produce.
There’s a barrel … and he has us over it.
Last Tuesday, he called me as I was driving in. There’s an offer on the table from another firm. He’s “not sure he’s feeling supported.” He wanted me to know before he made any decisions.
I’ve been in this seat for four years, and I know what that call is. I also know that when I bring it to my CEO, the conversation will last about four minutes and end with me being asked what we can do to make sure he feels taken care of.
Nobody is asking what it’s doing to everyone else.
How do you manage someone you’re not allowed to manage? How do we have a real business conversation nobody wants us to have?
— Hostage Negotiator Without A Badge
Dear Hostage Negotiator Without A Badge,
Let’s start with the thing nobody above you will say out loud: You don’t have a rainmaker problem. You have a leadership problem, and this is just a symptom of it.
What you’re describing isn’t a difficult advisor. It’s a negotiated surrender that happened so gradually nobody remembers signing the armistice. Every ignored flag, every quietly resolved OSJ finding, every four-minute conversation that ends with “what can we do to make him feel supported?” is a choice to make an exception. It just doesn’t feel like an exception anymore because it’s been made so many times that it looks like policy.
Here’s what that call on Tuesday morning actually was: a Pavlovian performance. He’s done it before [ding]. He’ll do it again [ding]. And it works every time [ding] because your firm has taught him that it works. You didn’t create this dynamic. But you’re being asked to maintain it, and that’s worth naming clearly before you decide what to do next. [Ding!]
Now. The real question underneath yours.
You asked how to manage someone you’re not allowed to manage. You can’t.
You asked how to manage someone you’re not allowed to manage. You can’t. At least not directly. But you can change what it costs your firm to keep pretending. The two good people on your team asking whether the rules apply to everyone? That question doesn’t stay quiet forever. It travels and shapes how your firm gets talked about in recruiting conversations — including the ones your rainmaker is apparently already having.
The conversation your CEO doesn’t want to have isn’t about one advisor. It’s about what kind of firm you’re actually running versus the one you tell people you’re running. Those two things are drifting apart. Someone needs to say that plainly with numbers and without editorializing.
I’m guessing that someone is you.
The offer on the table may be real. It may be leverage. Either way, the answer is the same: Firms that get held hostage by one producer have already decided their values are negotiable. The only question is whether anyone is willing to say so.
— Ryan
Ryan George is the Chief of Staff of Docupace.
