Lesson 1 | 4-Phase Model for Planning (7:34 minutes)

4-Phase Model for Planning

In this segment, I wanna talk with you about the power and the advantages of actually having a shared process that you can bring to the collaboration, and the work that you're doing with the other professionals as a part of this engagement. One of things I wanna point out, however, is that although we've put together a process and steps and kind of roles and responsibilities as you'll see as we go through and map this out, today in your practice, in your business, you might be doing some things that are working really well. You might have different language and vernacular that you wanna use to describe these phases and the approaches. But what I'm sharing with you is a proven process, and a tested process that has been around, and a part of the work we do at Legacy for over 20 years. Many, many advisors before you have already tested and proven this to be a very successful way to enter the planning process and the collaborative process with the other advisors.

But what this is a framework, and I want you to feel comfortable to really make this work for you. To tweak it, to refine it so that it meets your needs in your practice, and it's something that you're using on an every client engagement basis. So, don't feel like you have to follow this identical, although as I said, this has been proven successful for over 20 years in the work that we've been doing here at Legacy.

So, the power of a shared process and kind of where it shows up, let's talk about that a little bit here for a moment. The power of a shared process is as we talked about earlier in some of the other segments, there's gonna be instances where there's not really a team leader that's stepping up on behalf of a client and in some situations. And you're gonna have an opportunity to step into a team leader role, which we also talked about as kind of that most trusted advisor. And it's a powerful seat to be able to take and be able to be put in on behalf of the client as well as potentially the other advisors, the other collaborators. And when you're in that seat, you have the opportunity to really to drive, to facilitate, to be able to bring your knowledge and best practices to the table and that's where this shared process can be amazing and powerful. For you to be able to bring this and say, "Listen," to the other advisors, "This is what we have used in other cases and other situations. It's served us really, really well." And having introduced the process and the phases and walk them through all the steps, and that's what we're gonna do here in this segment. I'm gonna introduce them to you here, but then we'll break them down in more detail as we go forward.

So, in instances where you're in that team leader, and you're in an opportunity to step into a team leader role, it's fantastic to be able to bring a proven, tested process to the table and that will really increase your value and, I think, leadership amongst the other advisors. So, it's a powerful, powerful thing. The other side of it is as we talked about earlier, you might identify that there's a really good relationship that's intact in one of the other advisors on behalf of this client, and it's not something that we're talking about in this course, that you should be trying to disrupt that and put yourself in that position. But there's a way for you to team up and to bring your process with a proven track record to this collaboration, to team up with that leader, with that person that's in that trusted advisor seat with the client and be able to share with them because in most cases you're gonna find they don't actually have a process for how you can all come together and collaborate. So, this is gonna be huge advantage for you to be able to bring this to the table.

And one of the ways, I think, you need to do that when again you're not the one driving it and bringing in these collaborators together and maybe these are not known relationships and people that you've worked with for a while. It's always nice to kind of vet out what they've done to date, what approaches have you taken that have been successful for you in other situation where you've collaborated with advisors in this same type of a scenario and let people bring things to the table. Let them bring their ideas. Let them bring their approaches and processes, and I think what you'll find is there's probably not a lot out there, or they've done different things probably every single time or at least a number of times. So, for you to be able to bring actually a process with steps, roles, responsibilities like we're gonna share with you here in this session, really will put you in a powerful role. Again, whether you're in that seat of team leader, or the trusted advisor or somebody else is in that seat, and you wanna bring this to the collaboration for everybody to win, for everybody to be successful.The last thing I wanna talk about is that today in your practice, as you're going through this, no doubt that you're, you've got things that have work, worked for you over the years. You've got things that are proven successful and so what I want you to look at this process is as a framework. Yes, it's a successful framework. It's our best practice at Legacy. We've been deploying this for 20 years with advisors all throughout the United States and Canada. And it's been a very, very successful model. However, you need to take what's worked for you and integrate it with this and my hope is that as you go through this and you see the steps and how we've really mapped this out, that you're gonna really find this to be a powerful tool and a resource for you as you move forward in these collaborations.

So, as we move forward let's look at breaking down these four phases of our shared process. I'll talk to you about just briefly each of the four right now and then we'll break them down further. So, the first phase of our shared process is what we call The Discovery Phase. And we'll go into more depth as we move forward, but in The Discovery Phase, we're looking at, you know, getting clear on what really matters to them and why, right? It's that above the line conversation that we talked about earlier. You know, we want to understand their goals, their objectives and things that matter most to them. Their vision for the future, things of that nature. We also wanna understand who are the advisors they're working with. Who are their key collaborators that you wanna engage as a part of this process and that's what we're doing in The Discovery Phase.

And in The Creative Solutions Phase, which is phase two, we are now looking at knowing now what the client wants to do and what's important, what matters to them and the resources that we have to work with now in the creative solution phase. We're actually gonna come up with ideas, right? What are the best strategies and approaches to be able to help them get where it is they wanna go. That we can discuss and come up with as a collaborative team.

The third phase is what we call The Strategy Deployment Phase. Now this is where we're actually given the opportunity to put everything into action. The clients signed off and they're ready. They're approving everything and we're ready to move forward. Now in The Strategy Deployment Phase, we're gonna actually put everything into action.

And then the fourth phase of the shared process is what we call The Results Management Phase. And The Results Management Phase is simply that. It's we're managing the results and we're always evaluating how we're preforming, how things are working. Are things shifting from a vision and goal standpoint that we need to address? And that will be brought out and discussed in the Results Management Phase.

So, again, it's The Discovery Phase. It's The Creative Solutions Phase. It's The Strategy Deployment Phase, and it's The Results Management Phase. And that is our four phase, shared process for planning and collaboration.

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