Lesson 5 | Phase 4: Results Management (8:28 minutes)
Phase 4: Results Management
In this segment, I want to talk with you about the final phase, the fourth phase of the shared process. That is what we call The Results Management Phase. To this point, you've worked really, really hard to put the proper processes in place, strategies, and ideas in a collaborative way to help a client accomplish what it is they want to accomplish. You've put those into place through The Strategy Deployment Phase.
Now we want to have an approach, and protocols, and systems in place to ensure that the results that they're trying to achieve we have management protocols and steps in place, to ensure that we're always going to be evaluating how we're doing. How effective are we doing? And what else is happening in their lives that we need to be thinking about, and considering, and potentially doing some more work on?
In this section, we've got actually seven steps that we're going to walk through. The first one in The Results Management Phase is called The Management Assessment. The Management Assessment is that we're, basically, assessing all of the protocols that we've actually put into place to really assess them for strength from a management perspective. Are there things that need to be addressed, or changed, and tweaked at this point in time? We want to have a protocol in place for looking at assessing how are those things that we've put in place working? How are they doing? How are we evaluating them? That's kind of the first step in the fourth phase, The Results Management Phase.
The second step is what we call The Management Protocol. As I talked about protocols in the third phase, we want to have protocols in place, also, for how we're going to manage these things. I talked about it a little bit. As far as in the third phase, we talked about building protocols for deploying a strategy. Now this is about management. I said, "As you're talking about deploying itin the third phase, you might be looking at what are some of the things that you need to do to manage it and sustain it effectively over time?" That's where this is really going to come in. We're really going to kind of build protocols to be able to manage effectively all the things that we're putting in place on behalf of a client.
We want to have a team briefing. And that is the third step in The Results Management Phase, is that we want to bring the team together and say, "How are things working? Let's talk about it. Let's talk about the different strategies, and solutions, and things that we've put in place. How are things working? What do we need to refine, adjust, and anything of that nature?" That's the third step.
The fourth step in The Results Management Phase is The Strategy Maintenance Protocol. Some of these strategies and solutions that we've put in place actually need maintenance done with them. We have to have a protocol for what needs to happen in order to be able to maintain, or another way I like to say this, sustain these results that we're trying to accomplish for the clients specific to a strategy. We want to make sure that we are mapping out and creating a protocol for the different strategies that need to be maintained.
The next step is around strategy maintenance. We're actually now going to take the protocols, and we're going to look at what maintenance needs to be done at this point in time, as we're kind of reviewing the situation on behalf of a client.
The next step is something we call The Gap Assessment. The Gap Assessment has a couple of components to it. Number one is we need to be reviewing. What are the current gaps that still exist on behalf of this client? Because the one thing that we've found over the years, and all the planning and work that we've done, and the work we've done with advisors, is that rarely can we accomplish everything that a client needs to accomplish all in a 12-month period of time, or in the first year, let's just say, of the engagement.
Oftentimes, there's things that maybe weren't as high of a priority, but they're still on the list, and still important, and things that we still need to address. Part of the Gap Assessment is we're reviewing what gaps still exist today, that we need to make sure that we're talking to this client about and making sure that we're looking at what are the ways that we can now begin to address or tackle this. Because now we've got the room, and we've got the space, now that we've taken care of the higher priority things that needed to be addressed? That's one component of it what are the gaps that exist?
The other side of The Gap Assessment is what has happened? What new has happened? What new things has the client brought to the table? What new things have you, in the collaborative advisory team, what have you discovered? Are there things that have come out that have created gaps that you've seen as you're looking at your management protocols or your strategy protocols? Are the things that have come out, that you're saying, "Hey, we've just identified a new gap. This isn't a gap that we didn't address or that we knew existed. This is something new." That's what we're really trying to kind of vet out in The Gap Assessment step in this Results Management Phase.
The final step in this is what we call re-discovery. One of the things I think is interesting about discovery is a lot of people look at this as kind of a one-time event. We need to do discovery with a client and figure out what's important to them. What are the things they're trying to accomplish? Kind of a look at their entire situation.
In our world, especially when we're working in these multi-disciplinary collaborative teams, re-discovery is a critical step that has to happen each and every year with these clients. The team needs to come together and really assess how everything's working. What new is being brought to our attention on behalf of the client, or the way things are performing, or things that are happening in the world, or the markets, or the tax system? Who knows?
But we need to be doing re-discovery and from an above-and-below the horizon perspective. We need to be making sure that we're checking in around their vision, their values, and their goals. Do we still understand that correctly? Have things evolved and changed there from a below-the-horizon standpoint, in the strategies, the tactics, and tools? How are things performing? How are things working? Do we need to adjust? Do we need to add things? Do we need to change things?
Re-discovery is an opportunity to recreate a whole framework for this collaboration to continue during this next 12-month cycle. It's an opportunity for you to continue to be able to work together, to be able to do this great work on behalf of the client, and to really be able to achieve the results that you're all trying to achieve on behalf of the client, and being successful yourselves in business. This should create ongoing work for this collaborative team.
This, basically, constitutes our shared process, our four-phase process that we wanted to share with you as it relates to bringing this to the collaboration. I really hope that you've enjoyed it. I hope you found this impactful. I hope that you can see the benefits and the value of adding this into your client relationships, into your collaborative relationships, as you move forward.
