Welcome to the 55th edition of #theFutureReadyAdvisor Newsletter!
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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
It was 2009, and the wounds of the Great Recession were still raw.
I sat across from Edward, a prospective client whose portfolio had been decimated. Not because he lacked discipline or intelligence—quite the opposite. He had meticulously tracked market benchmarks, adjusted his allocations based on expert forecasts, and done everything the financial industry had traditionally advised.
“I did everything right,” he said, his voice quiet but edged with disillusionment. “I diversified. I rebalanced. I stayed invested through the volatility.” He paused, then looked up at me. “But I guess I never really asked myself why I was investing in the first place.”
His words resonated deeply, illuminating what I had begun to suspect was a fundamental flaw in how we approached wealth management. We had become so focused on beating benchmarks and optimizing returns that we’d lost sight of the human purpose behind the portfolios.
Look at a glass of water from one angle, and it appears half full. Shift your position slightly, and that same glass now looks more full. This everyday phenomenon—parallax—perfectly captures our challenge in financial services. Depending on our vantage point, we see entirely different realities. If we don’t have the right perspective, we risk making decisions based on distorted or incomplete views.
This conversation wasn’t just another client meeting—it was a turning point that would reshape my entire professional journey. It sparked my deep interest in behavioral finance and goals-based investing, which later became the foundation for success when we built a brand-new wealth management firm for a major Canadian company in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
The Blind Spots We Don’t Know We Have
That meeting with Edward revealed something profound: our perspective shapes not just what we see, but what remains invisible to us. When we view the world through a single lens—whether it’s market performance, technical analysis, or industry benchmarks—we develop blind spots to everything that falls outside that narrow field of vision.
Consider one of the most revealing experiments in attention research, the Invisible Gorilla: Participants watched a video of people passing basketballs and counted the number of passes made by players. Halfway through, a person in a gorilla costume walks through the court, stops in the center, pounds their chest, and exits. About half the viewers never notice the gorilla. Their focus on counting passes made the unmissable invisible.
How many gorillas walk unnoticed through your professional life? What crucial realities remain invisible because your attention is focused elsewhere?
From Inside View to Outside View
The aftermath of the financial crisis showed me how our traditional approach had failed both advisors and clients. This “inside view”—focused on beating markets and maximizing returns—had created dangerous tunnel vision.
What was missing was the “outside view”—a broader perspective that considered not just how investments performed relative to benchmarks, but how they served the actual human beings behind the portfolios.
The inside view is seductive in its precision. It offers concrete metrics and the comforting illusion of control. But I saw how this approach failed clients at the most fundamental level. They had portfolios optimized for theoretical efficiency rather than their actual life goals.
This recognition sparked my journey toward goals-based investing—an approach that begins not with market benchmarks but with human aspirations. It asks not “How can we beat the market?” but “What is this money actually for?”
When we launched our new wealth management firm, we built this perspective shift into our foundation. Every client relationship began not with a standard risk questionnaire, but with deep discovery conversations about what truly mattered to them. We tied the clients’ goals to how we set up and managed portfolios.
The results were transformative. Client satisfaction soared. Even more remarkably, clients remained calm during market volatility because their investments were now anchored to meaningful personal goals rather than arbitrary benchmarks.
Three Practical Perspective Shifts
This experience taught me that perspective-shifting isn’t just an occasional insight, but a disciplined practice. Here are three perspective shifts that have proven valuable:
1. The Client’s Journey
When designing our wealth management platform, I insisted we experience every aspect as a client would. We had outsiders go through the entire process and document their experience.
The gaps between our intentions and their reality were startling. Forms we thought were straightforward were confusing. Communications we believed were helpful felt overwhelming. Our industry jargon created unnecessary barriers.
This shift led us to redesign our entire client experience, resulting in deeper engagement and stronger relationships.
2. The Future Self
Another powerful shift comes from viewing our work through the eyes of our future selves. I regularly ask: How will I look back on today’s priorities five years from now? Which urgent matters will seem trivial in retrospect? Which overlooked opportunities might become painfully obvious missed turning points?
This temporal perspective helped me allocate more energy to transformative client relationships and thought leadership that would ultimately define our firm’s market position.
3. The Beginner’s Mind
When launching our platform, I assembled a diverse group of advisors including not just financial experts but also clients and prospective clients with limited financial background.
Their questions challenged assumptions I didn’t even realize I held. “Why do you show performance this way?” “Why do you use these words that nobody understands?”
These questions from outside our industry bubble led to some of our most innovative approaches.
Protecting Against the Parallax View
How can you develop your own defences against the parallax view? Here are three quick approaches:
1. The Reference Class Inquiry: When making decisions, seek out similar situations to draw insights from. Ask not just “What do I think will happen?” but “What typically happens in situations like this?”
2. The Experience Audit: Have someone unfamiliar with your industry go through your client experience. The gap between your intentions and their experience reveals valuable opportunities.
3. The Perspective Portfolio: Diversify the viewpoints that inform your decision-making. Build a “portfolio” of perspectives that includes clients, team members, industry outsiders, and critics.
My conversation with Edward changed everything for me. Not that his situation revealed something I didn’t intellectually know—but it forced me to feel the human cost of our industry’s limited perspective.
That emotional recognition gave me the courage to shift my own view and build something that addressed what I had been missing. That courage—to see differently and then act on what we see—is what separates those who merely live with change from those who adapt to change and profit from it.
What perspective shifts might transform your practice? Which lenses have you been neglecting? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Remember, as Anaïs Nin said: “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
#theFutureReadyAdvisor #PerspectiveShift #AdvisoryExcellence
“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” – Peter Drucker