Maybe a financial advisor’s most important checklist

This is a blog about checklists as a financial advisor practice management tool, so you might expect that the most important would be about investments or customer service.  In my view, the most important checklist a financial advisor can employ helps assure the next actions receiving precious attention are the ones that contribute the most to the goals of the practice.

And that checklist is the weekly review prescribed by productivity guru David Allen.  It is the single most important way to keep up on your commitments.

My biggest practice management challenge is follow through.  It is to to remember to do things when the follow up doesn't have to be immediate, or when other tasks take higher priority at the moment.  For most of my professional life as a financial advisor, my follow up was terrible.  There are still times it stinks.  And when follow up stinks, customer service stinks.  I have a great assistant, and delegation is the best solution most of the time.  But I still have my own commitments to fulfill.

A well designed and implemented checklist reminds you of the important things that can easily be overlooked, freeing your mind to express expertise and creativity.  Remembering to follow up on the proposal or transfer paperwork I sent a week ago requires neither creativity nor expertise.  Nor is it urgent.  But it is important.   And, without a system to remind me, I would probably drop it.

The weekly review is an inventory of all your outstanding projects and commitments.  Does each project have a next action on your current to-do list? Do you know the next action for each?  Are there deadlines approaching on any of them?

This assumes, of course, that you have all your projects listed in one place.  Collecting your projects is the basis of a "Getting Things Done" system, and the weekly review is its cornerstone.  You can find out about GTD and the Weekly review here.

Miss doing this conscientiously, and you will constantly be compensating.

Running through the checklist that is the weekly review, you are systematically reminded of the commitments you made.  And always being up to date on your commitments is the most important place a financial advisor can be.