When you’re focused on all the daily activities of being a busy financial advisor, it can be easy to overlook points of friction for either clients or your team. Other people in the office may see the problems and have ideas for solutions, but do they feel comfortable speaking up? And if they did speak up, do they feel like their ideas would be seriously considered?
To overcome this
- Invite ideas: Give team members an easy way to identify friction points and suggest improvements.
- Discuss solutions: Have the person who submitted the idea explain both the problem and their proposed fix.
- Evaluate the benefit: Determine whether the change would improve the client experience or the business overall.
To encourage feedback and discussion of ideas, two-year MDRT member Phil Thompson invites the team to send ideas to an online suggestion box. Whoever sends ideas is then invited to a weekly 20-minute meeting, said Thompson, a two-time Top of the Table qualifier, in his 2026 MDRT Annual Meeting presentation Finding your niche: How focus ignited 24x growth.
At the meeting, the person giving the suggestion could say, “Hey, this is an issue and this is what I think the fix should be,” said Thompson.
The team decides at the meeting whether to implement the idea as proposed and what resources are needed, modify it or decide it isn’t practical currently.
For any idea or suggestion, the bottom line is if “it’s netting a benefit for the clients or the business overall,” said Thompson.
While not every suggestion translates into a change, there’s value in giving team members a consistent way to share ideas and showing them that those ideas will be considered. It can help uncover improvements that might otherwise go unnoticed and help team members feel valued.
For more ideas that foster better processes, MDRT members can read
