Articles
The Business You Think You’re Running
Oct 20, 2026 When did you last follow the work? Most financial planning practices have some form of documented processes....
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Excellent Advice, Fragile Business
Oct 13, 2026 There is a sentence I keep coming back to when I think about financial planning practices: Excellent...
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Why Teams Keep Asking the Same Questions
Sep 14, 2026 There is a particular kind of frustration that shows up in many financial planning practices, and it...
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Ownership Needs Clarity: Why Self-Managing Teams Still Need Management
Aug 21, 2026 Practice owners often say they want a self-managing team. What they usually mean is that they want...
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Solve the first problem first
July 27, 2026 I recently delivered a lecture for Moonstone on something I see quite often in financial planning...
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What’s the difference between a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and a Process?
July 16, 2026 And where does the RMCP Fit in? After posting my first Reality Checks video on YouTube, titled...
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Your Process Is Not Broken. Your Handover Is.
July 8, 2026 In many financial planning firms, when something goes wrong, the first instinct is often to blame the...
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RCR submissions: Are we answering honestly, or optimistically?
July 7, 2026 The 2026 Risk and Compliance Return is not just another regulatory questionnaire. It may feel like one....
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When Everyone Is Helping, But No One Owns It
July 2, 2026 Helpful teams can still create fragile processes when ownership is unclear. In many financial planning practices, work...
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When money becomes control – and what you can do about it
July 1, 2026 In many households, one person naturally takes the lead when it comes to finances. They manage the accounts,...
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The risk of assumed compliance
June 19, 2026 Assumed compliance is one of the most common risks I encounter when working with businesses. Somewhere along...
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Your process document is not your process.
June 9, 2026 A documented process can look perfectly sensible until you ask one simple question: “Who actually owns this...
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Panic or Prioritise?
June 1, 2026 We are almost halfway through the year, which is usually the point where operations people start doing...
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Informal Decision Making Can Be A Blind Spot For Your Business
May 25, 2026 One of the more interesting things about working with financial planning practices is seeing how businesses make...
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Why Most Financial Planning Firms Don’t Actually Run Like Businesses
May 14, 2026 Most financial planning practices don’t start out as businesses. They start with one planner. One person servicing...
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Processes vs behaviour
May 8, 2026 There is often a lot of focus on designing better processes… Better workflows. Better templates. Better systems....
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You trained your team. So why isn’t it working?
May 8, 2026 One of the most common frustrations I hear in businesses is this: “We’ve already trained the team...
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You can’t outsource accountability: What COFI changes for Reps and KIs
May 4, 2026 Something I’ve been noticing more and more in practice is how easily accountability becomes a bit blurred...
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Operational Fragility in Financial Planning Practices
April 28, 2026 Most financial planning practices don’t feel unstable. In fact, many feel quite the opposite. Clients are being...
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The Founder Trap in Financial Planning Practices
April 21, 2026 Most financial planning practices are built to succeed, but very few are built to function without the...
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Why Most Junior Adviser Models Fail (And What We’re Missing)
April 13, 2026 There’s a recurring pattern I see across many financial planning practices: A junior adviser joins the business...
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Compliance Theatre in Financial Planning Practices
April 7, 2026 Most financial planning practices are compliant. At least… on paper. If the Implementation Gap is the distance...
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The Implementation Gap in Financial Planning Practices
March 17, 2026 The financial planning industry does not lack frameworks or guidance. What many practices struggle with is implementation....
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Growth exposes what your operations were hiding
March 9, 2026 Growth is often seen as a success signal. More clients. More staff. More opportunity. But growth also...
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Compliance is clear. Implementation is where it gets messy.
March 2, 2026 Very few practices struggle to understand compliance requirements. The challenge starts when those requirements need to live...
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“We know what to do… we just don’t have time to build it properly”
February 24, 2026 One of the most honest conversations we hear in practices sounds like this: “We know what needs...
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From insight to implementation: the real challenge behind “How do I?”
February 17, 2026 Across the financial planning profession, there is no shortage of information. Webinars. Guidance notes. Regulatory updates. Frameworks,...
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Clarity is the most underrated productivity tool
February 16, 2026 Most productivity conversations focus on tools, techniques, or time management. Very few focus on clarity. And yet,...
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When good people become your biggest operational risk
February 5, 2026 High performers are often seen as the solution to operational problems. They step in. They absorb...
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Why most internal controls fail under pressure
January 28, 2026 Internal controls are often designed for ideal conditions. Clear desks. Plenty of time. Fully staffed teams. No...
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The difference between being busy and being in control
January 23, 2026 Busyness is easy to recognise. Control is not. Many teams operate at full capacity: calendars packed, inboxes...
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Why good governance often looks invisible
January 19, 2026 When governance is working well, very little draws attention to it. There are no emergencies. No escalations....
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Not every problem needs a new system
January 15, 2026 When something isn’t working, the instinctive response is often: we need better tech. And sometimes that’s true,...
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The risk most Financial Planning practices don’t measure (but should)
January 12, 2026 Some risks are easy to spot. They show up in reports, audits, and dashboards. Others are far...
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Why good transitions are designed – not rushed
January 9, 2026 Transitions are often treated as administrative exercises: A resignation is submitted. A replacement is recruited. A handover...
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Why training fails (even when everyone attends)
January 7, 2026 Attendance is easy to measure. Understanding is not. Many organisations invest time and effort into training only...
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What really matters when reviewing a Financial Planning practice’s processes
January 6, 2026 When Financial Planning firms review their processes, the focus often falls on documentation. Those questions matter, but...
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3 signs your operations are holding your people back
January 6, 2026 When people struggle at work, we often assume it’s a skills issue, a motivation issue, or a...
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Busy doesn’t mean effective, and it definitely doesn’t mean sustainable
January 5, 2026 Full calendars can be misleading. A Financial Planning team can be constantly busy and still move very...
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“We’ve always done it this way” is not a strategy
January 5, 2026 Every Financial Planning practice has at least one process that started as a workaround and quietly became...
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Compliance fatigue is real, and it’s quietly costing you more than you think
January 5, 2026 Compliance doesn’t usually fail because people don’t care. It fails because people are tired… Tired of remembering...
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Make your end-of-year bonus work for 2026 – not just for “Ke Dezemba”!
December 9, 2025 Let’s be honest, many of us already started thinking about how to spend our bonus around October,...
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The Hidden Chains: Understanding and Combating Financial Abuse
December 4, 2024 Economic and financial abuse are serious, yet often misunderstood, forms of manipulation and control that can leave...
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