My name is Matt Taddei, and I am a Co-Founder and the President of Taddei, Ludwig & Associates.
When we first began strategic planning, we would come back from our annual summit in January and share the results, the key highlights of our strategic plan with our firm. What we were hearing over time, though, was that several of our employees would say, "How are we doing on our plan?" And, frankly, we needed to get better at regularly communicating our progress.
And so what we've done is at our quarterly meeting, a recurring theme is we look at where we are with our one-year strategic plan, our five-year strategic plan, and a number of key performance indicators along the way, as well. And that happens at every one of our quarterly meetings. So, you know, we're always keeping our eye on the vision, but also on the things, the day to day things that we do that make the plan a reality.
I think I can confidently say across the board, strategic planning, both the adoption and the regular communication, has been fully embraced, and supported and encouraged by every one of our team.
It is the difference between where are we going together and having clarity and definition around where we’re going together.
It builds a common teamwork goal in achieving our objectives of the strategic plan. It, also, the regular communication around the plan has sent a signal about our desire as a firm for transparency and open communication. It only has fostered better and deeper communication among the firm.
If I were to give advice to leaders of other RIA firms about strategic planning, I would say do it yesterday. And absent of that, start today.