Serve Clients More

For the last ten years, our strategic goal has been to be “Top of Mind” with our clients and for prospective clients with wealth management, fiduciary, or retirement plan needs. Top of Mind for our clients meant they actually might not be thinking about us at all because we provided them with peace of mind knowing we were working on their behalf. But when they needed additional financial solutions to issues, they knew to reach out to us for help. Top of Mind for prospective clients meant they or their advisors thought of us when they were considering a more comprehensive and holistic team-based approach to managing their wealth. I believe we have been successful in this journey with the caveat that continuous improvement is one of our core values.

Last month I wrote about the process we used to create our new long-term strategic goal. After unveiling the goal to our entire team in November at our annual strategic planning meeting, I am excited to announce that our new long-term strategic goal is “Serve Clients More”. Our new goal is focused on what we are passionate about and built with a deep understanding of our core competency. Related to the Hedgehog Concept, our new strategic goal reflects the convergence of the answers to the three questions: What can you be best in the world at? What are you deeply passionate about? What drives our economic engine? We believe we can be the best in the world at client service. And we are deeply passionate about our clients. More reflects our desire to increase the breadth and depth of service to our existing clients.

Serve Clients More means delivering more personalized service, more often, in more innovative ways, with more expertise, and in more places. It requires more talent, more training and development, more leadership, and more collaboration. As a team it looks like more tools, to create more efficiencies, more impact, more specialization, more expertise, and more engagement and alignment with our culture. As a community it looks like more awareness of Greenleaf Trust, more brand recognition, and more local affinity in the communities we serve. As a client it looks like more value-add holistic planning, a more seamless digital experience, more consistency of outcomes, and a more personalized relationship.

Serving our existing clients more then creates opportunities to serve more clients.

With our new strategic goal set, we then built our strategic plan for 2025 with input from the entire company. The 2025 plan represents our first step toward the successful achievement of Serve Clients More. Next year we will be concentrating on four strategic initiatives: Culture, Client Focused, Evolution, and Purposeful Growth. Because our culture is a differentiator, our identity, and a source of pride for us, we want to make sure we continue to nurture it as we grow. An area of focus within the initiative will be intentional human capital investment. We want to ensure our teammates have the tools and knowledge they need to Serve Clients More. Our Client Focused initiative involves continued enhancement of the client experience based on their direct feedback. Evolution represents our investment in new technology platforms that create scalability and drive efficiencies, which allow our teammates to Serve Clients More. And finally, our desire has always been to grow purposely. We aspire to grow in service – not just size. Growth will occur through the successful execution of Serve Clients More.

We are looking forward to the next ten years and are thankful for the trust our clients place in us. I hope that you have a lot to be thankful for this year and can enjoy the merriment of the holiday season. Happy holidays.