The Plan for 2023

We have built a dynamic plan for 2023 that is again focused first and foremost on our clients and a part of our longer-term strategic goal to be Top of Mind.

Our Advance is an annual three-day meeting in October involving our entire Executive Leadership Team. The purpose of the Advance is to share and discuss divisional strategic plans for the upcoming year. Divisional plans are scrutinized and challenged by each leader’s peers in an effort to create a cohesive organizational plan. Candor is essential. Once an organizational plan is constructed, we build our budget around it. We view strategic planning as a long-term endeavor. However, each year we want to take one step forward towards achievement of our longer-term Top of Mind strategic plan. Our Advance helps us do this. And, if you are wondering why we do not call it an executive retreat it’s because we are not going backwards. We call it an Advance because we are moving forward.

Our organizational plan for 2023 is focused on four key themes: Workplace Culture, Service Evolution, Platform Evolution, and Purposeful Growth.

Workplace Culture continues to be one of the most important reasons teammates join Greenleaf Trust and want to spend their careers here serving clients. We strive to hire talented diverse people and provide them with a work environment that challenges, supports, equips, and multiplies their efforts through collaboration. The end result is an engaged team that is inspired to do great work for our clients. In 2023, our focus will be on new talent acquisition and integration, inclusivity, succession planning, and emerging leader development.

Growth is not always about getting bigger in size. It’s also about continuous improvement and evolution. We want the way we serve clients and the tools we use to serve them to continue to evolve and improve. We appreciate that what got us to where we are today may not necessarily get us to where we want to be in the future.

In 2023, our Service Evolution efforts will include creating more tools and communication enhancements for participants in our Retirement Plan division, expediting the prospect to client lifecycle, developing efficiencies in how we deliver fiduciary excellence, and designing new ways to serve the next generation more effectively.

From a Platform Evolution perspective, scalable technology solutions that improve our client experience will continue to be a theme. Our clients through their survey responses said loud and clear that they want a single access point for automated statement, tax document, and performance delivery. We heard them and have already begun working on this initiative. In addition to a more robust private alternatives investment platform, we are also expanding our performance reporting capabilities, further integrating payroll communication with our retirement plan offerings, and elevating trading capabilities.

In order to serve from generation to generation, it’s important that we continue to grow purposefully in size. There are risks to growing too quickly, and risks to growing too slowly. Purposeful Growth involves growing deeper and broader in our capabilities at a designed pace in order to serve existing and prospective clients better. That’s our goal. In 2023, expanding our digital media footprint, a more targeted social media presence, and selective advertising will help us expand brand awareness to be Top of Mind. Longer term, our growth will continue to come from satisfied clients, deliberate geographic expansion, and potential adjacent business acquisitions.

I appreciate the opportunity to share our 2023 plan with you and hope that the holidays find you well.