• Customization: Consider your audience, and tailor your message accordingly. If I want to convince my 13-year-old daughter and my 71-year-old mom to eat healthier, I need to approach them in different ways. I would tell my daughter that eating healthier will help her excel at lacrosse. For my mom, I might remind her that eating healthy can help her live longer so she can see her grandkids graduate from college.
• Credibility: Show them how the change will help make their lives easier or better. When leaders in the organization model and endorse new technology, other professionals are more likely to get onboard. In other words, if you won’t eat your own cooking, your dinner guests will notice—so make sure leaders in the organization are modeling the changes you’re asking everyone else to adopt.
• Consistency: Set a strategy and stick to it. Be consistent in your messaging: framing updates in the context of improving client service helps financial advisors and service professionals see the bigger picture, rather than feeling like new tools are being thrust upon them for no clear reason or purpose.
One example of a communication tactic that has proven effective in driving behavioral change at Morgan Stanley is our internal “Two Minute Update” video. We distribute these videos every six to eight weeks to inform our service professionals about recent technology enhancements. The videos are tailored specifically to the service professional audience, and we intentionally inject a lot of humor in the content. And as anyone who has ever seen a viral cat video on the Internet knows, funny videos can be highly memorable.
Embrace Change
Organizational leaders must encourage financial advisors to “get comfortable with the uncomfortable,” and embrace new ways of doing things. In my day, colleagues didn’t text each other, so I won’t lie when I say it took me time to get used to my teams sending me emojis. But if you want financial advisors and service professionals to embrace digital transformation, getting their attention and empowering them to take action are the most important steps to make it happen.
Even as we increasingly conduct our business (and our lives) on our electronic devices, the human element of the financial advisor-client relationship will always remain critically important. Getting out of our comfort zone may take patience (keep in mind that it even took the iPhone 10 years to achieve full saturation). Today, my 13-year-old daughter, 71-year-old mom and I would be lost without an iPhone. At Morgan Stanley, we have seen that once this change is accepted, it is rapid in its adoption. So eventually, everyone will get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Lisa Golia is the head of field strategic services at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.