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How Thought Leadership Leads to Innovation in the Retirement Planning Industry
Last Updated: September 04, 2012
It is part of the mission of Pension Consultants to be a thought leader in the retirement planning industry. In this writing, I’d like to discuss what we mean by the phrase, “thought leader”, and also explain why we believe thought leadership is important to our clients.
To lead the thoughts of our industry, our consultants and analysts must be at the forefront of ideas, trends, opportunities and obstacles in their respective discipline. To quote Wayne Gretzky, arguably the greatest hockey player ever, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
Thought leadership, therefore is having a firm understanding of where things stand now in order to anticipate where things are going; and influencing that direction for the good of the client.
To create a culture of thought leadership, our team leaders (directors and managers) set aside regular meeting times with their teams where the only topic is thought leadership. Each team member contributes to the discussion. This is possible because each consultant and analyst is expected to spend 15% of their daily work time reading industry publications.
Thought leadership is so important to us because we believe it results in value to our clients. It is the research and development that leads us to innovative solutions on your behalf. Vendor selection and monitoring, the creation of our ERISA services QP Review® compliance audit, in-depth research in stable value investments before the 2008 financial crisis, and plan sponsor methods for tracking the effectiveness of participant education, are a few of the solutions that we’ve created as a result of our emphasis on thought leadership. Many more innovative solutions are in the pipeline and we consider the development of these innovative solutions not only a mission of our firm, but a truly fun part of our job.
If you have an idea or would like with speak to us about new solutions in the retirement planning industry, please contact me or one of our consultants.
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