tasks . We should use AI . But we should also know when and how , and make sure we know the outcome . Of course we can mingle most accounts — but not the one from Grandma who passed away . We can send automated e-mails — but not about a client ’ s birthday .

This little rant ( disguised as an article ) is mostly directed at younger advisors . The people who started our industry , and the founders of most things , tend to intuitively understand the importance of relationships . Consider John Adams , who said the country ’ s founders would be soldiers so that their sons could be farmers so their grandsons could be painters and poets . 1

In our industry , the next generation tends to be MBAs , people who fall in love with their spreadsheets rather than the people in front of them . They have been

YOUR BUSINESS

taught that a business should be scalable . But would you ever go to your spouse and say , “ I want to scale our relationship ”?

This logic was spawned by a generation of tremendous innovation and disruption , upheavals that gave us Amazon , Uber , Airbnb and Tinder , companies that showed us you can scale what were traditionally small , fragmented industries . But look at what that ’ s done — talk to bookstore owners ( if you can find one ), taxi drivers and bed and breakfast owners ( those are probably on Airbnb ). Scale favors the lone two to three surviving megafirms , and clients don ’ t always capture the benefits .

While investors may love scale and efficiency — which spawn publicly traded companies offering 35 % rates of return — clients love your attention .

We need to teach the next generation to understand the importance of relationships and know how to create them . Just as Grandma taught us to say “ Good morning !” to the stranger in the elevator — and that “ You count your friends when you need them ”— we need to teach G2 how much pressing is too much . We need to teach them that to be profitable and successful in the long term , sometimes you have to do something inefficient in the short term .

There is a reasonable compromise , and good businesses will find it . Dell , for example , became very successful with “ mass customization .” Even McDonald ’ s lets you subtract the pickle and lettuce . The trick is to standardize and make more efficient the things that don ’ t matter much to the client and customize the things that do . Knowing what to standardize and what to customize , though , requires a relationship .

PHILIP PALAVEEV is the founder of the G2 Leadership Institute , a two-year leadership and management program that trains and develops the next generation of leaders of advisory firms .

1 . This is the paraphrasing of his quote . According to the National Archives , the quote appears in one of Adams ’ s letters to his wife , Abigail : “ I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy . My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy , Geography , natural History , Naval Architecture , navigation , Commerce and Agriculture , in order to give their Children a right to study Painting , Poetry , Musick , Architecture , Statuary , Tapestry and Porcelaine .”

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