When someone is struggling to scale or fix their workflow, their first instinct is to look at the ‘Best in the World’.
They look at the big firms, take advice from institutions or global thought leaders, or seek out the wisdom of industry legends who haven’t worked in the engine room of a small practice since the late nineties.
It feels like the right move. If you want to be the best, learn from the best, right?
But more often than not, it’s not.
Taking advice from someone who mastered their craft twenty years ago often overlooks the fact that they have forgotten what it’s like to be where you are.
The specific, grinding friction of trying to get a team to follow a checklist from the last time they remembered it, or the particular nightmare of integrating a new CRM when you’re already at capacity, is based on legacy tech.
Those problems are now concepts they may not have touched in a decade.
When you ask a titan of the industry how to grow, they may talk about ‘vision‘, ‘culture‘, and ‘strategic alignment’.
All good things. But they won’t tell you how to stop your Associate Adviser from spending four hours a day crafting Booker Prize-winning file notes because they haven’t done it lately.
I’ve found that the most useful insight usually comes from the person who is exactly two steps ahead of you, not ten.
The person who solved the problem three months ago still remembers the pain.
They remember the specific button they had to click, the awkward conversation they had to have with the team, and the tiny, boring details that actually made the solution stick.
There is a massive difference between ‘mastery’ and ‘recent victory’.
Mastery is great for inspiration, but recent victory is what you need for execution. The person who just figured out how to use AI to draft their first batch of review documents is going to give you more practical leverage than a global keynote speaker talking about the ‘future of advice’.
It’s a bit like asking a mountain climber four days ahead of you for advice on the trek. They’ll tell you the view is great.
But the person who is just 50 metres above you? They can tell you exactly which loose rocks to avoid.
If you’re feeling stuck, stop looking for the ‘Best in the World’. Look for the person who was stuck exactly like you, very recently, and isn’t anymore.
The boring, tactical reality of how they got out is worth ten times more than a visionary’s map.
