Work in Office vs. Work from Home

The advisory profession only has one answer if brand, culture, and mentorship matter

To say that I have strong opinions about working in the office would be putting it mildly, and to say that I have listened to this audio leak from Jamie Dimon twenty times so far would be under-stating how many times I have actually listened to it by about thirty times.

I had strong opinions back in the summer of 2020 and shared those opinions then far and wide. But in the summer of 2020 my urgency was about restoring economic activity “for the little guy” (I haven’t changed my opinion one bit). I felt that the Sixth Avenue skyscrapers being empty while senior partners camped out at the Hamptons and the dry cleaners, hot dog cart vendors, fitness center employees, busboys, and bartenders were left to starve was unconscionable. That rationale was worth the prioritization at the time. It never occurred to me that asset managers, law firms, and wealth advisors would need to be prodded back to work for their own sake as circumstances called for it.

Nearly five years later and the consensus view has moved to my side of this issue. Even besides the baby boomer wisdom of leaders like Jamie Dimon and David Solomon, the tech companies and cool Gen Y/Gen Z companies have one by one come around to getting people back to work, as well. Now, I have already made the ideological argument for mentorship, for collaboration, for brand, for culture, etc. in pleading my case for working from the office (my debate with Harvard Business School professor is here). My new Capital Record podcast on the subject is here.

As an aside, I encourage you to subscribe to this Capital Record podcast. It is my ideological defense of free enterprise and capital markets, done as two 15-20 minute episodes per week addressing contemporary topics like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Big Pharma, credit card fees, tariffs, Fannie/Freddie, and shareholder engagement. I even recently reviewed one of the worst books I have read in years written by a fellow finance comrade.

But back to the subject at hand for us financial advisors. I had opinions in 2020 about “work from home” and “return to office” relevant to the impact on the economy, and I have had opinions ever since around the optimal way for a business to flourish. But I actually have spent very little time outside the hallways of The Bahnsen Group talking about this subject specific to the wealth advisory business. And it is here where my publicly stated opinions thus far do not capture the breadth and depth of my conviction.

The business we are all blessed to be in is, above all else, a people business. That is primarily about the relationships we have with the most important people in our business – our clients. But of course it is also about the people who are our prospective clients as well as the people who are our team members. We are a collection of people who are in the business of serving people, and we are especially and uniquely called to do this through the establishment of trust. We can contribute to trust with the written word (my company creates a lot of written content for this very purpose). We can utilize the phone. We can send emails. And yes, we can even do video zooms. But there is nothing like a sit-down with a client where they look in your eye, you look in their eye, a bond is formed, and subsequently renewed. The experience of a client visiting your office, meeting your team, seeing your place of work, observing your chemistry, culture, and setting, being comfortable in your turf, and developing a confidence around your station, your routine, your people, your physical setting – is impossible to set a value on. This is a physical reality around the non-physical process of establishing trust.

Now, take this dynamic outside of current clients coming in to discuss their estate plan, long-time clients doing a regular portfolio review or update of their cash flow plan, new clients looking for a breakdown on how the portfolio has been constructed three months after onboarding. Apply this mentality to a prospective client coming in to visit. Think about the impressions formed when you deliver a hospitable experience, when your office setting reflects the authentic personality of you and your team, when your physical presence has a command to it – shows gravitas, shows confidence, shows experience, and shows confidence. There is simply no denying that when you go to a law firm that looks like Better Call Saul’s space in an Albuquerque strip mall versus going to a law firm with a more, shall we say, professional motif, it leaves an impression. I am not merely referring to impressing people with fancy or expensive design, furniture, and space, though. I am referring to the establishment of a connection that comes from the authentic demonstration of who you are, who your people are, where you work, and what you do.

And beyond the number one priority of personal contact with clients, and the number two priority of the messaging to prospective clients, is the day-to-day reality of culture-building with your team. I recognize many of your practices may be smaller, many may be larger, some are in wire-house branches, and some are very unique and bespoke. My business happens to have tax professionals, operations personnel, research analysts, planners, advisors, and a variety of categories across our different offices. Regardless of the magnitude of this dynamic, the personal cross-pollination of your people, the on-site interaction, the real-time peer sharing, the laughter in the kitchen, the encouragement at the pods, the opportunities to help each other, needed admonishments, high-fives, after-work happy hour, morning walks to Starbucks, conference room huddles for team business, and five thousand other examples I could share if I wanted this post to be longer, are all vital for culture.

And just so we are clear, inclusive of culture-building is the intentionality of mentorship. I lack the words to explain how much I learned (sometimes by what not to do, but mostly from positive example) by observing others in the office. A remote work culture is a culture if isolation and isolation is the enemy of mentorship. This is why Jamie and David are so vigorous about this issue – they know that JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs were the greatest mentors of new talent across Wal Street for the last few decades. It is the height of selfishness to deny to others what you, yourself, benefitted from. Young talent yearns to observe, interact, and collaborate, and Gen Z, far more so than Gen Y, seeks mentorship. In-office work exponentially improves this prospect!

I know some hate my views on this. I try to be charitable in my expression but my passion for the issue is real. Culture, brand, collaboration, and mentorship argue for work in office in the wealth advisory space. And if we were to calculate organic net asset growth of in office advisors versus those not – a metric that captures business growth and attrition – I don’t have any doubt in my mind what it would show. And deep down, neither do you.