Morningstar Advisor - August/September 2011 - (Page 8)

Behavior Gap Simplicity and Design Matter By Carl Richards Our industry is one in which decided complexity represents a sort of intellectual superiority. For years, the classic sales strategy relied on using confusing jargon and complex charts to convince prospects that they need us. But if you look around, people like the things that are easy to understand and use. In other industries, the pursuit of this elegant simplicity is called design. Among the most admired companies, it’s not an afterthought, but a primary focus. Apple AAPL is an obvious example. Before the iPod, nothing existed to tell you how much you’d like using a simple scroll wheel to play music. It took a designer to decide that, and soon after, few of us could imagine living without it. We can learn a lot from Apple’s pursuit of simplicity and its value to our industry. When our clients-to-be come to see us, they rarely know what they want and almost never know what they truly need. They may have a sense they need help, but they often don’t even know what questions to ask. Of course, we don’t help matters when we immediately dive into a 60-minute presentation full of bullet points and jargon. We end up confusing the very people we’re trying to help! Because our industry has traditionally been so bad at design, it presents a huge opportunity for members of the Secret Society of Real Financial Planners (see “Questions for the Secret Society” in the June/July issue) to stand out from their peers by embracing simplicity over complexity. We can do that by making the “look and feel” of everything we do a primary focus, instead of an afterthought. So, here are a few simple ideas to get you started: 1 Explain to your parents what you do and ask how they’d describe it to their friends. 2 Explain diversification to an 8-year-old and then ask the child to draw it. I’ve experimented with this idea, and believe me, we can’t make things too simple in our industry. People don’t find it offensive; they find it refreshing. 3 Revisit your presentations. Do you really need 120 slides, or will 10 pictures work instead? 4 Reduce your proposals to a single-page summary. Some people want more detail, but I’ve been surprised at the sense of relief I see when I reduce my proposals to the most important things. The idea of embracing simplicity can be scary because it’s clearly different from the way we have been doing things, but the market does reward it. Apple, Google GOOG, UPS UPS, and Volkswagen VLKAY are all examples. In our industry, Morningstar has stood out as one of the few companies that is focused on design. So, whether we’re talking about an iPod or explaining how we can help people get what they really need, design matters. If we’re telling people that we’re trying to simplify their lives yet everything they see from us is complex, we’re sending the wrong message. K Carl Richards runs BehaviorGap.com, a laboratory of sorts where he asks tough questions about financial planning and investor behavior. He puts his ideas to work in the real world through his firm, Prasada Capital Management. 8 Morningstar Advisor August/September 2011 http://www.BehaviorGap.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Morningstar Advisor - August/September 2011

Morningstar Advisor - August/September 2011
Contents
Contributors
Letter From the Editor
Simplicity and Design Matter
Do You Use ETFs Strategically or Tactically?
The Institutional Way
How to Analyze an ETF
Eyeing ETFs’ Next Chapter
Small-Cap/Large-Cap Flip-Flop?
Four Picks for the Present
Investment Briefs
Morningstar Investment Conference
Pitfalls of Peer Groups
A REIT Recovery, With a Catch
Turning Fund Distribution on Its Head
Here Come ETF Managed Portfolios
Circle These Picks Amid the Crop of New ETFs
ETF Analyst Favorites
Beware, the Accidental Portfolio Manager
It’s the Destination, Not the Vehicle
New Growth, Rooted in Experience
Better Ways to Look at ETFs
How to Better Manage Your Clients’ Future(s)
More Bargain Than Bubble
Cheap, Local, and On a Roll
Mutual Fund Analyst Picks
50 Most Popular ETFs
Undervalued Stocks With Wide Moats
First-Quarter Assets Hit an All-Time High
You Say You Want a Revolution?

Morningstar Advisor - August/September 2011

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