How to Scale Your RIA Without Losing Your Culture
It’s on Section 87 On the COO Roundtable Podcast, OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners Vince Nauheimer and Grace Balestrieri of Brighton Jones sat down with two operators who have led their companies through significant growth, and asked, “How do you maintain your culture as your organization scales?” I asked them a question. Thanks to Vince, he corrected the question’s phrasing. Keeping your culture the same is not the point, he explained. The goal is to grow into something you’re still proud of. That’s a key difference in how I phrased the question, and it’s more important than most organizations realize.
Many strong leaders approach culture as something to protect, as if it is weak and will break if you don’t protect it. Vince summed it up in a way that stuck with me: “We’re not trying so much to freeze culture in place, but to make culture fluid and non-negotiable about what the critical elements are. There are things that aren’t negotiable: your values, how you treat customers, how you treat people. But as you add offices, buy organizations, and create new people, the texture of your culture changes. Fighting the natural evolution of your company culture is a losing battle. Embrace it, at the core.” By sticking to principles, that’s where the most successful RIAs live.
Vince also pointed out that the culture should be put into action. It can’t just be a poster on the wall or a line in an employee handbook. It should show how you hire, how you onboard, how you evaluate performance. And for RIAs that grow organically: How you approach M&A.
Vince makes a point that I think gets lost in many acquisition conversations: “Culture fit really isn’t a filter, it’s just a check box. His company doesn’t shy away from deals when the culture isn’t a good fit. It takes guilt to give up the extra AUM everyone is clamoring for. But as Vince puts it, “It doesn’t take much to poison a culture. Anyone who has been through a bad purchase knows exactly what I mean.
The first 90 days after bringing in a new hire or a new team are critical, he said. That new guy or that team he’s got is watching closely. Are you doing what you said you would? Did you deliver on what you promised during the employee interview or M&A courting process? That’s where trust is built or broken, and trust is the foundation of culture.
Grace brought the challenge to the discussion with an absolutely catchy phrase: “Balance with the soul.” At Brighton Jones, they put this into their 10-year vision. The idea is that you can grow stronger and still maintain the essence of who you are. But this requires deliberate attention. It doesn’t just happen by itself.
A few things that Grace and her team built to make that happen stood out to me. First is ownership. The company is 100% employee-owned, with about 30 team members holding equity. When people have a real stake in an organization’s success, they invest in how it grows and changes. True business owners will protect culture at all costs and not stand back and watch it erode.
The second is the common language. Every Brighton Jones employee goes through GRACE as part of their “MESI” training framework, which stands for Intellectual, Emotional and Social Intelligence. The goal is to give everyone the same vocabulary to navigate the tough conversations, leadership challenges, and inevitable conflicts that come with growth. As Grace explained, when things get tough, it means “we’re speaking the same language and we can use those skills to get through these things.” You can’t imagine how powerful it is in a multi-office organization.
Third, and this is particularly useful for operations professionals, they have built a model for deriving best practices that balances consistency with flexibility. Grace describes it as thinking about what is “demanding, dynamic and personal”. You need consistency across offices to deliver an amazing customer experience. But that amazing customer experience comes from personal relationships, local service teams, and the human element that can’t be completely systematized. Finding that balance between standardization and customization is very difficult, and as much an operational problem as it is a population and culture problem.
This discussion has provided some ideas that should be explored in your organization. Ask yourself if your culture is functional or just wishful thinking. If it’s mostly words on the wall, there’s work to be done. Culture will be reflected in your hiring criteria, your onboarding process, your performance reviews and your M&A due diligence. If it doesn’t include those things, it’s not your culture yet. It’s just your intention.
Be prepared to avoid a bad situation. That applies to hiring and acquisitions as well. A bad habit can do more damage than most people realize, until it’s too late.
And finally, stop trying to fix your culture on the spot. The best companies I’ve seen don’t look the same at 50 with 250 employees. The tradition did not continue there. It got better.
