Search
“Project management can feel like work that sucks the soul right out of you.” That’s a direct quote, used with permission, from Joe Olson, Partner, COO, and CFA at Luminate, an RIA based in Southern California.
It’s an observation that resonates with me because I’ve seen firsthand how many leaders have lived it. Endless status meetings. Updates without progress. Tools that feel like bureaucracy layered on top of real work. And capital investments that don’t produce the planned ROI.
To be candid, that version of project management is soul-sucking. It’s outdated. And in today’s more complex advisory businesses, it can be quite dangerous because execution is now a significant margin issue.
The economics of running a wealth advisory firm have changed. Human capital costs continue to rise. Technology spending keeps climbing, and as AI accelerates, your tech spend will need to keep pace. Compliance and operational complexity aren’t easing up either. At the same time, pricing pressure and client expectations are also ratcheting up. What does that mean for your business? If you’re expanding services for clients without raising fees, it’s quietly eroding your profits. (That, however, is a topic for another blog).
Execution is a margin lever
Projects that drift, expand in scope, or require rework quietly erode profitability. Projects delivered on time, within budget, and properly integrated protect margins and free leadership capacity. Strong project management is not overhead – when done well, it’s a strategic reinforcement and an economic discipline.
It’s worth remembering that disciplined execution isn’t a novel concept. Modern project management was institutionalized decades ago through Six Sigma initiatives at companies such as Motorola and General Electric. Six Sigma work was treated as formal projects, with defined scope, accountable leaders, timelines, and measurable outcomes. The lesson was simple and enduring: execution should be structured, repeatable, and tied to results, not heroics.
And although today’s advisory firms are far more complex than those of years past, the underlying principle still holds. Execution requires engaged leadership.
Firms need to redefine their understanding of project management
Historically, advisory firms treated project management as administrative work – task tracking, meeting scheduling, and follow up. But that model strips the work of meaning and misses the key point. In a modern advisory firm, project management is execution leadership. It’s how strategy survives contact with reality, and how complexity is integrated rather than amplified.
As firms grow and expand, projects stop being isolated efforts. Technology implementations affect the client experience. Changes in the client experience in turn impact operations and compliance. And talent initiatives directly influence service delivery. Without a clear owner for execution, workflows often become fragmented, and priorities eventually begin to collide.
This is why larger firms need a project management leader, and at sufficient scale, a project management office. It’s not bureaucracy. It’s infrastructure; an execution nerve center which AI is helping to evolve (the toolset; not the need for leadership). Modern platforms like ClickUp, Asana, and monday.com are no longer static task trackers. They now employ AI to help summarize progress, flag bottlenecks, forecast timelines, and reduce administrative overhead. In short, AI removes noise and increases the signal – which means execution leadership matters more, not less.
Firms that attempt to adopt AI without strong project leadership are merely adding complexity. But those firms that pair AI with execution leadership have the potential to gain tremendous leverage.
Project management is a team skill that builds on the owner’s mindset
The mistake many firms make is that they concentrate project management responsibility into a single role and hope it scales. Trust me…it won’t!
Everyone on the team needs to be trained in the fundamentals of project management, not so they all become project managers, but so they understand how work moves from idea to execution. And this needs to include all the variables (i.e., scope, dependencies, ownership, risk, budget and timelines).
The Project Management Institute has years’ worth of clear data to back this up. Organizations with higher project maturity outperform their peers because execution capability is distributed rather than centralized. Teams share a common language, reducing friction and rework, and allowing leaders to lead rather than chase updates.
This is the point where something more powerful starts to happen. Because when everyone is trained in project management, you begin to build an owner’s mindset within your team:
-
People stop waiting for direction and start thinking strategically
-
Whenever a new initiative or idea is discussed, the team begins to think within a project management framework
-
They ask whether a project supports the firm’s priorities
-
They create initiatives that align with the firm’s agreed upon OKRs rather than competing for attention
-
And they ask about ROI, budget tradeoffs, and overall impact greater or less than the current course of action.
Work stops being activity and becomes outcome-driven. And over time, this discipline sharpens execution, reduces wasted effort, and improves profitability. Done well, project management is not about control, it’s about alignment, ownership, and results.
Myth vs Reality
Myth: Project management kills creativity
Reality: Project management protects creativity by removing chaos
Myth: Only project managers need project skills
Reality: Strategy and execution are a team sport
Myth: Tools solve execution problems
Reality: Tools amplify whatever discipline already exists
How to change your project management perspective
If you’re truly serious about scaling your firm, start by asking your leadership team one direct question: Do we treat project management as administrative support or as execution leadership? Then take some time to carefully evaluate the following four key success criteria:
-
Ownership: Is there clear accountability for delivering strategic initiatives, not just for participating in them?
-
Authority: Does your project leader have the credibility and the access to resolve trade-offs among senior leaders?
-
Capability: Are team members trained in project fundamentals so that execution doesn’t end up getting bottlenecked in a single seat?
-
Economics: Are projects consistently delivered on time and within scope, or are overruns quietly eroding your firm’s margins?
If you don’t like the honest answers to any of those questions, you don’t have a project management problem. You have a leadership design problem – but one that can be rectified by standardizing processes, enhancing your technology to digitize workflows, and striving for more proactive communication.
While project management can genuinely feel soul-sucking when reduced to chasing tasks, it can just as easily become energizing when it becomes about making progress visible, protecting resources, and translating strategy into results.
In a world of increasingly tighter margins and constantly expanding complexity, execution matters more than ever. And execution requires leadership. That’s not bureaucracy; that’s how sustainable and enduring firms are built.
Coaching Questions From This Article
-
What actions steps could you commit to taking that will help shift your firm’s project management away from being an administrative support function that tracks tasks, and towards an execution leadership designed to ensure strategy meets reality?
-
Where in your current project pipeline is 'scope drift' or 'rework' quietly eroding your profit margins, and what structural changes could help prevent that leakage?
-
If your project management capability were distributed across the entire team rather than centralized in one person, how would that change the way your team prioritizes their daily work?
Questions Financial Advisors Often Ask
Why does project management often feel “soul-sucking” in advisory firms?
Project management often feels frustrating when it becomes endless status meetings, updates without progress, tools that create bureaucracy, and capital investments that fail to produce the planned ROI. That version of project management is outdated and can become dangerous in modern advisory firms because execution is now a significant margin issue.
Why is execution becoming a margin issue for wealth advisory firms?
The economics of running a wealth advisory firm have changed. Human capital costs continue to rise, technology spending keeps climbing, compliance and operational complexity are increasing, and pricing pressure and client expectations are also rising. When firms expand services without raising fees, poorly executed projects can quietly erode profits.
How does strong project management protect profitability in an advisory firm?
Projects that drift, expand in scope, or require rework quietly erode profitability. Projects delivered on time, within budget, and properly integrated protect margins and free leadership capacity. When done well, project management is not overhead; it is a strategic reinforcement and an economic discipline.
What role does project management play in executing strategy at an advisory firm?
In a modern advisory firm, project management is execution leadership. It is how strategy survives contact with reality and how complexity is integrated rather than amplified. Without clear ownership for execution, workflows become fragmented and priorities begin to collide.
Why should project management capabilities be distributed across the team?
Concentrating project management responsibility into a single role does not scale. Everyone on the team should understand the fundamentals of project management so they know how work moves from idea to execution and how to account for scope, dependencies, ownership, risk, budget, and timelines.
What should leaders evaluate to improve project management in their firm?
Leaders should evaluate four key success criteria: ownership, authority, capability, and economics. This includes having clear accountability for delivering initiatives, ensuring project leaders have the authority to resolve trade-offs, training team members in project fundamentals, and confirming that projects are delivered on time and within scope rather than eroding margins.
