Tuesday's article "Wake-up call for advisors" drew by far the largest response of any article since the launch of this blog a year and a half ago.Focusing on a number of recent articles on affluent investors leaving existing advisors, the post laid out five strategies to respond to this trend.

Of course, laying out the strategies is the easy part - it's acting on them that's tough. One approach that might help was suggested in a recent email from Patty O'Connor of Price Metrix.



In order to better support her clients, earlier this year, Patty attended a one week coaching program offered by Adler International Learning, a Toronto based firm that's a global leader in this area.

Adler suggests asking two questions whenever your are considering a new initiative.

First: ‘How committed are you to this on a scale of 1 to 10?'

And second, if the commitment to the initiative is not a 10..... ‘What can you commit to that would be a 10?'

In Adler's experience, anything less than a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 is not a commitment, it's an intent. If an advisor isn't able to give something a '10', then he or she should consider taking it right off their list of priority ‘to dos' and focus on something else.

The reason is simple - because the commitment is less than 10, it's unlikely to happen and the emotional energy spent worrying and thinking about it will simply drain the capacity to concentrate on something else that will get a 10. Taking an idea off the list because it's just not important enough to merit a 10 creates room for something you really CAN commit to.

As you think about your response to Tuesday's article, consider going back to the five strategies that were outlined. As you think about them, consider whether you'd give any of them a 10 - and if the answer is yes, that's the idea you should focus on going forward.