It is October, and I am writing about April. That is deliberate. October is neither my best month nor my worst — it is simply business as usual, and the pattern behind my most innovative months is easiest to see from here.
My best ideas arrive in April. January, the month we all treat as the fresh start, is reliably my least productive of the year. That annoyed me for a long time, because it contradicts the calendar our industry runs on. In January we set objectives, in January we launch initiatives, in January we plan everything. In those weeks I work well, but I do not think well.
Why Spring Brings My Most Innovative Months
At some point I stopped fighting it. April, May and June are my window. It is not the quietest quarter — reporting, meetings and events are all in full flow.
But the light returns, everything comes out of hibernation, and the year still feels open. That sense of an open year matters more, it seems, than an empty calendar.
Which is the part I find genuinely uncomfortable. Our industry plans its thinking for the month when the year is at its most closed — when the numbers are fixed, the targets are set, and every question already has a box to fit into. We call that the fresh start. It is the opposite.
Three Changes to How I Plan the Year
So I have rearranged a few things. The difficult, unstructured questions now go into the spring rather than into January, where they used to get ground down between target-setting and reporting.
In December I commit to nothing new, only to what must be finished anyway. And with my team I have started asking not just when something should be ready, but when someone realistically has the head for it. That last question changed more than the other two together.
What the Most Innovative Months Mean for Our Industry
Of course, my most innovative months are a personal theory, not a rule. Still, I suspect many colleagues know the feeling. New ideas in wealth management rarely come out of a planning template; instead, they need time and a little open space.
Take technology, for example. A credible AI strategy is not something you write between two budget meetings in January. Similarly, a new service for the next generation of clients needs room for curiosity before it needs a deadline.
The same applies to the bigger questions clients bring to us. When a family moves from growth to duration, the conversation calls for calm thinking rather than a quarterly box. A good routine protects the daily work; however, vision needs its own season.
Over to You
So, dear colleagues: is October simply business as usual for you too — or does someone see it entirely differently?
Source: https://vapa.ch/most-innovative-months-wealth-management/ · vapa.ch
