If you’re an advisor seeking success, you’ve no doubt experienced transitions—and you’re practically guaranteed to experience more of them going forward. Transitions are frustrating and expensive when they’re unclear—but they’re powerful when you’re armed with clarity, confidence and commitment.

In this week’s podcast, CEG Worldwide Managing Principal of Coaching Val Chaney spells out what goes into those three “C”s—and how advisors can foster all of them and thrive as they seek to transition from where they are today to where they want to be down the road.

Types of transitions

A transition is any moment where your current approach to what you're doing cannot reliably produce the next result that you're looking for. It might occur when your existing way of growing the business or serving clients becomes a strain rather than an exciting experience. It could be when your team is evolving and roles become unclear. It might be when you’re moving upmarket and not sure what field you’re playing on anymore.

Regardless, transition create noise. And when noise gets loud enough, advisors usually default to what's familiar—not necessarily what's effective.

The 3 “C”s

The key to navigating through the noise is to adopt the 3 “C”s:

1. Clarity. Acknowledge that you’re in an entrepreneurial fog—that it’s cloudy and you don’t have a clear direction forward. Then develop a vivid vision—one that is specific enough to guide your decisions and mobilize your team. Any vivid vision must have three component parts:

Understand for yourself what winning would look like, in very specific terms, 12 months from today. Don’t think in vague ideas, but in specific outcomes.
Decide what must be true to make that vision a reality. What are some real, tangible and measurable things that have to be in place for you to win?
Identify the vital few things you must do this quarter to move forward. Don’t try to design and implement 20 action steps. Focus on three things you need to do in the next three months to move you forward.

When you create a vivid vision with these components, you sharpen and refine your clarity. You come away knowing what you need to do and—just as important—what actions are extraneous to your goals and can be stopped or delegated to others.

2. Confidence. Confidence isn’t a mood—it’s a byproduct of evidence. And evidence comes from repeating actions that have a big impact, the tools we use and the wins we start to rack up. For example, work on your discovery process in which you ask clients deep, reflective types of questions and engage with them through active listening. Boost your ability to explain the value you offer to clients and how it connects to your fees. Practice new approaches with clients, team members and others.

3. Commitment. Transitions are fatiguing—they are killers of follow-through. So commitment must be designed. Chaney recommends implementing a 90-day commitment framework around one goal. That might be a practice growth goal, a team-focused goal or even a person goal for yourself. Then set up a weekly scoreboard to map and measure your progress. Enlist others to keep you accountable, too. This will build consistency.

A business commitment might be reaching out to two centers of influence and having two client rediscovery meetings per week. That's a clear, definable, measurable, focused business commitment.
A team commitment might involving picking one role and come to a role clarity decision within a week so that the organizational flow and process flow is solidified and everybody knows it.
A personal commitment might be protecting two mornings on your calendar each week for deep work.

Ultimately, transitions are not a threat. They are a doorway to a path from what was to what can be. But you have to walk through that doorway and take that path with intentional purpose. Clarity will give you the direction. Confidence will give you the power. And commitment will turn both of those things into results.

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