Does your team know each other?

Did you realize that in addition to your day job you hold another, very important job title? Specifically, CEO of your household. (Congrats by the way on reaching this lofty position!) Whether your household is currently a start-up with a small budget or a Fortune 500, you are the top dog. The buck stops with you. At the end of the day, you get to call the shots. Fortunately, you don’t need to run every department on a daily basis. Many of us have our own accounting, legal, investment, and strategic planning departments among others. We hire professionals to help do the work, and do it right so that we don’t have to spend our own time crossing all the t’s and dotting the i’s.

So, take a moment to ask yourself, does your team know each other? Does your legal team know what your accounting and financial teams are doing? Do they even know the names of the other professionals you employ? Do your accounting and investment departments talk?

It’s amazing, but so often we hire professionals but fail to connect them with the other people on our team. Often times this lack of communication can mean that our plans fall through, not only costing us money but wasting the investments we made when we laid out the plans to begin with. I can’t tell you how many often we see clients with estate planning documents that have been very well constructed and thought through, but their financial lives don’t align with the plans.

If you were running a large corporation, would you expect your department heads to talk to each other? I hope so. I also hope that those people you employ would make that effort to know each other and discuss what’s going on in your company without your prodding, but at the end of the day if they don’t its really only you that will suffer for it.

And let’s take this one step further. You may be CEO of your household, but you may have other shareholders to think of too. Your spouse may be Co-CEO, or they may be more of a silent partner when it comes to the financial operations. You may have plans to leave money to your children or grandchildren, and maybe very specific plans for how you will do so. Does your spouse know your accountant? Your attorney? Your financial advisor? Do your kids know these people?

If not, maybe they should.