How Babcock will Get the Leafs to Win the Stanley Cup

Mike Babcock and Jim Heller with Toronto Maple Leafs

Being a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan, I often hear that "The Leafs can never win!" This negative view is echoed by the media and Twittersphere. Reasons given are that the players are too young, they don't get rid of players like Bozak, if Matthews gets injured the whole team collapses, we are too reliant on one player  - that Matthews again- and where is the defense?

How does a recently-hired coach like Mike Babcock break through that mindset? Such a defeatist view of the Leafs' destiny is a deeply ingrained habit for the players to not believe it. Each player gets on the ice with their own thinking and analysis. They are pattern recognition machines checking their team members for body language and style of play in order to predict their own next ten seconds of play. Each player builds up their own habits of play and their habit of psychology during the game.

One of the first changes I noticed when Babcock arrived as the new coach was that he began to break down the habits of each player doing their own thing. He set team plays, particularly in the first ten minutes of the game. It became evident that a team doing set plays was far more effective than one star player being expected to win the game. For the players, these team formations yielded improvements quickly.

Yet, when the opponents kicked in their plays, the Leafs would still fall back on its old psychology, particularly when playing home ice, in front of the Leafs fans.

Jim Hiller - The Leafs

Belief is an important part of team sports and in the book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg, the author, credits belief with the biggest part of success. Duhiggs discusses, "laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Procter and Gamble, Target superstores and NFL winning teams." Implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death. Duhiggs gives the Alcoholic Anonymous process as one of the examples about how to change patterns and the controversial piece is the belief part. For habits, Duhigg writes that the highest impact piece to solid habits is belief.

I would agree.

Mike Babcock and his passionate but intense leadership style gave the team quick successes. For the first time the team wants to believe, but when things get tense, their body language slumps, they look depressed and they fall back to their own game style and their old habits.

Then came the game changer. The Capitals were in town to play the Leafs at the ACC in front of their fans. This season, the Leafs had a string of failures when on the home ice and the rumour was it was due to nerves in front of the fans. The Capitals were a particularly tense opponent as they had taken out the Leafs in the playoffs and had played an aggressive game. The game began badly as the Caps scored early. Then again. By the end of the second period, the Leafs' deflation was evident.

After the break, Babcock had got the team energized again and the Leafs managed to pull back to get just one behind the Caps. In the final five minutes, the Leafs were at the Cap's net battling it out when Babcock made a big scene. He pulled the Leaf's goalie from the net. I was shocked. What the heck... Then I could see Babcock's reasoning - to add another player to the ice to escalate the pummeling on the Caps' net. Babcock's public decision to up the ante on the final push to get the needed goal showed the Leafs their coach believed.

Babcock burnt the boats.

Unbelievable! Would his team step up to give the Caps a pounding? Not just Matthews? By golly, they did. Every player gave it their all. They played as if it was the Stanley Cup finals. There was no holding back.

The Leafs started to believe and what a final five minutes. at the eight second spot, the Caps main player scored on the Leaf's empty goal. A fan threw a hat on the ice to recognize the hat trick. Until the final moment, that night, the fans stayed riveted in their seats. They watched as each of the players gave Babcock every squeeze of their energy.

Most teams are not teams. They are a group of guys who play together. Babcock's symbolic strategy where he put himself out in front of the fans and the media for a public drubbing made a difference. I wondered what would be the mood and atmosphere in the changing room that night after pulling the goalie? Would the Leaf's mood be different if Babcock had not created that drama with the Caps?

Jacoline Loewen

Babcock changed up the feelings. (Am I allowed to say feelings when writing about sports?) He not only showed that he believed, he put his own credibility on the line. Babcock gave the Leafs fans a spectacle and my favourite photograph from 2017 - see above. The tweets and the media had a different tone. There was excitement and appreciation.

When you see belief in other people's eyes, it seems real. The Leafs players saw their fans stick around to the end and the support given. That will remain. The power of a group to reach each team member to stay strong is immense. Babcock's gesture will have been significant enough to change the psychology of the team. The next time they face the Caps, they will have the fortitude to power through the game and bring their practiced plays.

Since then, the Leafs are playing differently. A conviction is emerging about the strength of Babcock's strategy. The Leafs are playing a tighter, precision game.

Habits change with a group. Babcock's belief is compelling enough that the young Leafs players are getting behind him and giving it their extra talent. Maybe this year it will be enough to get the finals? Here's believing!

What sets top wealth management client advisors apart?

I work as a wealth management expert and get to observe many client advisors. I have noticed 4 key areas where top advisors set themselves apart:

1. Develop a defined value proposition.This has never been more important. Robo-advisors have set the benchmark for fees and services. You need to differentiate your services to allow you to continue to charge fees above what the robos charge. According to Cerulli Research, an attribute of the fastest-growing advisors is the ability to communicate their value proposition in a concise and compelling manner.

Jacoline Loewen

2. Lower fees.

Look to scale your operations by leveraging technology, people, and processes to more effectively support clients while driving down cost.

3. Develop specific services for targeted clients.
Don’t try to be all things to all people. The top advisors have told me they focus on serving one segment of the market (for example, high-net-worth clients). Without client segmentation, advisors tend to overserve clients on the lower end and underserve clients on the higher end. By focusing on one type of client, you’ll help drive down your costs.

4. Get to know your clients and their families.

Spend time early and often with clients and their families to build trust and lasting relationships. By getting to know your clients’ goals, you’ll increase your ability to retain their assets and generate business through referrals.

Private equity owns more companies than those listed on the public markets

Private equity now owns far more companies than the public market. The private markets allow a more effective way to manage than public companies.
That is why we are seeing financial engineering with mergers and buy-outs and buy backs. It is an important part of the economy and the financial markets. The duration of the assets is lengthened and increases the price sensitivity.
The issue is that more and more equities are owned privately. There is a vibrant market that is private.

What would Ray Dalio, a billionaire, do with a personality assessment tool?

Ray Dalio is a Hedge Fund founder who is also a self made billionaire. His recently released book, Principles, shocked me as it features more about how tomeditate, build habits, manage your monkey brain and learn how to use pain to achieve your dreams. in short, Dalio shares the soft issues that built his success and zip on the schematics of hedge fund algorithms. I am full of admiration as Dalio is sharing his true secret sauce at great risk to his reputation.

One of the tools Dalio reviews is the simple personality tool - achiever, promoter, analyst and supporter. I am very familiar with this tool and have used it throughout my career so it was wonderful to read Dalio's positive views.

Back in the 1990s and I was part of the merger of Deloitte. We were requested to take personality tests to help the newly formed team understand each other better. The tool was a simpler version of Myers-Briggs personality test. Very quickly, I observed that the insights I gained from this test were a game changer for my attitudes to all the different personalities I encountered in my work at Deloitte. Different styles clashed with my more creative style but armed with my newly gained insights, I changed the way I reacted. I began to recognize that what I thought were odd ways of working were, in fact, a great asset to my project work. With the personality models tool, I could respect others and their different ways of approaching work. It would help me go on to leverage my ability to sync with teams very quickly anywhere in the world.

But, back then, when I asked my new Deloitte leader what he thought of these personality tests, I got an earful. When my senior partner at Deloitte answered my question about a management tool with, "It's useless and a waste of time!" I took that advise to heart and did not pursue using personality types in my consulting work for many years. Boy, was that wrong advice. This senior pertner was stressed but also, ironically, I noted that his personality profile did say he would be skeptical of most information until he could analyze it to death.

Later, that leader would go on to be head of Deloitte, Canada, and then London, and finally, the world. When I caught up with him in Toronto a few years later, I mentioned his comment about personality tests. I was shocked when he said that, in fact, he had done a complete right turn on his assessment quite soon after our conversation. In contrast to his early scoffing, he had gone on to use the tool extensively, and credited it as one of his most valuable tools as a top management consultant.

Dalio goes through how I could have learned from this experience, I learned two lessons from Dalio:

1. To speak up and explain my truth - why I thought the tool was particularly a stand out and why I valued its impact on my ability to be a better team player.
2. To speak up to my seniors with the attitude to share and to have an open mind. I did not need to be afraid but realize that my worth came from adding insights.

Ray Dalio says personality tools were invaluable in understanding his people and their significant alternative ways of thinking and feeling. He started using these tools in the 90s, at about the same time my newly forming Deloitte team was struggling to grasp the different personalities.  I do think that the Deloitte merger change group achieved a tremendous jump-start by having the courage to get the teams to apply the analysis. These are the very same tools named by Dalio who also had the courage to build a unique culture, starting with nothing and growing his business to make him a billionaire.

One of Ray's Principles is truth.  He has created a corporate culture where the team is encouraged to understand different personalities and the way they will view the world. The culture at Bridgewater then encourages everyone to speak up about their opinion.

In my case, speaking my "truth" back then may have pushed me along my career path faster. Also, my Deloitte leader may have picked up those personality assessment tools far quicker too. In a world of speed, we both would have benefitted.

I give Ray's book five gold stars and am amazed that he has chosen to share his Principles with all of us but grateful. Thank you, Ray!

Why Endowment Style Portfolios are catching on like fire

For those with wealth over ten million, the Endowment Style Portfolio is being used as a model to protect wealth, as well as to give it a better grwoth trajectory than the traditional 60/40 portfolio structure. Here is a great summary of ESP and how their performance is influencing wealth management by John Authors, FT:

The endowments of the most prestigious US universities have long been watched as a model by asset allocators, and have helped to drive interest in such sectors as private equity, hedge funds, and natural resources. Their financial year ends in June, and their results are now available, summarised in this excellent blog post by Markov Processes International. The most interesting result, by far, is what has happened over the past 10 years — a period that started almost exactly as the credit crisis was beginning to take hold in July 2007. By lucky coincidence, I wrote this Long View column in June 2007 after listening to David Swensen, head of Yale’s endowment speak at a Yale reunion. At that point, Yale’s record looked stunningly good. How has it done since? This is Markov’s summary of how the eight Ivy League universities performed, compared with a “60/40” portfolio (60 per cent US stocks, 40 per cent US bonds) representing a typical asset allocation for such endowments before the move into alternative assets took hold:

Jacoline Loewen

 Only Princeton and Columbia have managed to beat a 60/40 portfolio over that time, even though it started just before one of the worst crashes for public equities in history. Yale has almost matched it — but it went to far more trouble than it would have taken just to put the endowment’s money into conventional public assets. Others, particularly Harvard and Cornell, have lagged behind badly.

 Over the past year (not such a relevant period for a long-term endowment, but the results are still interesting), all the Ivies managed positive results, and all bar Harvard managed to beat the 60/40 portfolio reasonably easily, led by Dartmouth. What are the lessons on asset allocation?

 Execution evidently matters. This is not just a game of asset allocation. If you look at how Harvard and Princeton were positioned 10 years ago, they are strikingly similar; with much the same weight in hedge funds and minimal interest in bonds and cash. Harvard had a much greater weighting of resources, which appears to have hurt its returns, and Princeton was considerably more enthusiastic about private equity and venture capital. But these asset allocations are similar enough, while other asset allocations among the Ivies are very different and yet ended with returns in the middle of the pack, to suggest that implementation had a lot to do with this.

Book by Jacoline Loewen