Taking a break doesn't have to mean derailing your career — just ask this Morgan Stanley executive

Welcome to Human Capital, an open exploration of the ideas and people moving financial services forward. Every few weeks, we feature a leader or rising star who's changing the game in his or her own way. "Finance is an apprentice business," one often hears in this sector. Here are some of the teachers. Click Subscribe above to be notified of future editions.

When I first heard snippets of Lisa Golia's career, I knew I had to get the full story.

Golia just celebrated her 20th anniversary at Morgan Stanley, but the executive's path has not been a straight line. Most notably, as you'll hear, the working mom decided when her daughter was 10 years old that she needed a career break. So, still far from retirement age, Golia "retired" from the bank. More in our conversation below.

Today, as the head of field strategic services for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, Golia oversees about 8,000 professionals working with financial advisers and their clients on everything from client onboarding to asset movement to technology innovations. We spent a lot of time discussing how and why tech has come to play a larger role in the world of wealth management — and whether or not it has the potential to supplant human advice.

Below are excerpts from the conversation.

Let's start with how you entered financial services and progressed to where you are now.

I started a little bit over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley as a service professional in a New York City branch. I always wanted to get into something where we were servicing, where you’re dealing with people, but with very fast pace and very high energy, sort of A-type personalities. So the financial services industry — I had a lot of friends in the industry — seemed like something that really would work for me. I got the job at Morgan Stanley and I was a service professional for a financial adviser for a few years.

I obtained a lot of my licenses within the branch, and I began wearing many hats. I became the assistant branch manager, and I started helping with recruiting, et cetera. A few years after that, I was offered an opportunity in the corporate headquarters. From there, I continuously rose in the organization. I was the one always raising my hand to work on things, whether helping new recruits or helping the organization think more outside the box.

My role continuously expanded year after year as I would take on more responsibility. I was the chief administration officer for field management for about eight years. That meant I oversaw internal communication, I ran the service organization, which consists of about 8,000 employees, I had the technology trainers, and I wore, again, many different functional hats. I worked a lot with legal, risk, and compliance on policies and procedures as well.

Today, I run an organization called field strategic services. It includes the entire service organization across wealth management — about 8,000 employees. These are service professionals who work for their financial advisers and they have daily interactions with our clients. It’s the second-largest organization within wealth management.

I also oversee a home-office team, and their primary goal is to continuously modernize the client experience through constant investment and tools that really enable those interactions.

So, I started at the firm as a service professional and now I oversee the service organization. I've basically spent my entire career focused on perfecting the client and branch experience.

Speaking of the branch experience and financial advisory services in general, how have they evolved during your time in the industry?

If I think back to when I was a service professional in the branch, things were very manual, and really the biggest focus for a client was advice. Today, the client demands much more than just good advice — advice is critically important, yes, but they also demand a level of service that is very different than 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.

If you think about the financial services industry, historically we were always just compared against our peers. Now, clients expect the same level of service that they receive, say, from an Amazon. So, our competitive landscape has really broadened and evolved.

There has definitely been a real digital transformation, where clients expect a level of service that they didn’t before. They want things to be safer, faster, and easier — and essentially be able to conduct business from their iPhone or talk to their financial adviser in many different ways. There are still one-on-one meetings, of course, but there’s also a lot of digital engagement.

One example is, 15 years ago, if a financial adviser wanted to let clients know about a shift in the market or how it impacts their portfolio, they would have to reach out to clients individually. Today, as an example at Morgan Stanley, we have a tool called Next Best Action, and it uses AI technology to help advisers target and send relevant timely information to large numbers of clients. It could be everything from operational in nature, like letting a client know that they have a low cash balance, all the way to investment-related messages, like deviations from their planned portfolio asset mix. That didn’t exist when I started out in the industry; it was all one on one, very manual.

From a service perspective, we have clients moving money internally between accounts at Morgan Stanley as well as externally. And we always have had that. Historically, when a client wanted to move money, they would either sign a letter of authorization or fax it or email it. We made the process via something called e-authorization, where the client can review the information on their smartphone if they wish. With a few taps the money is moved, there’s no paper back and forth, and it’s all safer because it’s done within the confines of the bank's platform. The same with something we introduced called the digital vault, an encrypted cloud-based platform where clients can store financial documents and share them with their financial adviser team much more securely than, say, faxing or emailing.

Then there’s advice today — totally different, much more customized. Every client is different and has different needs and financial goals. One tool that we built is GPS, goals-based planning. It lets advisers show clients how likely they are to achieve their goals and how to create an investment portfolio, as opposed to, say, 20 years ago, when everyone was just looking at where their investments were versus the Dow or S&P.

All in all, clients expect a level of service that is customized and far superior to what we’ve had in the past.

Does all of this evolution necessitate a new kind of talent in wealth advice and management?

So, we spent a lot of time and effort investing in training, because over the past decade there has been such a transformation digitally across the industry — across all industries, really.

We found that by investing in training, both our financial advisers and service professionals have really embraced the digital transformation. They've realized that it gives them an ability to service their clients in a way that they couldn’t 10 years ago. But how do we get them through that transformation? It's really an investment in training — one on one, online, and in seminar format.

So, it’s not so much that we need a different type of talent. It’s like anything else in any industry: As things evolve, so do the people within the organization. Obviously, if we didn’t make the investment in training then there would be a disconnect. So, training is critical.

Just as important as investing in the technology is investing in the training. You can invest in all the technology in the world, but if you don’t invest in communication and training, it will not be successful.

That’s the key point that I found throughout my career. You can’t just build something and expect people to come; you have to bring them along from the start and have them understand why and how it will enhance their job. Giving them a seat at the table allows you and the process to gain credibility. And then, as I keep saying, invest in the training.

Speaking of digital transformation, what's your take on the rise of robo-advice? Will it replace or complement human advisers, or a little bit of both?

It’s definitely a complement.

If you think about a goals-based robo-adviser, it has an appeal to a certain client segment. But I see it as an opportunity and just another tool in our toolbox for offering clients the types of service they want.

We actually built a goals-based robo-adviser two years ago; we call it Morgan Stanley Access Investing. It allows clients to create a goal, then choose from a number of model portfolios.

But I’m not worried that all of a sudden we are going to see robo-advisers taking over the industry, because the reality is that different client segments have different preferences.

There are some clients who are well served by digital advice, and others really, really want the human touch and advice. I think it’s totally reasonable to expect some clients to start with the digital-advice solution and eventually switch to a traditional financial-adviser model as they grow older and wealthier and see that their lives and needs become more complex.

So, it’s definitely not a threat. It’s another tool in the toolbox.

I want to pivot to why, in your career story, there is a short break. How did that come about, and why was it important to you?

If I think about my journey as a working mom, it’s been very rewarding. I mean, of course like most working parents, there are always challenging days when you wish you could split yourself in two. But for the most part, it’s been a great journey.

For the first 10 years of my daughter’s life, I really put the gas pedal on the accelerator in terms of my career. For me, I found it easier really just to juggle both when she was a baby or a toddler. I was definitely tired a lot, but there wasn’t that mental drain.

As she got older, I found it more challenging. That's when I found, with respect to my work, that I was sloping down. I decided I needed to take a step back.

For me, I realized that the pre-teen and teenage years are really when a child might need you the most. Of course, every child needs their parents present at all times, but it wasn’t as challenging for me to get help with changing her diaper or feeding her when she was an infant. When your child reaches a certain age, they’re faced with things like academic stress or social questions, or even "boy questions." That's all normal, but I didn’t want anyone else helping her with that. So, that’s where my alone time with her became critical. You can’t outsource emotional advice with your child.

So, when she was 10 years old, I resigned from Morgan Stanley. It was a combination of her getting older and being at a point in her life where I felt like I wanted to be home, and candidly it was my own lack of self-discipline to find balance between work and "me time."

I always had an "all or nothing" personality, so even though Morgan Stanley was extremely supportive and gave me all the flexibility that I needed, I just couldn’t get myself at that point to find that balance. So, I resigned, and after a year of being home, I realized how important it is to have that balance.

When you leave the office and you go to your child’s bake sale, nobody cares that you are the CAO or what your title is.

It was a wakeup call for me. And then, Morgan Stanley called me back a year later. By then I was ready to take them up on their offer of flexibility, which they had always been offering up.

I’ve been back now for a few years — my daughter will be 14 — and I actually have more balance today than I’ve ever had. I run a large organization, my team and I deliver so many different things, and my daughter has plenty of alone time with me.

I also realized the importance of "me time." You have to have balance between work and your children, but you also have to have time for yourself. I actually became a certified exercise teacher, and I teach one night a week in my town and on some weekends.

Having balance or not having balance can only be up to the individual. You have to want it bad enough.

It’s been a great journey and a great learning experience that I think has really helped me become the executive I am. Today I preach that same balance to everyone who works for me.

What role do men play in promoting such work-life balance?

I’m glad you raised that. It’s just as important to have male leaders be a role model and involved and mentoring.

When I think about the management committee and I think about all the time we spend talking about these programs, a lot of these programs were built by men and women. It’s a group effort.

You can’t just have women helping women. You have to have men and women helping men and women.

So, I don’t look at it as a silo within the workplace. We need the perspectives of everybody across the firm when designing these programs and policies. Every one of the male colleagues that I work with is involved in a formal mentoring program or mentoring on their own. Every woman that I have ever put up for managing director or executive director, I’ve given them a list of mentors to speak with about their careers, and there is always a man on that list.

It has to be a cohesive, collaborative team effort. If it's just one group championing a cause, it will fail.

How do you approach balance in your own work and career? Join the conversation in the comments below.