Great advice doesn’t start with answers. It starts with better questions.

What’s Shifting – and What Isn’t

Clients are recognising the need to reset and rightsize for an increasingly complex world. Reactive problem-solving is exhausting and, frankly, unsustainable at any stage of business. They know they need to be more strategic, and they need help getting out of the weeds to do it.

How we arrive at those strategies is changing. AI is now a genuine tool which helps us explore the external environment, stress-test assumptions, and map competitive landscapes. Used well, it sharpens thinking and opens up richer conversations.

But here’s what never changes, no matter how sophisticated our tools get, the quality of the advice is only ever as good as the relationships and understanding behind it. Clients need to trust their advisor before they’ll be honest about what’s really going on. And advisors need to genuinely know their client, their context, their people, their pressure points, before they can add real value. Technology can accelerate and deepen the work, but it can’t replace the human foundation built on trust and mutual respect.

What has also fundamentally shifted in recent years is the importance of robust pre-work. No longer can an advisor turn up to a problem-solving or planning session without doing a significant amount of preparation. Surveys, diagnostics and genuine, deep conversations with stakeholders give the advisor the insight to tailor the session to that client, their stage of business, the issue at hand, the people involved, the environment they’re navigating and to ask the right questions to get to the nub of what actually matters.

Meet Them Where They Are

Clients are tired and very time-poor. The ‘new normal’ is bite-sized, just-in-time problem-solving and learning through doing. And it demands that we truly understand the people we’re working with: their strengths, their gaps, their level of business acumen, and where they are in their leadership journey.

Advisors are educators, facilitators, strategists and yes, sometimes counsellors. Wearing all those hats with care and skill is what sets great advisory apart from generic consulting. And knowing when to push and when to give someone a breather is a skill no framework (or AI) teaches. Clients often say they want accountability and they mean it, until they’re sitting across from you looking exhausted and what they actually need is space, not pressure. Knowing the difference is everything.

How Advisors Are Using Health Checks & Diagnostics to Cut to the Chase

Our clients’ appetite for focussed, targeted support has made diagnosis more valuable than ever but as advisors, we need to find smart, cost-effective ways to do it. When clients don’t have the bandwidth for open-ended exploration, we need easy-to-build tools that find the real issues fast. Here’s what the best advisors I know are doing:

• Running a paid health check as the entry point. Rather than discounting an initial meeting with a new client, or doing it for free, a paid health check positions the advisor as an expert from day one. Clients who invest in the process are far more committed to acting on the findings.
• Running regular client health checks and setting a 90-day focus. This forces us to step back and take a broader view before deciding what deserves attention and gives clients a clear, manageable view of what matters most in the next quarter.
• Pinpointing where things are really slowing down. Diagnostics help identify the real bottlenecks – the ones worth acting on now. Mindshop’s Growth & Profit Diagnostic is perfect for this or curating a custom diagnostic using AI around a specific client issue is a game changer. It saves time and has a significant impact on the client’s specific issue and outcome.
• Creating shared understanding across the team. Diagnostics surface perspectives from across the organisation, getting everyone on the same page about where things actually stand, not where leadership assumes they are. That’s often where the real work begins.

Mindshop’s Health Check accompanied by easy-to-build, AI supported online diagnostics is a practical starting point for any advisor looking to build this kind of targeted approach into their offering.

Learn It, Use It and Don’t Wait!

Too many advisors spend their time trying to master every tool before they’ll use any of them. But the reality is that learning retained is learning applied. If you’re not taking what you’ve learnt straight into a real client context, it won’t stick.

The best advisors I know are curious. They don’t pretend to have all the answers. They’re willing to say, ‘I don’t know but I’ll find out’ and they actively surround themselves with people who challenge them to grow.

For me, the Mindshop network has been a huge part of that. The peers I learn alongside, the tools I’ve added to my kit bag, the way I facilitate has been shaped by being part of a community that’s just as committed to growing us as we are to growing our clients’ capabilities. Our clients are operating in a world that is changing fast. They deserve advisors who are keeping pace not running the same playbook they learned five (or more!) years ago. Keep learning, apply it quickly and never stop being curious.

Angela Grogan is a business advisor to small and privately-owned organisations in Australia and 17-year member of the Mindshop network.