I was hired at a BB in 2014 as a VP in Wealth Management and asked the users here “Tell Me How to Be a Great VP”. simian_superman requested that I go back to the archives and let everyone know what worked, what didn’t, and if I even followed any of the advice.
I did use some of the advice provided in that thread and I picked the top and bottom 3 things to share today over 10 years later.
The Three Most Helpful Pieces of Advice
- DickFuld’s “Do what you say you’re going to do.” - Of everything in that thread, this is a piece of advice that works at ever single level of your career. Early on this is a signal to your managers that you can execute, later on this is a signal to your directs that you are consistent and sets the tone for them without saying anything at all. POWERFUL.
- thebrofessor’s “Praise in public, criticize in private.” - The more I practiced this the greater my influence became with my directs as well as with my own managers. I adapted it over the years and add, “All compliments will be redirected to the team, and all criticism will be borne by me alone.” (Thanks to grinch14) It is my responsibility for all deliverables to the client. They don’t want to hear me blaming a direct report for an error, and they never will.
- CorpFinanceGuy likely meant this as snark, but “Don’t be an accounting nerd” is actually good advice. I interpreted that as “don’t be pedantic about every little thing or controlling over how someone completes a task”. I could never have imagined how helpful it would be to simply allow people to find their own way to do things.
The Three Least Helpful Pieces of Advice
- prospie’s “transparency about everything” is good in theory, but in reality there are some things that aren’t appropriate to divulge. I would alter this to be “be appropriately transparent”.
- Multiple people suggested having an “open door”. Not everyone should have access to my time at a moment’s notice. Perhaps a better way to phrase this would be to make sure you are approachable and provide opportunities for staff to bring items that are on their mind.
- MoneyTalksMonkeysWalk’s “Some analysts will be doing more work than others. Figure out a way so that they are doing equal amounts of work.” This is another theoretically great piece of advice, that doesn’t work in practice. Bad analysts are difficult to fire, but the work still needs to get done. The best analysts are just going to be doing more work until we can lose the bad analysts. If I could adjust this advice I would say, “Treat the best analysts like clients because their workloads will be heavy and they will fight to work on your projects.”
I hated to even call these the “least helpful” as all of the serious responses were actually pretty good. I just found these to be impractical in the firms and constraints at the firms I have worked at.
Based on the most helpful WSO content, here's a detailed breakdown of what worked and what didn't from the advice you received in 2014:
The Three Most Helpful Pieces of Advice
DickFuld’s “Do what you say you’re going to do.”
thebrofessor’s “Praise in public, criticize in private.”
CorpFinanceGuy’s “Don’t be an accounting nerd.”
The Three Least Helpful Pieces of Advice
prospie’s “transparency about everything.”
Multiple suggestions for having an “open door.”
MoneyTalksMonkeysWalk’s “Ensure analysts do equal amounts of work.”
Conclusion
While all the advice had merit, practical constraints and firm-specific dynamics required you to adapt some of the suggestions. The most effective advice focused on reliability, positive reinforcement, and allowing autonomy, while the least effective needed adjustments to fit real-world applications.
Sources: New VP struggles - asking seasoned VPs for help, To all the shitty VPs, Tell me how to be a Great VP, Would appreciate some advice, To all the shitty VPs
Thank you!
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