Business Performance | Talent Development

The Danger of Monolithic Thinking

We can’t afford to seek monoliths. They are hard and unmoving, and if all we focus on are unmoving objects, the world will pass us by.

BILLION PHOTOS/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

By Ali Agha, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CLF

Earlier this year, I attended a workshop on Diversity & Inclusion in our industry. Although I learned some good information from this workshop, something kept nagging at me. Every time it happened, I made a mental note of it, and ultimately, it became the thing I remembered the most about the whole session.

What was nagging me were examples of monolithic thinking, which I can explain by asking if the following statements sound familiar to you:

• “Millennials are addicted to technology. All they do is check their phones all day. They don’t want to talk to people!”

• “It’s all selfies and likes with young people these days!”

• “Millennials don’t save money. They want everything for nothing!”

Some of these may sound familiar either because we’ve been guilty of saying them ourselves or we have heard them from others. These statements, and others like them, were the constant jokes being tossed around by the attendees of this workshop, who were mostly Gen Xers and some baby boomers. They had established this “monolith” to represent what the members of these groups valued and patted themselves on the back for “figuring it out.”

In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first 10 minutes of the movie show the dawn of mankind. There, early man encounters this strange rectangular structure called a monolith. They end up worshipping it, and it becomes their central truth, eventually fighting each other over control.

We’re all trying to figure out what different groups of people want, and often, our brains tend to resort to a monolith. We want to use the simplest generalizations to easily understand something. Complexity is scary, and we wish to see the world as black and white instead of as in shades of gray. This is true of all aspects of our life, whether it is about morality, politics, economics or diversity.

Against conventional thinking

As a millennial myself, I couldn’t relate to any of those monolithic statements listed above. I save plenty of money, I talk to people every day and I don’t like taking selfies. I hardly post on Facebook, and I’m also one of those people who absolutely refuse to use the self-checkout lanes at a store. I want human interaction.

In my 11 years of helping people with their finances, I’ve come to understand that no specific group of people fits a pre-determined mold. I’ve met millennials who prefer to meet face-to-face with a financial professional, and I’ve met Gen Xers who absolutely refuse to. I’ve seen Baby Boomers who literally post their entire lives on Facebook, and millennials who almost never post anything. If you spend one day taking the subway in New York City, you will see everyone on their phones, even the Gen Xers and baby boomers. Being “hooked on your phone” isn’t necessarily an age thing. It’s more of a boredom or a stimulation thing. I would argue that if smart phones existed in the 1930s, people living then would resemble those living today. Why? Because we’re human. Give us a new tool, and we’re going to use it.

In my 11 years of helping people with their finances, I’ve come to understand that no specific group of people fits a pre-determined mold.

How about saving money? Well, is it that millennials don’t want to save money? Should we ignore socioeconomic trends such as crippling student debt, stagnant wage growth, rapidly rising home prices and the Great Recession of 2008? In fact, studies done recently by Charles Schwab and Morning Consult show that Gen Xers are just as unprepared for retirement as millennials are. In the Morning Consult study published in September 2019, 50% of Gen Xers reported they don’t have a retirement account, which is barely below the 54% of millennials who don’t have one. Should we just blame it on age though? Absolutely not.

And herein lies my point. When it comes to understanding diverse markets, we should certainly keep track of cultural and technological trends, but we have to avoid creating monoliths. As financial professionals, we’ve always possessed the most powerful weapon to defeat monolithic thinking and create amazing opportunities for our businesses. That weapon is: asking questions.

It is important to create an ideal profile of the client you wish to do business with, including their values about money. When creating your marketing material and conducting your client meetings, you should have processes in place to hone in on those desired traits. By doing so, you will find that the ideal qualities you seek in a client transcend generational and cultural divides. This is where we find the shades of gray, and in this complex world that we live in, we can’t afford to seek monoliths. They are hard and unmoving, and if all we focus on are unmoving objects, the world around us will pass us by.

Ali Agha, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CLF, is a senior development manager at New York Life Insurance Company (NY, NY). He joined the financial-services industry in 2009 and has helped clients across all age groups and cultures with their financial goals. He currently trains and develops the next generation of effective and ethical financial professionals and is a member of NAIFA’s National Diversity Task Force.