From Advice to Enablement: Letting Go of What You Know
- Jan 16
- 3 min read
There is a quiet discomfort that comes with changing fields—not because you’re starting from zero, but because you’re starting from experience that no longer fully applies.
For years, I worked as a private banker. I faced end clients. I discussed investments, diversification, risk, long-term allocation. My role was clear: understand the client, advise them, take responsibility for the structure of their portfolio. Decisions were debated, justified, refined. The accountability was direct.
Today, my role looks very different.
I now work for an international investment platform, facing Financial Advisers rather than end clients. I no longer give investment advice. I don’t approve allocations. I don’t influence portfolio construction. My responsibility is narrower—and, in many ways, more complex: enabling advisers to use our platform effectively, making sure they understand its features, its architecture, its possibilities.
At first, the transition felt deceptively easy. Same industry. Same vocabulary. Same products, in some cases. But that familiarity was a trap.
Because the hardest part wasn’t learning something new.
It was unlearning the instinct to intervene.
There are moments—many of them—where I look at certain investment decisions and feel puzzled. Concentration risk. Limited diversification. Choices that, in my previous role, would have triggered long conversations and careful rebalancing. My old professional reflex still activates.
But here’s the reality: it’s no longer my call.
That realisation forces a deeper lesson about professional identity. When you move into a new field, the challenge isn’t competence—it’s boundaries. Knowing where your responsibility ends. Accepting that expertise doesn’t always grant authority. Understanding that value can come from support, not control.
My role today is not to be right about investments.
It’s to be useful about systems.
That distinction matters more than it sounds.
In many careers, especially senior ones, we unconsciously equate value with decision-making. If we’re not deciding, advising, or shaping outcomes directly, we fear we’re becoming peripheral. But enablement is its own form of leadership. Quiet, often invisible, but foundational.
A well-used platform amplifies good advice.
A poorly understood one quietly undermines it.
I’ve learned that stepping back doesn’t mean disengaging. It means shifting focus—from outcomes to process, from opinions to execution, from judgement to clarity. My contribution now is to remove friction. To anticipate questions. To make complexity usable. To ensure that when advisers make decisions—good or bad—they are doing so with the full capabilities of the platform at their disposal.
There’s humility required in that shift.
You have to accept that your past experience is now context, not command. That your role is to inform, not influence. To support without steering. And that can bruise the ego if you’re not careful.
But it also brings something unexpected: perspective.
By not being responsible for the advice itself, you start seeing patterns more clearly. You notice how tools shape behaviour. How defaults influence decisions. How gaps in understanding—not intent—often explain outcomes that look irrational from the outside.
This move has reminded me that growth often comes disguised as constraint. That being “less involved” on paper can actually demand more discipline, more restraint, and more emotional intelligence.
And perhaps most importantly, it has reinforced this truth:
A career isn’t a straight line of accumulating authority. Sometimes, it’s a conscious step sideways—to learn how value is created from a different angle.
Letting go of what you know doesn’t mean losing it.
It means carrying it lightly enough to serve a new purpose.
Question
Have you ever had to redefine your value by not doing what you were once known for—and what did that teach you about yourself?
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