Podcast Interview: LPL Financial CEO Rich Steinmeier

Episode Summary

Rich Steinmeier, CEO of LPL Financial, grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, raised by a single mother who worked several jobs and showed him what grit, perseverance, and commitment to family looked like. He took a job at an early age and learned how much it takes a village, since extended family, neighbors, and teachers all pulled for him. One coach, who also taught his calculus class, took him out of the quarterback role and told him two things in order: first, he had earned an A on the calculus test, and second, he was losing the starting job. Rich says he is the sum of hundreds of contributions from people who cared, and he believes successful leaders should share credit instead of claiming it.

At LPL, Rich has spent the past year and a half pushing decision-making as low in the organization as possible. He starts with a shared vision of success over a five-year arc, then works backward to milestones so he does not have to micromanage. LPL shares its playbook with every employee, five objectives with five initiatives under each, which it calls the five by five. Rich says distributing decisions only works if everyone is on the same journey, with accountability to outcomes. He describes himself as overly communicative, because he wants employees to have careers, not jobs.

Rich began as a management consultant, which let him see many companies and learn that he is a change agent and a problem solver. He also learned what fills his tank at work, and when he found that fit, his wife told him she had never seen him so fulfilled. He tells people that one person is responsible for their career development, and that is them, so they should tell their organization where they could thrive instead of waiting to be placed.

On leadership, Rich follows a model he credits to Tom Landry: he would rather have exceptional individuals and shape the system around them than force people into a box. When leading change, he says, craft a strategy that fits the market, explain its logic so it does not look like a mandate, track outcomes closely, and pivot quickly without penalizing failure.

Rich worries about the isolation of the CEO role, where more people wait on every word and it becomes easy to treat success as your own. He leans on a coach, a supportive board chairman, a personal board of trusted people, and a wife who challenges him. To stay close to clients and employees, he is moving client NPS from quarterly toward monthly and employee sentiment surveys from annual to monthly. He says trust is earned over time, and that bringing people along matters more than immediate outcomes.

What You’ll Learn

Find a winning company and stick with it, meaning one that makes clear decisions and does not second-guess them once they are made, advice Rich got from an engagement manager on a Victoria’s Secret catalog project.

Rich says he would take someone who does things the right way over a stone-cold killer, because LPL is building an organization that can be sustained and many people are watching how it behaves.

Be the captain of your own career: Rich once spent a role as Chief Digital Officer where 96 percent of the job was managing technology development, work he did passably but where he did not thrive.

Create and share joy is one of LPL’s newer values, and Rich says celebrating successes together matters because the connection built in good times helps a team bunker up when hard times come.

Rich once heard an idea for prototype vehicles at an auto manufacturer dismissed with “we tried that in 1968,” and he now reads how change-ready an organization is before pushing an agenda.

Know the role where you help the team most: Rich says he was a reasonably good basketball player who set picks and grabbed rebounds rather than shooting threes, and that role fulfilled him because the team succeeded.

About Rich Steinmeier

Rich Steinmeier is the CEO of LPL Financial, a Fortune 500 company and the largest independent broker-dealer in the country, responsible for $2.4 trillion in advisory and brokerage assets. He grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, raised by a single mother who worked as many as three jobs to help pay for his college education. Rich began his career as a management consultant, met his wife at McKinsey, and later served as Chief Digital Officer at a previous firm. He joined LPL almost eight years ago and now lives in San Diego.

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