Here’s an intriguing question for you. Who are the principal agents of change – whether positive or otherwise – in the wonderful world of financial advice?

To put it another way: who is coming up with the ideas that are reshaping how we lead our professional lives? And, by extension, who is determining how we serve our clients and influencing the outcomes we deliver for them?

Ideally, every adviser reading this article would unite in a resounding and unequivocal response: “We are!” But I feel we all know this wouldn’t be an especially honest or convincing answer.

Many years ago, when I first entered the industry, financial institutions were acknowledged hotbeds of excellence and innovation. The likes of banks and life insurance companies were training grounds for instilling best practice, nurturing skills and developing novel concepts.

For all sorts of reasons, this is no longer the case. That era has passed, taking its trickle-down effects with it. So who or what has picked up the baton? By and large, it’s the regulator that now sets the agenda.

It’s not for me to say whether the agenda itself is good or bad – I like a quiet life, after all. But I have no hesitation in saying it’s crazy that the adviser community plays such a relatively small part in it.

The situation reminds me of an observation by Paul Lutus. You might not have heard of him, but it’s safe to assume he’s a pretty smart cookie. His career achievements include designing components for Space Shuttles and creating a mathematical model of the solar system.

Lutus has argued that people can be divided into “idea producers” and “idea consumers”. Describing the second group, he once said: “The central organising principle of this class is that ideas come from somewhere else – from magical persons, geniuses, ‘them’.”

The adviser community has become overly reliant on “them”. It has slipped into a rut of awaiting inspiration from elsewhere and word from on high. It’s increasingly losing sight of the possibility that it can drive change itself.

Look at it this way. When you speak with clients about the importance of diversification, how often do you point out that much of the appeal of small companies lies in their capacity for innovation?

You probably explain that small-caps and mid-caps are innately agile and flexible. You perhaps describe how this helps them respond to or even initiate new trends and developments.

You might add that many large-caps and mega-caps, by their very nature, are set in their ways. You might discuss why this means they’re comparatively lacking in imagination and unwilling to disrupt the status quo.

We could easily apply all these arguments to our own arena. We have the ability to transform our industry, but instead we surrender the task to “others” who either protect the existing state of affairs or sporadically disrupt it in ways we don’t particularly like.

That can’t be right at a time when new adviser numbers are insufficient to close the advice gap and when even sizeable firms are going under. We have to do more to become masters of our own collective destiny.

I’m not advocating some kind of revolution. I’m simply trying to draw attention to a couple of truths that, at least as far as I’m aware, are nowadays widely acknowledged in multiple settings.

The first is that anyone is capable of having decent ideas. The second – which is directly related to the first – is that everyone deserves to be heard.

Not all ideas are fantastic, of course. Many turn out to be rubbish, and most don’t move the needle. Yet even the daftest ones can be of value, if only because they help steer us towards superior options.

You may believe it’s wasteful to expend time and energy on opinions or concepts that ultimately fall flat. I disagree. What’s really wasteful is stifling any chance of those opinions or concepts emerging to begin with.

So what I’m basically advocating here is sometimes referred to as “diversity of thought” or “co-creation of knowledge”. If those terms strike you as overly pretentious – and I must admit they’re a bit highfalutin for my taste – we might settle for “brainstorm” instead.

Again, think of your conversations with clients. In effect, they’re brainstorming sessions. It’s very seldom a matter of you rattling on without pause and a client tacitly accepting everything you say. It’s a collaboration. You work together to establish the optimum way forward.

We need more of that in defining our own path. We need to step out of our personal vacuums. We need to think harder about the products and services we provide and the people who use them. We need to reflect on the fundamental goal of meeting unmet needs. We need to give much more thought to where we go from here.

In short, we need to talk more – both among ourselves and with our stakeholders. This can happen at any level – in an office, within a business or on an industry-wide scale – with everyone contributing and every idea given its due.

You never know: sometime, somewhere, someone might just hit on something worthwhile. And that something might play a part in putting some or all of us on a more promising course.

The alternative is to carry on in the style to which we seem to have become accustomed, merely waiting for “others” to act on our behalf. All things considered, I sincerely doubt that approach will do us many favours.