Richard Lofgren is a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs Asset & Wealth Management. At our recent RIA Summit in Napa, he sat down live with Addepar Chief Client Officer Janeen France to discuss geopolitics, decision-making, organizational resilience and the choices leaders face as technology moves faster than institutions.

Financial advisors are often asked to interpret events they cannot control and outcomes no one can predict. In a period shaped by geopolitical tension, shifting markets and rapid advances in artificial intelligence, clients look to their advisors for perspective as much as information.

That was the thread running through the conversation with Lofgren, whose career has included operational and command roles in the Navy and decades in financial services, including his work with the wealth management community. Discussing geopolitics, AI and leadership, he returned to a practical point: sound decisions depend on knowing what matters, preparing people to act and staying focused on the right time horizon.

“The loudest thing happening is not necessarily the most important thing happening,” says Lofgren.

Separate the headline from the trend

The Strait of Hormuz offers a vivid example. Its importance is easy to understand in the headlines, but Lofgren urged the audience to look beyond the immediate event and consider the durable conditions beneath it. Geography is one. The Strait is a narrow, channelized waterway, and its position cannot be changed by new tactics or technology. Endurance is another. Protecting commercial traffic over time requires people, ships and supplies. Industrial capacity is a third. Those factors do not resolve quickly. They shape the range of possible outcomes long after a headline has faded.

For investors and advisors, Lofgren’s point was not to forecast geopolitical outcomes, but to notice when a development changes the underlying conditions. He says, “Don’t overreact to the headline and don’t underreact to the trend.”

Energy prices are another way regional conflict is impacting households and businesses. The effects move from oil to diesel, from diesel to manufacturing and transportation costs, and then into the price of food and consumer goods. Those pressures eventually influence inflation and Federal Reserve policy.

The sequence matters because economic effects rarely arrive all at once. Consumers can feel higher costs before they have a clear explanation for them. Advisors can help clients follow the chain without reducing a complex situation to a single number or a single prediction. The useful questions are what is changing, how those changes may travel through the economy and whether they alter the assumptions behind a plan.

Financial advisors plan for market volatility, client uncertainty

A breaking news event can prompt an urgent desire to change course, even when a client’s goals and investment thesis remain intact. Advisors should help clients establish in advance what would warrant a fundamental change in their plans. When the markets are volatile, the conversation can return to those agreed upon priorities instead of starting from fear.

The approach also helps advisors put market volatility in context. A slower-moving shift in shipping, energy costs or supply chains may have a more persistent effect. The advisor’s role is to help clients assess both, and to distinguish a genuine change in conditions from the natural impulse to react to uncertainty.

Having the capability isn’t the same as having the capacity

The Strait of Hormuz also illustrates a point about capacity. Lofgren noted that keeping commercial traffic moving there takes more than advanced capabilities. It takes ships, skilled people, supplies and the ability to replace what gets used, and none of those can be built overnight. When the tools in place don't match the resources needed to sustain them, even a strong position gets harder to hold.

For business leaders, the same idea applies. Organizations should understand which capabilities are essential, where they depend on a narrow set of suppliers or people, and how quickly they can restore operations if something fails. Efficiency matters, but a system designed only for ideal conditions may struggle when demand spikes or a critical input becomes unavailable.

Let learning set the pace

Lofgren and France drew a direct connection between technological change and leadership. New tools can spread faster than institutions can establish doctrine, policy or familiar ways of working. In that gap, he argued, the ability to learn becomes a strategic advantage.

“When your technology outruns the doctrine, the learning speed becomes the strategy,” says Lofgren.

That principle has particular resonance for organizations adopting AI. Leaders do not need to know every technical detail before their teams begin learning where the technology can help. They do need to create conditions for disciplined experimentation: clear goals, appropriate safeguards, feedback from users and a willingness to improve or stop an approach that does not work.

Speed is not the same as rushing. Teams need a shared understanding of what they are trying to achieve and the boundaries within which they can test new methods. The organizations that make progress will be those that shorten the distance between trying something, learning from it and applying what they learn. That cycle can produce efficiency, but it can also help teams rethink how work gets done and where people can contribute more valuable judgment.

Make decisions at the right level

Leading a large team reinforced for Lofgren that important decisions cannot all pass through one person. If every choice depends on the leader, the organization is already too slow. A leader’s responsibility is to develop other decision-makers, communicate priorities clearly and give people the authority to act within those priorities.

“If those decisions had to come through me, we were failing,” he says.

That requires clarity about the organization’s purpose and the standards that guide its work. It also requires feedback. Lofgren described seeking perspectives from people at different levels, rather than relying only on formal reporting lines or the most senior voices. Leaders need to hear what is working, where processes are getting in the way and how the organization’s values are experienced day to day.

For firms growing quickly or introducing new technology, this is especially important. A shared direction gives teams room to move without requiring constant escalation. Feedback helps leadership see whether that autonomy is producing good decisions and where additional guidance is needed.

Match the decision to its reversibility

Lofgren’s approach to incomplete information was grounded in the consequences of a decision. Some decisions can be reversed at modest cost. Others are difficult or impossible to undo. He advised leaders to spend less time on reversible decisions and more time on irreversible ones.

“Acting without perfect information is not acting recklessly,” he says.

Before making a consequential choice, leaders can ask what is known, what remains uncertain and what additional information would materially improve the decision. They can also identify the risks and consider what would trigger a reassessment. This creates space for action without pretending uncertainty has disappeared.

The method also gives teams a constructive way to bring decisions forward. A strong recommendation includes a proposed course of action and the risks that come with it.

Have the hard conversations in moments of calm

Asked what RIA leaders could do differently over the next 90 days, Lofgren recommended having the difficult conversations during a period of relative calm. Advisors can ask clients what developments would lead them to change their investment thesis or time horizon. They can also explore how clients want to respond when the next unsettling headline arrives.

That preparation is valuable because the most difficult part of a crisis is often emotional, not informational. Technology can organize data and surface patterns, but it cannot replace the advisor’s role in helping a client connect those facts to personal goals and make a considered choice.

“Clients need us to make the irrational rational,” Lofgren says.

The phrase captures the enduring work of advice. Clients do not need advisors to predict every geopolitical turn. They need them to provide perspective, reinforce a plan when it remains sound and recognize when the evidence calls for a change. For leaders inside firms, the parallel is clear. Build teams that can learn quickly, make decisions close to the work and stay anchored to a purpose that holds when conditions shift.

What this means for your firm

Here are three habits advisors can start on now.

  1. Decide in advance what would change the plan. Agree with each client in advance what would warrant a change, so the next volatile day starts from shared priorities and not from fear.

  2. Follow the chain, not just the headline. When a client asks how an event affects them, the answer sits in their exposures. That takes a clear, consolidated view of what they own across accounts, asset classes and entities. With that view in hand, advisors can trace an energy shock or a supply chain disruption to the holdings it touches and have the conversation the same day.

  3. Shorten the distance between trying and learning. Firms that test new tools in small, well-governed ways will adapt faster than those waiting for a perfect playbook.

Technology organizes the data and surfaces the patterns. The advisor connects them to a client’s goals. Addepar helps RIAs do the first part well, so advisors can spend more time on the second.

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