Chris Janowski

PLANADVISER: In what ways do you influence business decisions or firm growth through your operational role?

Janowski: In my role, a typical day often involves meeting with stakeholders to understand a current pain point or working directly on a solution to address one. I regularly collaborate with department heads to understand their initiatives, priorities and where technology can better support the direction of the business. I also stay closely connected with end users who rely on our customized CRM and tool kit every day, using their feedback to identify what is working, what is creating friction and what functionality may be missing. That mix of strategic and day-to-day input gives me a practical view of how decisions will affect the people using our systems. While leadership focuses on new strategies and firmwide growth, I help ensure our existing processes, tools and workflows remain effective, scalable and well-integrated into our broader systems.

PLANADVISER: How did you end up in the retirement advisory industry?

Janowski: Like most people in our industry: accidentally. Back in 2017, my roommate in college asked if I wanted to work for this company his mom was helping start. I was getting my computer science degree at the time and funding it by making pizzas at a local pizza shop. At this new job, the pay was better, I got to work normal hours, and all from a laptop at home! Now I’m closing in on my ninth year with SRP.

PLANADVISER: What is the most complex operational challenge you’ve solved, and how did you approach it?

Janowski: An ongoing operational challenge I’m faced with is coming up with novel and scalable solutions that are accepted by both the company and all its branches. Sometimes it can feel like each branch is its own company (and in reality, at one point, they all were). A recent specific example that comes to mind is a custom-built AI agent that produces meeting minutes. Our firm has a standardized meeting minutes template, but the content within the template can vary from office to office or from client to client: things such as naming schemes, formality, always including specific topics or notes, or even using particular tone or level of verboseness or brevity. After meeting with many team members across many regions on how their teams do minutes, I was able to identify key similarities and build a single solution, rather than having one meeting minutes agent per region.