By Steve Conley, Academy of Life Planning
Overnight in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered what I believe will be remembered as an era-defining speech.
Not because it was dramatic.
Not because it was ideological.
But because it named reality.
Carney spoke about geopolitics.
But what he really described was every untrustworthy system that survives by ritual, compliance, and polite silence.
Including financial services.
The Power of the Powerless — and the Greengrocer Problem
Carney drew on Václav Havel’s famous essay The Power of the Powerless.
Havel described a greengrocer who puts a sign in his shop window every morning:
“Workers of the world, unite!”
He doesn’t believe it.
Nobody believes it.
But he puts it up anyway:
- To avoid trouble
- To signal compliance
- To get along
- To survive inside the system
And because every greengrocer does the same, the system persists.
Not through violence alone.
But through the daily participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know are false.
Havel called this “living within a lie.”
The system’s power doesn’t come from truth.
It comes from everyone acting as if it were true.
And its fragility comes from the same place.
Because the moment one person takes their sign down,
the illusion begins to crack.
The Parallel Nobody in Finance Wants to Name
Now let’s be honest.
This is exactly how large parts of financial services still function.
We all know the signs:
- “We put the client first.”
- “This is in your best interests.”
- “It’s independent advice.”
- “It’s about long-term wellbeing.”
- “It’s a rules-based, trustworthy system.”
And privately, many professionals already know:
- Product-led models distort advice
- Commission and AUM bias behaviour
- Cashflow models ignore human reality
- Suitability ≠ meaningful life outcomes
- Regulation protects firms more than people
- Complaints systems gaslight more than resolve
- Complexity is used as a power tool, not a service
Yet the signs stay in the window.
Not because people are evil.
But because:
- They need an income
- They fear regulatory uncertainty
- They don’t see a viable alternative
- They worry about reputational risk
- They’ve built their identity inside the old system
So they comply.
They accommodate.
They hope staying inside buys safety.
It won’t.
That bargain no longer works.
The Rupture Is Already Here
Carney’s key line wasn’t about geopolitics.
It was about systems collapse.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
That is just as true for financial services.
We are not gently evolving.
We are structurally breaking.
Look around:
- AI is moving financial agency from experts to users
- Consumers no longer trust institutions by default
- Victims of financial harm are organising independently
- Regulation is visibly captured and performative
- Younger generations are opting out entirely
- Human capital is now the primary wealth driver
- Traditional planning is solving the wrong problem
You cannot keep “living within the lie” of mutual benefit
when the structure itself extracts value from the people it claims to serve.
Just like geopolitics, financial integration was sold as a win-win story.
It wasn’t.
It was asymmetrical.
It privileged insiders.
It centralised power.
It socialised losses.
It privatised gains.
And it required ritual silence to survive.
“This Is Not Sovereignty. It Is the Performance of Sovereignty.”
Carney said something devastatingly precise:
“This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”
That sentence should be carved into the walls of every compliance department in the world.
Because that is what much of modern financial advice has become:
The performance of independence
The performance of client-first
The performance of professionalism
The performance of empowerment
While the underlying architecture still:
- Locks people into dependency
- Extracts fees disconnected from value
- Frames money as the engine of life
- Ignores human development entirely
- Treats clients as passive objects
- Treats planners as sales distribution
This is not professional sovereignty.
It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination to a structurally untrustworthy system.
Take Your Sign Down
This is the invitation.
Not to burn anything down.
Not to shame anyone.
Not to attack the past.
But to stop pretending.
To take the sign out of the window.
To stop repeating language you privately know is false.
To stop defending structures you quietly know are broken.
To stop confusing survival with integrity.
To stop waiting for permission to evolve.
Because here is the deeper truth:
The old order is not coming back.
Nostalgia is not a strategy.
And just like geopolitics, the future belongs to those who:
- Name reality
- Build parallel institutions
- Shift power to the edges
- Re-centre human dignity
- Reduce structural dependence
- Restore personal agency
- Align money with life, not the other way around
Crossing the Bridge: From Financial Adviser to Total Wealth Planner
At the Academy of Life Planning, we call this crossing the bridge.
From:
- Product-led advice
- Money-first planning
- Institutional dependency
- Expert-centred models
- Sales-embedded economics
To:
- Life-first planning
- Human-capital-led wealth
- Client sovereignty
- AI-enabled agency
- Transparent, product-free support
- Total wealth (human + financial + social + emotional + purpose)
This is not “soft.”
It is more rigorous than traditional planning because it deals with:
- Behaviour
- Identity
- Capability
- Meaning
- Self-control
- Resilience
- Decision literacy
- Life transitions
- Trauma recovery
- Structural injustice
These are not lifestyle extras.
They are the hidden engines of every financial outcome.
Middle Powers, Meet Middle Planners
Carney spoke to “middle powers” — countries too small to dominate, too large to be irrelevant.
Financial services has its own middle powers:
- Ethical advisers
- Independent planners
- Values-led professionals
- Disillusioned insiders
- Human-centred coaches
- Technically competent rebels
You are not powerless.
But if you keep negotiating your future inside a broken architecture, you will always negotiate from weakness.
The alternative is not isolation.
It is coalition.
It is building a third path.
It is linking arms with others who:
- Refuse extractive economics
- Reject institutional gaslighting
- Use AI as a leveller, not a weapon
- Re-centre planning around human life
- Treat clients as sovereign adults
- Operate in daylight, not opacity
Living in Truth — The New Professional Standard
Carney ended where Havel began:
Living in truth.
For financial professionals, that now means:
- Naming what no longer works
- Applying consistent ethical standards
- Refusing performative compliance
- Building what you claim to believe in
- Reducing dependence on coercive structures
- Shifting agency back to the individual
- Aligning income with genuine value
- Treating planning as a liberation tool, not a control system
This is not anti-finance.
It is post-extractive finance.
It is what comes after a structurally untrustworthy era collapses under its own contradictions.
A Final Invitation
If you are still on the traditional side of the bridge…
If you privately know the signs in your window are no longer true…
If you feel the rupture but keep calling it a transition…
If you are tired of defending a system you no longer believe in…
Then this is your moment.
Take your sign down.
Cross the bridge.
Not in anger.
Not in fear.
But in truth.
The future of financial planning will not be regulated into existence.
It will be built by those with the courage to stop pretending — and start designing something better.
Call to Action
If this resonates:
- Explore the Academy of Life Planning
- Train as a Total Wealth Planner
- Join a growing global movement redefining what planning is for
- Build a practice that serves human life — not institutional rituals
Because the powerful already have their power.
But we have something too:
The capacity to stop pretending.
The courage to name reality.
The wisdom to build something better.
And the freedom to take our signs down.
Academy of Life Planning 