Talk about being on a fast track. After logging three decades as a top investment advisor and branch manager for CIBC Wood Gundy, Montrealer Monique Gravel was feeling pretty good about moving up to head the firm’s Quebec and Atlantic regions in 2009. Then, two months into that role, she found herself meeting with the firm’s executive team to discuss strategies to improve overall results at the brokerage, which was then grappling with dissatisfaction among some of its advisors.

At the meeting, Gravel offered ideas that were brief and to the point — “Just scratching the surface,” as she recalls. But despite — or, perhaps, because of — her unadorned directness, the meeting led to something Gravel was not expecting: in short order, she found herself being offered yet another major promotion, this time as managing director and head of Wood Gundy, the top position in the firm. “I had no idea I was going to be asked to be the head of the firm,” recalls Gravel of the role she took on in October 2009. “It probably surprised me more than it surprised some others.”

Now, two years into the job, Gravel still calls herself a “dyed-in-the-wool” Wood Gundy advisor. Her career at the firm stretches back to 1978, when she started out as an investment advisor. She quickly became a top producer, eventually managing one of the firm’s biggest branches in Montreal. Later, she was named regional head, and then to her current position.

After moving into the top spot, Gravel didn’t waste any time putting her ideas into practice. Since her arrival, there has been further improvement in Wood Gundy’s ratings in Investment Executive’s annual survey of Canadian brokerages. After moving up in 2009 and 2010, the ratings improved again in 2011, rising by half a point or more in 17 categories. Wood Gundy’s IE rating — the average rating for all the categories for each firm in the Brokerage Report Card — rose to 8.1 this year, up from 7.7 last year. In comments for the surveys, the firm’s advisors consistently gave credit to Gravel.

Gravel admits she’s proud of that accomplishment. But when she wants to gauge the firm’s progress, she also points to its four-year, five-point plan to bring Wood Gundy back to where she says it belongs — at the top in the Canadian marketplace.

Beginning at the start of 2010, the firm set a target of 12% annual revenue growth, and Gravel says Wood Gundy is on track to meet that goal. She also says she wants to achieve the highest assets per advisor in the business, up from Wood Gundy’s current position just behind the leader. “We’re second to RBC [Dominion Securities Inc.],” Gravel says. “We want to increase that number.”

As well, Gravel says, results improve when advisors are happy about their workplace. To that end, she says, her goal is simple if not easy: “The best branch management on the Street — full stop.”

While that goal may seem ambitious, Gravel is well suited to the task. She had become manager of a Wood Gundy branch in Montreal in the late 1980s. Her branch was merged with another Montreal outlet in 2006; Gravel then ran the merged branch — a high-profile location — for three years.@page_break@As well, Gravel wants Wood Gundy to rank highest among its peers for client satisfaction. To that end, she is focusing on cultivating what she calls “a culture of excellence.”

Although excellence isn’t always measurable, Gravel says, when she returned from a chairman’s council meeting in May with a group of the firm’s top advisors, everyone appeared to be on board with her five-point plan.

Gravel counts that meeting as one of the most satisfying experiences of her management role so far. “We think we have all the ingredients to be the best brokerage on the Street. It’s a matter of attitude and it’s a matter of believing, and they all do.”

If those are the goals, improved productivity is the strategy — and technology is the hands-on tactic to make that happen. In fact, Gravel says, “[Technology-related decisions] keep me busier than anything else.”

The firm has generated a list of technology “wants” for 2012 of more than 30 items, says Gravel. That list includes turning over some in-house technology to third-party providers; an upgrade to financial planning software, and new software for insurance and estate planning specialists. Says Gravel: “We like to think we’re spending on the things that will give us the greatest increased productivity and the greatest added value for the client.”

Gravel says technology has already revolutionized the business. Two decades ago, advisors had to spend much longer than they do now working on client records. “You’d prepare a spreadsheet for a client in a half-day,” she recalls. “Your days seemed full back then, but the top guys today are doing 10 times the amount of business they used to do in those days.”

Still, Gravel concedes that 12% compounded growth is a tough target. So, another element of this growth strategy involves building connections between the brokerage and the parent bank. Gravel says that Wood Gundy already receives numerous referrals from the bank, but she wants to see more new business for the brokerage flow from the parent bank’s commercial, small-business and corporate underwriting divisions. “I have to find ways to facilitate more partnerships within the bank,” she explains. “So, where possible, I want to introduce people from the bank to my people. And, to the same extent, my people can get help from the bank for their clients.”

But, Gravel admits, it can be a slow process working within the bank’s confines. The simplest decisions within a large bank — she describes it as a “small city” — can impact thousands of employees. For instance, when a broker wants to change firms, the decision has to be quick and the process almost instant for competitive reasons; but human resources inside a major organization is a slower process for legal and security reasons.

Gravel, 55, knows the business from several sides. Her husband, Alain Chung — with whom she shared a book of business years ago — is a money manager in Montreal for mostly high net-worth clients.

It’s not all institutional work for the couple, though. They spend lots of time on the golf course together with their son Cullen. The 13-year-old is an accomplished junior golfer, Gravel says, who inherited his athleticism from Chung. “They are avid golfers,” she says. “I am, on the other hand, an enthusiastic golfer. I play for one reason alone: to stay humble. And I’m very successful at that.” IE