The buzz probably starts Friday midmorning. Maybe word has leaked. If you're still there Friday afternoon, the buzz has become a roar. "Someone is leaving" becomes "[fill in the blank] has left." So begins the scramble for the person's remaining accounts.

At some point in the near future, you might want to ask your branch manager--perhaps over a beer--what it's like for him during those Fridays. When exactly does he get the idea that a broker's joining the competition? It's not fun for any manager, but these periods make up the front lines in the war for talent among brokerage firms.

The spin begins the Friday of the person's exit and is continued--usually by senior management--on Monday. You've all seen it. Somehow no one good ever leaves your firm and goes to the competition. Oh, you might hear some grudging words of respect, but the spin dictates that your poor departed former colleague (PDFC) needed the money, was fleeing a compliance problem, was having an affair with a sales assistant or is a hopper moving every few years for the next deal.

The hypocrisy goes even deeper. On the following Mondays, teams of attorneys scurry to court to declare that the advisor who left has no rights to the clients he or she once tended. Those clients, the attorneys argue, are the firm's--not the advisor's. These attorneys seek temporary restraining orders to prevent these professionals from talking to the clients that rely on them.

The industry is supposed to protect the client, but somehow that gets lost in the heat of the battle.

The very next Friday, those attorneys are in court yet again. But this time, they're pounding the table and defending the right of the firm's new hires to move from place to place. "The clients belong to the brokers!" they cry to the judge. We can only imagine what the justice is thinking, hearing the same arguments week after week from opponents who argue both sides with equal passion.

Forget the spin. Ignore the hypocrisy. It will never change and hasn't in my 22 years as a headhunter in the industry.

Ultimately, there are only two factors driving the decisions of those PDFCs in the weeks leading up to that fateful Friday: fear and greed. More specifically, they are the fear of loss and the prospect of gain. Imagine you're a big producing broker (BPB). Even though you might be unhappy with your manager and firm, and the big upfront dollars that competitors' branch managers wave before your eyes are enticing, you stay put year after year. Why? Let's face it: If you're going to be unhappy, it's better to be unhappy earning a few hundred grand a year than it is to be unhappy and unemployed.

In other words, though the prospect of gain is very powerful, the fear of loss is a stronger motivator. That fear drives you every month or year when you start at zero. That fear is of your buddy in the next office who calls your best clients at 4:10 p.m. that fateful Friday when you resigned at 4:02. That fear is the knot in your stomach when you're afraid that you've let your family down by not producing enough, or when you're unsure that the client really understands what you were talking about.

That fear of loss has to be knocked down by something, which is rarely the prospect of gain alone. No matter how big the upfront money is, the deal by itself is rarely enough to get a BPB to leave and overcome the fear of loss.

But one motivator that can actually help advisors do this is a wound. It's a problem that might have started small, but it has festered and grown.

For example, anyone who tried to recruit Advest brokers prior to last September was most often rebuffed. But the seeds of discontent were sown as the firm was sold to MONY, festered more when AXA snapped it up next, and finally grew to full-blown disease when Merrill Lynch announced its plans to buy Advest in September 2005. The fear of loss became unimportant as the anger of repeatedly being sold engulfed the Advest brokers. They were no longer afraid of change, because it had been forced upon them.

At the local level, great branch managers establish solid relationships with their brokers. But all too often, they're promoted to bigger branches or moved elsewhere within their firms. In their wake are the wounds of an angry sales force--individuals who are anxious to see what opportunities exist for them.