Investment Leadership

Building a Winning Culture for Long-Term Success

Wiley, 2003

15 min read

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Leading an investment firm takes trust and creativity, just like all service firms, only you've got other people's money.

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Investment firms confront a world of change. Yet many of them have managerial cultures that are ill suited for that confrontation. Author Jim Ware, writing with Beth Michaels and Dale Primer, exposes 10 myths of investment firm management, and shows managers what it takes to build a strong, successful management culture. The authors seem generous and humble, drawing examples from and crediting the work of numerous management authorities. The book does not break new ground, but rather it summarizes, compiles and restates what has been said elsewhere. The authors’ approach is frank, straightforward and anecdotal. Their focus on the book’s target market - investment firm managers - is tight and unvarying. Only in the last chapter do they stray from that focus, restating a number of criteria that investors might use to evaluate stocks on the basis of corporate culture. One suspects that the authors might have included this chapter at the urging of an editor eager to expand, if only incrementally, the readership for the book. If so, getAbstract.com believes the editor should have been content with how precisely the book serves its intended audience.

Summary

Investment Firm Culture and Leadership

Investment professionals are challenging to manage. Just think of "ranchers herding cats." It is nearly that bad. Typically, professional investors are independent, non-conformist, unsentimental and tough. They are skeptics who take little on trust. They don’t like to be told what to do. In fact, they buck the status quo and act creatively. They are good thinkers and hard workers, though they may lack social graces. To make things worse, 10 myths about the investment industry cloud the thinking of the industry’s managers and incline them toward precisely the wrong management decisions. Those myths are:

"Money is everything" - Money isn’t enough to motivate and retain talent. The most generous compensation systems do not produce the most successful firms. Sure, investment professionals like money. Why shouldn’t they? But credible leadership and an equitable, supportive organizational culture are the most important factors in building loyalty and employee satisfaction. Money only becomes a big issue when employees feel taken advantage of and start to think, "They’ll have to pay me a lot more if they expect me to put...

About the Authors

Jim Ware, a C.F.A., has more than 20 years of experience in the investment industry. He is the author of The Psychology of Money: An Investment Manager’s Guide to Beating the Market and co-author of The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush: 10 Commonsense Lessons from the Commander in Chief. Beth Michaels has collaborated with senior executives and senior management teams throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Dale Primer has worked with executives in more than 85 industries.

Dale Primer, Beth Michaels and Jim Ware

Investment Leadership

Building a Winning Culture for Long-Term Success

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Investment Firm Culture and Leadership

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