High Performing Investment Teams: How to Achieve Best Practices of Top Firms
240
High Performing Investment Teams: How to Achieve Best Practices of Top Firms
240eBook
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Overview
"Although most leaders agree teamwork is important, few businesses effectively build collaborative, synchronized teams. High Performing Investment Teams is an excellent guidepost for any manager striving to create a winning team and develop bench strength for the future." —John W. Rogers Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ariel Capital Management, LLC
"Turning individual talent into team performance is the ultimate challenge for an investment organization, but also the key to building a sustainable investment franchise. Focus Consulting has captured the essence of how to leverage your intellectual capital for maximum and enduring success." —Michelle R. Seitz, CFA, Principal, Head of Investment Management, Executive Committee Member, William Blair & Company, LLC
"Focus Consulting's work on behaviors of top teams is clear, effective, and practical. We recommend it highly for investment firms that are serious about world-class collaboration." —Terry Toth, President, Northern Trust Global Investments
"Focus Consulting really understands that attracting and motivating talented people makes all the difference for asset managers. Their work is based on years of experience helping investment firms build strong cultures with productive behaviors." —Scott Powers, Chief Executive Officer, Old Mutual Asset Management "Focus Consulting understands the people aspect of the investment business. They know the investment business and how to make collaboration work." —Harin de Silva, PhD, CFA, President, Analytic Investors
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781118429228 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wiley |
| Publication date: | 06/28/2012 |
| Sold by: | JOHN WILEY & SONS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
JIM DETHMER designs and delivers leadership training and coaching to investment professionals around the world. He has delivered speeches on this topic for the CFA Institute, Investment Advisors Association, and many leading investment firms.
JAMIE ZIEGLER has over twenty years' experience as a marketing consultant, specializing in branding and communications for investment management firms. She holds a BA in English from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA in finance from DePaul University.
FRAN SKINNER, CFA, CPA, has over twenty years' experience in the investment industry, specializing in measuring and incenting performance of investment industry employees. She earned her MBA in finance and marketing from the University of Illinois–Chicago.
Read an Excerpt
Table of Contents
Foreword viiPreface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
About the Authors xvii
Introduction: The Elements of Greatness 1
Chapter 1 Investment Leadership: Building a Winning Culture for Long-Term Success 15
Chapter 2 Curiosity: Learning How to Learn 33
Chapter 3 Accountability Part 1: Taking Responsibility 45
Chapter 4 Accountability Part 2: Making and Keeping Agreements 67
Chapter 5 Candor: Revealing, Not Concealing 93
Chapter 6 Authenticity: Eliminating Drama 105
Chapter 7 Awareness: Using Emotional and Intuitional Intelligence 119
Chapter 8 Genius: Maximizing Your Contribution 139
Chapter 9 Appreciation: Shifting from Entitlement 159
Chapter 10 Fit: Investment Personalities and the Seven Behaviors 181
Chapter 11 Decision Rights: Establishing and Clarifying the Rules 197
Concluding Thoughts: Measurement, Behavioral Finance, Integrity, and an Invitation for More 203
Afterword 207
Endnotes 209
Index 213
What People are Saying About This
It was relatively easy for any money manager to prosper during the 17-year bull market, Jim Ware, principal at Focus Consulting Group Inc., Long Grove, Ill., told a group of chartered financial analysts in New York in January 2005.
"During the ’90s, Forrest Gump could have managed a successful investment firm," Mr. Ware told the assembled CFAs. One wag in the audience responded: "He did!"
Mr. Ware relates this story and others in "High Performing Investment Teams: How to Achieve Best Practices of Top Firms" (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 210 pages). Co-written with Jim Dethmer, also a principal at Focus, the book discusses how a money manager can build a lasting and successful culture that relies on teamwork. Their previous book, "Investment Leadership," dealt with how top management can build a strong culture.
Mr. Ware writes that CEOs no longer quiz Focus professionals on why they should worry about soft issues: "Even the thickest-skinned, toughest-minded investment leader understands that the so-called soft skills are critical in attracting, retaining, and motivating talent."
Focus’ client list includes leading investment institutions such as UBS Global Asset Management, Northern Trust Global Investments and Analytic Investors Inc.
It’s no mean trick guiding investment professionals, which Mr. Ware likened to herding cats in a recent conversation.
In the new book, Mr. Ware cites Chris Argyris, a Harvard Business School professor, on why it’s hard to manage smart people. Because many professionals rarely fail, they don’t know how to learn from the experience.
"Instead, they become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the ‘blame’ on anyone and everyone but themselves," Mr. Argyris wrote in a famous 1991 Harvard Business Review article quoted in the book.
Members of high-performing investment teams recognize when they’re being defensive, and choose to return to more open attitudes, Mr. Ware wrote. Changing that defensive behavior is tough, but simple things such as moving around, deep breathing and listening carefully to others can shift the mood, he explained.
Many of Messrs. Ware’s and Dethmer’s guidelines boil down to lessons that may appear naive. That’s because open-mindedness and candor and praising others can be very tough standards to live by.
Here’s their advice in a nutshell:
• Be curious. Be open to learning from mistakes.
• Take 100% responsibility — no more, no less — for your actions. Don’t play the victim or the hero. Firms that don’t waste time finger-pointing are more nimble and creative.
• Make agreements only that you want to make and for things over which you have control. What’s more, write them down.
• Be candid. That includes separating fact from fiction, which yields superior analysis.
• Eliminate corporate drama, which siphons away energy and creativity.
• Use your intuition as well as your intelligence.
• Focus your and your staff’s efforts on their natural strengths, instead of spending countless hours trying to improve their weaknesses.
• Appreciate and praise your staff. Research shows that, in the most successful firms, positive feedback outweighs the negative by a ratio of 5-to-1.
Reducing Messrs. Ware’s and Dethmer’s lessons to bullet points does them a grave injustice. That’s because so much of their message has to do with the process of how people deal with conflict and with each other.
So stop the finger-pointing, the cringing, the over-the-top heroics. Read their book.
By Joel Chernoff, Pensions & Investments