What do you think?
Rate this book
Investment Leadership: Building a Winning Culture for Long-Term Success
A comprehensive guide to best practices within the investment industry
Investment Leadership provides readers with the tools to understand the leadership factors that contribute to sustainable growth; diagnose their firm's culture and understand why it is important; and replicate best practices from leading firms. With the help of diagnostic tools, practical advice from industry leaders, and real-life case studies, this book sets out to explain what is wrong with the status quo and reveal the secrets of long-term success in the investment industry.
James W. Ware, CFA, currently works as a consultant to money managers. He is the coauthor of The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush (0-471-42006-9). Beth Michaels has worked with many organizations, including Chevrolet Motors and the McDonald's Corporation. Dale Primer has worked with business executives from more than 700 individual businesses in over eighty-five separate industries.
Investment Leadership provides readers with the tools to understand the leadership factors that contribute to sustainable growth; diagnose their firm's culture and understand why it is important; and replicate best practices from leading firms. With the help of diagnostic tools, practical advice from industry leaders, and real-life case studies, this book sets out to explain what is wrong with the status quo and reveal the secrets of long-term success in the investment industry.
James W. Ware, CFA, currently works as a consultant to money managers. He is the coauthor of The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush (0-471-42006-9). Beth Michaels has worked with many organizations, including Chevrolet Motors and the McDonald's Corporation. Dale Primer has worked with business executives from more than 700 individual businesses in over eighty-five separate industries.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published October 22, 2003
5 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
Jim Ware
42 books20 followersJim Ware is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and is now a writer living in Colorado Springs. He is the author of several books, including the best-selling Finding God in the Lord of the Rings (with Kurt Bruner), as well as numerous books for children.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 21, 2012
The investment business can appear much like Hollywood in that it offers up a consistent stream of investment stars on television, in print, and in firms’ own promotional material. But visibility and leadership are quite different, and what passes as success to retail viewers is fundamentally different than what qualifies as success to investment professionals. Consultant Jim Ware and his colleagues have delivered an excellent book outlining how the best firms and leaders delivered their superior performance. Sadly, it will likely be of interest only to investment professionals and the most inquisitive of retail investors, and the majority of investors will continue to equate stardom on CNBC and BNN as leadership.
The book is divided into three parts: Cornerstones of Long-Term Success (leadership cultures (they’re not all the same), core values, vision, strong cultures); Putting Numbers to the Soft Stuff (leadership types, measuring culture, values, and the role of trust); and finally Specific Tools for Improvement (implementation, innovative culture, compensation and ownership, and nurturing leadership and talent internally). A couple of case studies and some notes on consultants bring the previous three sections to life and conclude - well, almost - the book.
The book’s final chapter, Stock Picker’s Corner, is unfortunately out of place, perhaps tacked on to attract broader retail readership. The chapter will be of little interest to investment professionals, and few non-investment professionals will read the first 15 chapters to get to it.
Ware and his colleagues weave leadership theory and practice together exceedingly well. With respect to the theory, the authors never dangle buzzwords, excessively footnote, or veer onto academic side streets from their main path. They draw on the work of, for example, John Kotter and Jim Collins, and cite research from Harvard Business Review, but they do so judiciously. The book is neither a literature survey nor a research piece itself; it is, rather, a well focussed and written manual from which investment professionals can learn and develop their action plans.
For the practice part of their book, the authors draw directly from their investment industry backgrounds, and their range of corporate contacts facilitated a broad roster of examples to illustrate specific points. Ware is a CFA charterholder, and many of the leadership examples or quotation sources will be familiar to fellow charterholders: Rob Arnott, Jeff Diermeier, Katy Sherrerd, Gary Brinson, Ted Aaronson. One hazard of reading older works (published in 2004), though, is that some company examples which proved a point at publication have since had changed circumstances, and in some cases now even prove the opposite (Fanny Mae and Lehman Bros, for example). Another more humorous example of this is the authors’ specific notation that despite the many good examples of practice fitting theory, Charles Prince and Citigroup seemed to have been proving a rare exception. In light of the soon to occur financial crisis, it seems Mr. Prince is not such an outlier after all.
For what can be a dry subject, Investment Leadership is an excellent, readable book, well grounded in theory but with neither excessive jargon nor an overly academic tone, and it is interspersed with personal anecdotes and humour. A must read for all investment industry leaders and aspiring leaders.
The book is divided into three parts: Cornerstones of Long-Term Success (leadership cultures (they’re not all the same), core values, vision, strong cultures); Putting Numbers to the Soft Stuff (leadership types, measuring culture, values, and the role of trust); and finally Specific Tools for Improvement (implementation, innovative culture, compensation and ownership, and nurturing leadership and talent internally). A couple of case studies and some notes on consultants bring the previous three sections to life and conclude - well, almost - the book.
The book’s final chapter, Stock Picker’s Corner, is unfortunately out of place, perhaps tacked on to attract broader retail readership. The chapter will be of little interest to investment professionals, and few non-investment professionals will read the first 15 chapters to get to it.
Ware and his colleagues weave leadership theory and practice together exceedingly well. With respect to the theory, the authors never dangle buzzwords, excessively footnote, or veer onto academic side streets from their main path. They draw on the work of, for example, John Kotter and Jim Collins, and cite research from Harvard Business Review, but they do so judiciously. The book is neither a literature survey nor a research piece itself; it is, rather, a well focussed and written manual from which investment professionals can learn and develop their action plans.
For the practice part of their book, the authors draw directly from their investment industry backgrounds, and their range of corporate contacts facilitated a broad roster of examples to illustrate specific points. Ware is a CFA charterholder, and many of the leadership examples or quotation sources will be familiar to fellow charterholders: Rob Arnott, Jeff Diermeier, Katy Sherrerd, Gary Brinson, Ted Aaronson. One hazard of reading older works (published in 2004), though, is that some company examples which proved a point at publication have since had changed circumstances, and in some cases now even prove the opposite (Fanny Mae and Lehman Bros, for example). Another more humorous example of this is the authors’ specific notation that despite the many good examples of practice fitting theory, Charles Prince and Citigroup seemed to have been proving a rare exception. In light of the soon to occur financial crisis, it seems Mr. Prince is not such an outlier after all.
For what can be a dry subject, Investment Leadership is an excellent, readable book, well grounded in theory but with neither excessive jargon nor an overly academic tone, and it is interspersed with personal anecdotes and humour. A must read for all investment industry leaders and aspiring leaders.
December 18, 2019
The bad: Nothing of note.
The good: A truly excellent book about investment leadership. Ware condenses multiple elements of a company's performance such as culture and values, innovation, and so many more elements. By the writing style, you can clearly see that Ware knows what he's talking about, and condenses a vast amount of information into key points. The relationship with Jim Collins's Built to Last methodology is a welcome addition and further refines the methodologies and content present in the book. Absolutely phenomenal. The best book I've ever read on leadership in financial services, and one of the best about leadership in general.
The good: A truly excellent book about investment leadership. Ware condenses multiple elements of a company's performance such as culture and values, innovation, and so many more elements. By the writing style, you can clearly see that Ware knows what he's talking about, and condenses a vast amount of information into key points. The relationship with Jim Collins's Built to Last methodology is a welcome addition and further refines the methodologies and content present in the book. Absolutely phenomenal. The best book I've ever read on leadership in financial services, and one of the best about leadership in general.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews