Expert on Managing Change for Financial Advisors, Developing A Winning Investment Culture, Managing High Performance Investment Teams.
Jim Ware is the founder of Focus Consulting Group, a firm that helps financial leaders understand and leverage their firm’s culture for competitive advantage. His first book, The Psychology of Money: An Investment Manager’s Guide to Beating the Market discusses his experiences in this regard and provides techniques for developing and leveraging the talent within investment organizations. He and his partners wrote a second book entitled Investment Leadership: Building a Winning Culture for Long-term Success released in October of ’03. Their newest book from Wiley, entitled, High Performing Investment Teams, was released in February, 06.
Mr. Ware is a Chartered Financial Analyst with 20 years experience as a research analyst, portfolio manager, and director of buy-side investment operations. He has taught investments at the Keller Graduate School of Management and written articles for various trade publications including the Financial Analysts Journal. He is on the advisory staff for Institutional Investor magazine. His books have been reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, Pensions & Investments, Forbes, and Canada’s Globe and Mail. He has presented at over 100 CFA events in 14 countries and writes a quarterly column for their website: “Firm Success: Leading the Investment Firm.” Jim has appeared on Fox News, Canada’s “Report on Business” and other news shows.
His educational background includes a Masters in Business from the University of Chicago and a degree in philosophy from Williams College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Topics:
1. Managing Change.
Understanding the choice: becoming defensive in the face of change vs. becoming curious.
• Drift and shift model for dealing with change
• Defensiveness and feedback
• The role of feedback and change in building and sustaining a winning culture.
• What are positive and negative responses to feedback
• Why valuing being right over everything else is so harmful
• Curiosity vs. defensiveness; introduce scale and have people identify their primary defensive reactions
• How to shift from defensiveness to curiosity
2. The importance of Culture.
Successful investment firms have developed strong and resilient cultures. This speech describes characteristics of strong cultures and how to develop them in your firm. David Fisher, Chairman of Capital Group, emphasized recently that “culture is our ONLY competitive advantage. Other firms have smart people, great systems, and lots of resources. But the difference is culture.” Another industry expert, Charles Ellis (Author of the recent book on Capital Group, “Capital”) believes that “over the long term, culture dominates.” Jim has studied investment cultures and clearly identified the factors that are found in the winning investment cultures. He can even measure these factors in your firm’s culture, prior to the talk and comment on them during the presentation. Jim has collected data from over 40 major investment firms for comparative purposes.
3. The importance of Leadership.
Leadership and culture go hand in hand. Great leaders create and maintain strong cultures. As investment firms enter a new era of investing (after an 18 year bull market that hid many flaws…), the demands on leadership are much tougher. In fact, we see many more initiatives from investment firms to identify and train their next generation of leaders. Jim shares observations about the top investment leaders: their strengths, common weaknesses, and challenges. He highlights seven key behaviors of top investment leaders.
4. Other:
Jim has also given talks on client relationships, creativity in the investment world (how to enhance it at your firm), and the Power of Vision (why vision and mission are important to a firm’s success, with examples.).
Testimonials:
Jim Ware gave two presentations to our investment firm: one on leadership and culture, the second on client relationships. Both presentations were excellent, receiving high ratings and comments like these: “good balance of humor and professionalism, thoroughly enjoyed, very energetic, love to hear Mr. Ware speak again.”
Sheldon Dyck Senior Vice President ATB Financial
You were fabulous!!!!!!!!!!!!! No one EVER stays past 1:00 – a huge tribute to you and what you had to say and the terrific way you delivered it and captivated the audience! (And for what it’s worth, I enjoyed it immensely!) BRAVO!
Isidora K. Lagos William Blair & Company
Your session on Leadership and Firm Profitability was a valuable contribution and once again the audience rated you session as one of the best on the program. I know it is not easy being the last speaker of 25, but you always leave our audience with many insights and things to ponder as they return to their jobs. Our perspective is that we always save the best for last!
Julie S. Hammond Vice President Educational Content Development Planning and Professional Development Division CFA Institute
I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday's discussion at the Columbus AIMR luncheon on Leadership, Culture and Investment Success. I give it a perfect “5” rating; I don’t know how you could have improved it. Thanks!
Daniel J. Kapusta Banc One Investment Advisors |