Training Grounds – Wellington Management, Jean Hynes (EP.423)

“I remember one large pharmaceutical company who had been very successful. One of the things he said to me, he's like, 'I've made four decisions that matter. Four decisions that mattered over those 10 years.' And he went through the decisions, and so that always sticks in the back of my mind. You're going to make a bunch of decisions, but in the end, it's back to the story of Wellington.”— Jean Hynes

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Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

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Four decisions in 10 years mattered most

“Every year, we have a feedback mechanism where you will have anywhere from 10 or 20 people that you work with most closely provide feedback on you, both qualitative feedback and quantitative feedback on your skill, in your recommendations over the past year but also the level of skill over time. The other part of the feedback is quantitative. What is the 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, 10-year, down to how good were they at recommending? How good were they at impacting portfolio management?”— Jean Hynes

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Operations & Execution · Leadership & Management

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360 feedback plus multi-horizon quant results

“In the mid 1990s, we started a hedge fund business, and that was based on talent. So we have a 30-year-old long-short business, and that also allowed many of our really strong investors to have another outlet within the Wellington structure. And I think that just kept a lot of people at Wellington. That mindset of both innovating for our clients and also innovating for our investors, I think, has continued over 30 years.”— Jean Hynes

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Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship

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Product innovation driven by talent retention

“The interesting thing is that we are a scaled business over $1.2 trillion in assets under management, but the 60 teams make it very small. So, think about each team being quite manageable. And the beauty of it is that you have scale and distribution across the globe, and will continue to invest on the margin there. Do we have scale in technology? Yes. That's probably one of the biggest changes. But everything else we do is really about the small boutique teams.”— Jean Hynes

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Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution

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Scale via small teams plus shared infrastructure

“What Ed taught me in those first few years, and it was really about observing him and being in every meeting with him, was really about how do you evaluate companies. And take all that information in and then gain some insights. A typical week would be which companies are coming into our office? Are we going to see Eli Lilly this week? Are we going to see this biotech company? And then you have a daily, a weekly, a quarterly cadence to how you do the work.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Operations & Execution

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Learning via presence plus structured cadence

“In the 1990s, becoming a global industry analyst became a destination. And instead of a stop on the way, to having to become a portfolio manager to be recognized and being able to run money. And so that became just a very important part of the model, if you take Wellington at its core where research insights is what we do really well.”— Jean Hynes

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Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

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Made analyst role destination not waystation

“We had told the story but we had to shift what the advantage was. And when we moved to have investors in London, we did it in our way. We wanted to make sure that investment culture was transported into our London office. And as we hired London investors, how do we make sure it didn't become siloed? So, I think what we very successfully did was that it didn't become a London office.”— Jean Hynes

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Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

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Prevent geographic silos via culture integration

“In 2006 when our head of research said we're going to have investors be in our London office, our London office was a smallish business office, and literally we almost fell off our chairs. He asked for volunteers to spend some time in London because I think he knew that in order for us to globalize our investment platform, we needed senior people and culture to make it happen. There was a bunch of us and we all decided we were going. We're going to London. In the end, it was only me who went.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making

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Culture expansion via senior volunteer transplant

“By the time someone joins Wellington, they will typically have gone anywhere from 25 to 35 interviews. I remember a few years ago, a new employee who had just been through the process said, 'By the time I was on my 25th, 26th, 27th interview, I felt like I was a Wellington employee already. I wanted to come.' And by the time the Wellington employees have interviewed the person and get the feedback, we want them to come.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Exhaustive interviews create pre-commitment from both sides

“It goes back to the fact that we've earned the trust of our clients because we've delivered very competitive returns over long periods of time. We're a stable organization, and that has allowed our clients around the world to trust us. That we will be there for them in the good times and the hard times. What has allowed that to happen, I think, is our private partnership model. I think it's our ability then to attract talent, people who want to be owners of the business.”— Jean Hynes

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Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship

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Flywheel: ownership attracts talent delivers performance earns trust

“We have both short-term ratings and long-term ratings because we know in this business, there are always years where you don't do well, but we want people to be reflective of that because that's the short-term client experience. But the most important rating is, really, how someone's doing over the long term.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making · Economics & Markets

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Short-term performance acknowledged but long-term weighted

“Two things across the board were unanimous. People felt lonely. So back to your previous question, how do you create a community and a network where you can share some of the things that get those off your mind? And then the other thing is I took too long on talent, and I think I heard it from every single CEO. Every seat has to have the right leader because that's what slows up organizations, if you don't have the right leaders in those management seats.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Two CEO regrets: loneliness and slow talent moves

“The turnover in the organization overall is under 10% and turnover of investors is lower than that. One of the things that is a benefit of being a private partnership is that we can take the long-term view on talent, but we also have to have a high bar. I've seen many successful investors who've had a downturn, and then they've recovered and have gone on to do great things.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship · Psychology & Behavior

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Private structure enables patience through downturns

“Sometimes, we're looking for a very specific skills that we don't have at Wellington or that we want to replace if it's a succession. Or if we're in a new area of the market, something we want to add. But really importantly, it's about culture and it's about values. And that would be being a client fiduciary, having high integrity, being really collaborative. And you can interview for collaboration.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making

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Culture fit equals explicit rejection of misfits

“I think there are two things. One, it's the culture. That we have a very strong culture of great people that people like to spend their days with, because that's very, very important. Number two, we have this culture of collaboration. A lot of people in organizations will say they're collaborative. We are insanely collaborative. And that makes people better. You have a group of people who are better at their jobs because they're part of the broader Wellington ecosystem.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Collaboration makes individuals better performers

“When I think about being an investor and the managing partner role, the energy was very similar. And I would say, probably the biggest surprise for me being CEO, the days are different. They're more dynamic. How do you balance the schedule of the short term with making sure that you're thinking really long term? The day-to-day of being CEO is just very different than the day-to-day of being an investor.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making

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CEO role trades deep work for dynamic execution

“We're not a political organization, but we are a relationship organization. Getting to know people is important, and that's how you create networks and collaborative networks. People really want to collaborate. And so, how does someone who comes into Wellington really form those networks is important over time.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Relational not political; networks enable value

“When I joined Wellington in 1991, under 300 employees, I started as an administrative assistant. Very unusual, I only had two interviews, not the typical 30 that we have now. But the early couple of years was really about working in the research department and then 18 months in getting to work with Ed Owen. We talk about having an apprenticeship model. And I think I am the classic apprentice, particularly that first decade.”— Jean Hynes

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Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship

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Apprenticeship through proximity and observation