Sloan Payne discusses WCM Investment Management's succession architecture and how the firm structures founder equity buyouts to avoid debt burdens.
Opinion
WCM hires for self-awareness through personal networks rather than credentials
“There's a layer of nepotism here that's worked incredibly well. Because people are pre-vetted, and if you're hiring not for credentials, but for self-awareness for the whole person, that's the whole ballgame for us.”
Insight
Payne: WCM overtrusts employees in roles before they prove readiness
“We want to overtrust people before they're ready, put them in roles before they've proven they can do them. That's our whole mantra. And then we pay them really, really generously.”
Insight
Payne: A dedicated culture officer becomes essential once headcount reaches 50
“You need a dedicated person building into the culture, reminding people of good relationship habits, helping people interact in ways that reduce friction, that encourage connection and collaboration, and that's Matt's job. It probably would have been useful at…”
Disclosure
Payne: WCM operates without multi-year business plans
“Since I've been here, we have never had a five-year plan. We have sales targets and we have some projects we're trying to complete every year, but we don't have a business plan for the next one, two, three, four or five years.”
Insight
Demanding pure logic in asset management destroys the possibility of non-obvious discoveries
“When you demand logic, there's a hidden price that you pay, you destroy magic. The whole world's run by logical people. But if that's the case, if it were only run by logical people, you'd only discover logical things. And I guess the point is in real life, A …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
WCM Co-Founder Kurt Winrich gave 66% of his equity to employees
“Kurt, who's now retired, owned 90% of the firm. When he retired three years ago, he owned 24% of the firm, a firm that was hundreds of times larger than it was when he started, and he handed the rest of that equity to the rest of the employees at virtually no …”