The Financial Times of London ran a generally admiring profile yesterday of Vanguard Group CEO Jack Brennan. FT writer Deborah Brewster talks about Brennan's long-hours-at-work philosophy and his preference for yogurt in the cafeteria. It quotes him denying he uses a "General Electric-style" rating system for employee productivity. And it has this line about his personnel management and promotion system:
He favours promotion from within on the grounds that it reduces the risk of making recruitment mistakes, particularly if you know candidates well. "I've been here so long so that I have already identified most of the really good people. I have a practice where I will tap someone on the shoulder and they will work with me for 6 months. I will have an important project and I will have them work for me, I get to see them up close, to see how they think. It's a great way to get to know people."Another of his practices is to move managers systematically around the business. "Our former head of IT now runs our retail business. The man who runs marketing used to be our external institutional [sales] person. The man who ran Europe just came back to head internal audit. We want to round people out so they can be as effective as they can."
And it still gets voted best place to work. What's that tell you?
