John W. Rogers Jr. hasn’t
yet overcome his greatest challenge.
As founder, chairman and
CEO of Ariel Investments LLC,
he’s facing the challenge of
dealing with an inhospitable
stock market as his firm focuses on investing in high-quality
companies and avoids the more
volatile commodities sector.
“What we’re doing is staying
the course,” Rogers says. “The
worst thing you can do when your style is out of favor is go
chase what worked yesterday.
This is a game that’s won by
people who see the future and
not by those who follow the
past.”
In leading his 99 employees,
he works to help them build
better relationships with people
at the companies they hope to
work with because he believes
relationships are the key to
growing any business.
Smart Business spoke with
Rogers about how he trains his
employees to be like investigative reporters in order to better
build those key business relationships.
Focus on the future. It takes some
discipline, and you have to read,
study and meet with management teams and experts who
understand the economy and
the various industry sectors.
It’s about gathering as much
information as possible. We tell
people internally not just to
focus on the people you know
at the companies you invest in …
but to develop relationships
deep in the company where
people can give you a different
insight than sometimes the top
management will. Then you also
need to develop relationships
with your competitors, who
often have great ideas and
thoughts about the markets and
maybe a different perspective.
Show up at the conferences
and the trade shows. If you’re
trying to see the future, you
need as many people bringing
all the diverse viewpoints to the
table, and then you can make
your final judgment after you’ve
had a chance to study all of that.
Get better information. We’ve
talked to investigative reporters
to get tips on how they gather
insights and information. We
train young people how to gather information from places
where people don’t want to give
information. That’s what makes
for good investigative work.
We’ve been using a company
that helps you to be a better
questioner. They also consult
and guide you on how to determine whether the information
you’re getting is truthful or not.
They teach you everything
about how to read a press
release more skeptically, how to
read body language from people
if you’re meeting them face to
face, how to ask presumptive
questions, and different ways to
ask questions and follow up
with a question to elicit information that people maybe wouldn’t
be comfortable talking about.
