Recruiting great people is key to running a successful business, says Nathan, who is also CEO of the disruptive asset manager, which celebrates its 11th birthday this month, “but you will also need to empower them to get the best out of them”.
“If you get the right people they will work the stuff out for themselves,” says Nathan, who describes his management style as: “Find great people, explain what they need to do and get out of their way.”
“One thing I have learnt in business is that people have got to be empowered. I don’t want to micromanage anyone. It gives me no pleasure, and I wouldn’t like to be micro-managed myself,” says Nathan, who is a former managing director of Deutsche Bank.
“Besides, what kind of people are you going to get if they have no authority to make decisions. You want to enjoy what you are doing. Otherwise, it is just a slog.”
Nathan, who was an award-winning international investment analyst before he started 10X, adds that the best people will not necessarily be the same ones at different points on a company’s journey. “It is rare to find people who can be the right people all the way through, even as a CEO,” he says.
“You need different skill sets at different points on your journey … You have got people who can start a business, then you need people who can scale an idea. People who are great at a certain size and level of complexity might not have the best skillsets for a very different stage in the business’s evolution.”
Looking back to when he launched the company in January 2008 Nathan says: “When you start out, you are having fun, doing research, testing things, even going for a run at lunchtime.”
There were pressures, of course, “but they are not the same as when you have all the factors at play: the client dynamic, the shareholder dynamic, the market dynamic”.
Nathan adds that he is a “huge believer” in collaboration. “You can do things together and work things out that you could never do on your own. The whole thing is about getting the right teams, which means you need people who are great team players, which is another dynamic.”
That said, he adds, he would rather do things himself than try to motivate people who don’t really want to do things. “Where is the fun in that? I am happy to mentor people but would rather not drag people along.”
“I will go the extra mile, but I don’t know who else will. I try to find great people and let them work it out, helping them when I can,” he says. “It’s all hard. Like relationships, a lot of the stuff you are going to have to work out along the way.”
