Inside Vanguard: Leadership Secrets From the Company That Continues to Rewrite the Rules of the Investing Business

CAHPTER 13

BRENNAN’S WAYS

Jack Brennan had a morale problem, wrote Hal Lux in a 1999 feature article for Institutional Investor:

It’s early April, an important season is fast approaching, and the Vanguard chairman is stuck with a team that won’t get to work. “They are all coming to me and saying, ‘I’ve got to go on vacation,’” mutters Brennan. “Give me a break.”

Most people would cut Brennan’s team some slack. They average, after all, just 14 years of age and are members of a youth lacrosse team. Spring break will soon be here. But Brennan, who runs the world’s [then] second-largest mutual fund purveyor when he isn’t demonstrating the finer points of stick handling in a Radnor, Pennsylvania youth league, doesn’t want to hear about it. He wants ...