Designing your growth path: An interview with Charles Farquharson

Late in 1996 Mercury Asset Management (MAM) was nearing the end of a long effort culminating in a new strategy and organisation intended to expand its fledgling business outside its home market in the UK and consolidate its position as the leading UK institutional fund manager. Embarking on a path of international growth meant that a much stronger presence had to be established internationally. Along the way, a daunting array of questions had to be resolved, and new processes, performance measures and systems had to be put into place. At that time Charles Farquharson was holding down two jobs: on the one hand he was Corporate Counsel, Company Secretary, and a member of the Board of Directors; on the other he was a member of a team of change leaders responsible for substantial organisational change already underway. In mid-November a seemingly simple question arose: how many people should MAM recruit to meet the growth targets it had set itself? This is the story of how that question, and ultimately many others, were answered using system dynamics techniques, and how in the process the top management of MAM entirely changed the way they thought about growth, the way they measured their performance and the way they set priorities for developing the engines of growth in their business.