Week 2 — Organizational Culture

The organizational culture at William Blair is very collegial, team-driven, and non-hierarchical. We heard more about this in one of our meeting this week with a partner who is a senior research analyst that has been at the firm for over 20 years. He leads the technology and software sector and illuminated an added responsibility that isn’t in the direct job description. He said that the entrepreneurial nature of the firm gives room for the analysts to cover companies that they think are winners and drop coverage of those that they feel will not be. This allows them not to waste time covering massive well-known companies that 100+ other firms cover where there might be minimal additional insight and value that William Blair could provide for their clients. This freedom means that the analysts cover companies that they believe are hidden gems and often market disruptors. These companies are usually small-cap market size but ideally emerging mega-cap stories. Because of William Blair’s remarkable record of finding these types of companies and producing proprietary research on them, it can be beneficial for a company to have William Blair cover them. In turn, private companies looking to go public might hope to start a relationship with the research team before doing so because of their first-rate reputation. The partner noted that he often tries to introduce these private companies to the firm’s capabilities beyond their research department in hopes that they will use the firm’s investment banking team to go public. This introduction in no way benefits the equity research department, so it is uncommon for this to be part of the job. However, the culture and organizational structure ensure that when the firm wins, everyone wins, so there is an incentive to look beyond just your team or department, which drives the culture of collegiality (although there are limitations to this given the highly regulated nature of the financial services industry). It also gives room for everyone to have a voice. Beyond providing the analysts the ability to pick their own coverage, this is also seen in the little things such as emails. As an intern, I receive 100+ emails per day, and I would guess that is significantly less than the full-time employees. Most firms would want to minimize this and not send less-necessary emails like a simple acknowledgment of receipt or a thank you. It was made clear to us that this is not the case at the firm and that we should respond to every email we can. This small gesture shows that the original sender was heard and appreciated, regardless of their title or the urgency of their email.