Charles Merrill: Visionary, Leader, and Term Paper

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As a result: "In 1940, just 16% of Americans invested in stocks. Now over 50% do -- thanks to the explosion of 401(k) plans, the wide availability of mutual funds, lower trading costs, and accessible research." would call Charles Merrill a leader rather than a manager, although it is likely that he was a strong manager of his organization as well. But he was a leader because he led his industry in a whole new direction, and changed that industry permanently in the process. According to Leadership vs. management (April 14, 2004), Charles Merrill was not just a leader of an organization; he was a leader of change within his entire industry:

www.1000ventures.comLeadership is about getting people to abandon their old habits and achieve new things, and therefore largely about change - about inspiring, helping, and sometimes enforcing change in people. "While there can be effective management absent ideas, there can be no true leadership.

I believe that Charles Merrill was a leader, rather than just a manager, because at the same time he was changing the minds of typical Americans, about the efficacy of their becoming individual Wall Street investors, he was changing the orientation of his own organization, to be of service to those average investors once they decided to invest. Once Merrill decided to reach out beyond the usual Wall Street investor to others not yet in the market, he had to change everything about the way he did business, if he hoped not only to attract, but to then retain those new investors as clients.

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Like Jack Welch at GE, Charles Merrill created an investing revolution at Merrill Lynch, and to create and sustain a revolution within industry, one must be not just a manager, but a leader. For example, according to Leadership vs. management (April 14, 2004):

Jack Welch is all about leadership, not management... he wanted to discard the term "manager"... It had come to mean someone who "controls rather than facilitates, complicates rather than simplifies, acts more like a governor than an accelerator"... To manage employees effectively... he has come to seemingly paradoxical view. The less managing you do the better off your company. Manage less to manage more.

The same might have been said, in an earlier era, of Charles Merrill as about Jack Welch. Charles Merrill's vision required sweeping changes, and clearly, he led by example, by establishing "wirehouses" nationwide (taking advantage of the technology of the day) and doing a volume business right from the start. In revolutionizing the investment business as he did, Charles Merrill also saw to it that there was no possibility, for himself or his subordinates, of falling back on old ways of doing business, because these were no longer even applicable under the new design. Charles Merrill was a bold maverick and an entrepreneur in the classic sense. Consequently, he did not manage -- he led, both by personal example and the force of his all-encompassing vision......

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