John Clifton “Jack” Bogle (May 8, 1929 – January 16, 2019) was an American investor, business magnate, and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive of The Vanguard Group and is credited with creating the first index fund. Bogle was an advocate of long-term patience over short-term action, investment over-speculation, and the reduction of broker fees as much as possible.
“Life is a kind of campaign. People have no idea what strength comes to one’s soul and spirit through a good fight.” – Gutzon Borglum (sculptor of Mount Rushmore)
John C. Bogle was the founder and chief executive of The Vanguard Group and is credited with creating the first index fund. In 1999, Fortune named Bogle as “one of the four investment giants of the 20th Century.” alongside Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, and George Soros. In his book, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, Bogle shares great insights on what it truly means to have “enough” in a world increasingly focused on status and score-keeping. He also shared his principles on Money, Business, Life, and Leadership.
On Leadership
“What, then, are the characteristics of good leadership and of good management? On that subject, I have (surprise!) strong opinions, most of them formed in the crucible of my own six decades of business experience, including four decades as a leader—nine years as chief executive of Wellington Management, 22 years as chief of Vanguard, and (if you will) now nine years running Vanguard’s admittedly tiny Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, with its crew of three plus me. So here I speak from my own broad, firsthand, and often hard-won experience.”
10 rules for building a great organization
Rule 1: Make Caring the Soul of the Organization
When I first spoke to our Vanguard crew about caring in 1989, I used these words: “Caring is a mutual affair, involving: