Happy 7th Birthday Team Redington – lessons about teamwork

Happy Birthday Team Redington! Seven years ago on 16th May 2006 Redington was founded.

Teams are essential in solving the world’s most complex challenges. And solving the global pensions challenge is, without a doubt, one that requires collective action. One could even say, because of its scale and gravity, that it requires a ‘Super Team’.

On Redington’s 7th birthday, it only seemed fitting to celebrate how Super the Redington team truly is, and how it came to be that way.

The starting point for any great team is great individuals. At Redington, every member of the team is outstanding in their own right. You may already know some of them: Steven Yang Yu, nominated by Actuarial Post as 2nd in the Top 30 under 30; Pete Drewienkiewicz , head of manager research and nominated in the Financial News 40 under 40 Asset Management Rising Stars 2012; and Alex White, celebrated as an actuary of the future. And the other individuals in Redington – more than 50 of them – were all carefully, precisely and personally hand-selected for their special skills, peculiar talent, or palpable potential.

The next ingredient for a super team is common purpose.

“Great teams are motivated by a compelling and common purpose” – Khoi Tu.

At Redington we all share a declared intention that drives us: to solve the pensions crisis and ensure that the next generation is better off than the last. This is only achievable through teamwork, dedication and perseverance: to help each of our clients to repair their pension deficits one by one.

And finally, “No one and no team can get better without practice”. Khoi Tu

Every year our team performs over 200 billion simulations on behalf of our clients; running a rigorous pensions asset and liability analysis requires us to practice and improve continuously. Every week, the team meets to discuss the best way for us to collaborate, improve, and then put it into practice over and over again.

We do this because we believe that team excellence is a learned habit. Collectively we have nearly 260 years of hands on capital markets expertise. The senior members of the team each have over 10,000 hours of experience and practice, and those who don’t are clocking their hours. Head of Investment Consulting, David Bennett, holds over 40,000 hours of practice. Within the team, we know that excellence does not happen by chance, but by design and deliberate practice.

Our journey to solve the pensions crisis has just begun and there is still much to do. We still need to master the art of collaboration, build cohesion within a growing and constantly changing organism, and master conflict; each one of us needs to clock our 10,000 hours and learn the habit of perseverance. Through this, we will create tomorrow’s answers to today’s problems.

Well done team! Happy Birthday!