JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon
Managing yourself
A lot of people are inefficient with E-mail, phone calls, reading. They are always hurried. They should be thoughtful about their calendar. They need to take care of themselves.
Don’t get into this binary thing where you’re looking at Fox or CNN. Read the other side. Some of your fellow citizens have good reasons to believe something different than you do. I try to think sometimes about where are they right? Not are they wrong. You’ll become a better thinker. And you earn peoples’ respect. By telling the truth, being a team player. Team player doesn’t mean you don’t complain. It means you complain if we are doing something stupid.
Pitfalls of Zoom
You have to look at the flaws of the Zoom world. It doesn’t work for an apprenticeship program. It doesn’t work for spontaneous stuff. Management by Hollywood Squares slows down honesty and decision making. That disappears when you do it from home because at home you tend to say, okay, we’ll pick this up tomorrow. People laugh when I say it. I never did this, but a lot of people at home on a call are texting each other, sometimes saying what a jerk that person is. And we say we want diversity. When you come [to work] it is a rainbow room. But if you live in certain parts of our country and go eat out there, it is all white. You’re losing opportunities to meet other people. I think they are cumulative negatives.
On growth
Companies talk about acquisitions like that is what is going to save them. It’s not. What is going to save us is organic growth. Better products, better services, better bankers, better technology, hiring and training better people. Organic growth is harder and better than acquisitions. Most companies don’t do it because growing a sales force is hard. Opening branches is hard. Most people come up with a million reasons why they don’t do it.
Mentors and Ted Lasso
I have learned by watching people, reading people. I learn a lot by reading history books. Abe Lincoln: “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter, I don’t have time to write a short one.” I like the thing if you have a little bit of a temper, which I still do a little bit. Lincoln would get an angry nasty note and put it in his drawer, never to be seen again.
We have mentoring. Doesn’t always mean the mentor will give you the best advice. I think people should seek out other people to learn from so you have a network of people that will give you feedback.
[Someone asked me]: ‘Do you show gratitude to your direct reports?’ And the three direct reports burst out laughing. Like, really? Not a lot. But they do know I trust them, I break my back for them and deeply love them. I gave them all a little pink box with biscuits in it to show some gratitude and they appreciated it. Next week I came in, I said, ‘I gave you that box, you appreciated it.’ You know what occurred to me? Ted Lasso is giving the box to the boss. They don’t give me that either.
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