- JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon released his highly anticipated annual letter Monday.
- In it, the CEO addressed a variety of topics, including his advice for management.
- He admitted to some mistakes and encouraged execs to speak plainly and avoid backchanneling.
Write your own memos. Keep lists. Don't waste time in meetings.
These are just some of the management philosophies of Jamie Dimon, the billionaire banker and two-decade veteran CEO of America's biggest bank by assets, JPMorgan Chase, which will report its first-quarter earnings later this week.
In his newly released annual letter to shareholders — which the bank published on Monday — Dimon tackled a range of topics, from stagflation to the future of the US democracy. The CEO also outlined some of the "management tricks and tools" that have vaulted him to the zenith of Wall Street and corporate America.
Among them: Make follow-up lists. Refrain from pulling Dimon aside after a meeting to surreptitiously share grievances. Author your own memorandums and go right to the source when you want answers, even if it means breaking through the chain of command.
He reflected on a time when he worked through intermediaries while at Bank One, the firm he ran from 2000 to 2004 before JPMorgan Chase. One day, his wife phoned him to report that one of the firm's ATMs was malfunctioning.
Within the walls of the bank, one of the executives Dimon spoke with assured him everything was fine. But when the executive drove out to inspect the ATM — at Dimon's behest — he discovered it was, in fact, faulty. Dimon, in turn, instructed the exec to fire the third-party vendor to whom they'd outsourced monitoring the ATMs. "Now we track it ourselves," he said.
And, if your cell phone rings and "Jamie Dimon" pops up on Caller ID, it would be advisable to leave the fanciful corporate jargon at the door.
"Regarding communications, avoid management pablum," he wrote in the section outlining his leadership strategies and advice. "It's a pet peeve of mine. Talk like you speak — get rid of the jargon."
'Morale sucks because we suck'
Dimon is known for breaking with his buttoned-up counterparts across the Street when it comes to straight talk, including recently when he launched into an expletive-laced soliloquy to defend the firm's five-days-a-week return-to-office rule.
Dimon's pronouncement has been met with resistance inside JPMorgan, where some employees have contemplated unionization and strategized their next moves in private group chats. But this isn't the first time Dimon has remained steadfast in the face of complaints of plunging morale, he said.
He recalled visiting a local Bank One branch — one of the firm's roughly 1,800 retail outposts — and realizing that it was open for fewer hours than a rival bank nearby. Quickly, Dimon figured out that the shorter branch hours were actually a companywide issue — one that he was disappointed he didn't catch sooner — and he felt it needed to be corrected.
He decided to increase the branches' hours to match competitors, knowing this would likely damage morale.
"I said, 'We've got to change it. We're here for customers,'" he recalled. "Obviously, I care about morale — but morale sucks because we suck. Morale will get better when we're better as a company.'"
In yet another lesson, Dimon encouraged leaders to push back against tropes like "that's the way we've always done it" to justify misguided decisions. "It's important for leadership to always question what their company does and why," he wrote. The criticism comes amid a company-wide crackdown, led by Dimon, on bureaucracy and inefficiencies.
To illustrate his point, Dimon recalled dismissing a battalion of 500 management coaches the firm had been outsourcing. He cut the expense shortly after he joined JPMorgan.
"Lots of times bad habits form and people get lazy, take shortcuts or don't care enough," he wrote. "I did it because it's a leader's job to coach, and we basically had outsourced management," he added, explaining his rationale. "In my entire career, I've rarely seen this kind of outsourcing of responsibility succeed."
Dimon also said that a life of all work and no play risks leaving a person dull. Our jobs, he says, should still be enjoyable, even when we need to confront big challenges or own unpopular decisions.
"We spend the vast majority of our waking hours at work," he concluded. "It's our job to try to make it fun and fulfilling."
Reed Alexander is a correspondent at Business Insider covering Wall Street. He can be reached via email at [email protected], or SMS/the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758.
