A lot of businesses you've seen this, if you have a second rate execution, you 're in trouble. If you have a first rate execution, you can run a pretty good business, whether or not you have a perfect strategy. You know, some leaders talk a big game. Others, they just deliver big results. If you want to know what separates the two, keep listening. Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm David Novak. And every week, I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is Jamie Diamond. He hardly needs an introduction, but since 2006, Jamie has served as the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest and most profitable bank in the world. And in this conversation, you're going to get the full Jamie Diamond experience. He's got so much insight into what it takes to cut through the BS and execute big changes in your business. I love that about Jamie. He has a real allergy to anything that's going to gum up the works with too much bureaucracy or over-strategizing. The great leaders know, and Jamie knows that for sure that you get results when you get to work. If you want to cultivate a bias towards action, you're in the right place. Here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Jamie Diamond. Jamie, you've done a million interviews. I kind of like this one to be a little bit different, maybe even different than anything I've ever done on this show. But I know you're a master storyteller. Basically, we're going to try to share the stories of your life and the learnings that you had along the way. And I know it's going to be a lot of fun for me because I've been a part of at least a good deal of your business career. I know your father was a stockbroker, and we've talked a little bit about him, but I've never really heard you talk a lot about your mother. Could you tell us a story about your mom and a leadership lesson that you picked up from her? Yeah, I mean, I'll do both a little bit. My parents died in 2016. And if you'd asked me before that about credit for what you did and how you grew and stuff like that, I probably didn't talk about a lot. But now I'm looking back, and you realize that very fundamental values you have come from them. And the values are pretty basic. And I call them Greek, but they probably were just values that a lot of folks have. One is you do the best you can. And whatever you do, you do the best you can. It wasn't about how you did. It was simply that did you give it your best. The second was you treat everyone well. If you mistreated anyone like a waiter or a taxi cab driver, that was unacceptable. As a code-assil to that, you didn't allow other people to be bullies. It sometimes got you in trouble a little bit. And the third was do something with your life. But it was about purpose. So my dad was a stockbroker, but he was much more interested in philosophy than being a stockbroker. The purpose could be so my older brother became a real physicist, an MIT, New York, Chicago, Nielsberg Institute. My twin brother became an educator. But he was doing something with purpose. Draw your Picasso and make the world a better place through that purpose. You could be art, it could be science, it could be teaching, it could be, it could be being apparent. It wasn't anything that just do well and have a purpose. And they were pretty strict about that. Both of them. My mom was a Spartan. I say I really mean that. She was a beautiful woman, but she was pretty tough. The only time I saw her cry was when J.F. Kennedy got killed. I got home that day and she was crying. Other than that, not even when we told her she had pancreatic cancer. She said I've had a great life. So I would say kind of stoic . She became very early on in woman's liver. She also went back to college and I went to college. She hadn't finished college. She'd gone for a year to a Brooklyn college or something like that and then stopped to be a mother. So she always did things like, oh yeah, I'll tell you a quick little story about my mother. My mother's, we must be 12 or 13 years old and my parents are having a glass of wine in the living room. And my father says to my mother something about her name was Themis, which means justice in Greek, by the way. I believe the gods of justice and he used the word you're acting hysterical. And I don't remember those books about the second mystique or the second the second sex. And she said I told you not to say that, Ted. He said, well, when you're acting hysterical, you're acting hysterical. She said, I told you not to say that. And he said it one more time and she walked up to him and took her wine in his face and left the room. And he was in shock. And the three boys, we've never seen anything like that, not in my house. And now of course, the three of us were like, the revolution is begun because he was he was the boss. Like just you. And I was like, we're going to overthrow the king. And to his credit, when we all sat down for dinner a little bit later, he came back and said, I just want you all to know your mom was right. So that sounds like the Jamie Diamond I know to say. The other thing about mother, you got to understand, my mother was a was a was a Freudian. So my father kind of was, but my father was much was more like us. You know, like, what did they do? But she was like, why did they do it? And so it was like, so you've got these conversations. I don't care why they did it. You know, it's what they did. And so, but because of that, I read a lot of Freud before I finished college. I mean, I've had almost all the before I finished college, just to help you know how people think. And of course, a lot of Freud was wrong . But it is a real insight into trying to figure out how the mind works. Yeah, how much do you think that really helped you as you started working with people? Quite a bit. You know, I always try to be, I mean, I think both sides, you know, trying to act and do something, but also try to figure out people and their, you know, their motivations, all those EQ things you're talking about, are they real or authentic with motivation, why treating people respectfully. So yeah, I do think it helps in party life, you always thinking how the world works, but also how people work. And though, as you know, both of those things can be very complicated. And we still spend most of trying to figure that stuff out. You know, out of the fact that your dad was in finance and, and you know, was totally indoctrinated in that world. You know, how did that impact, you know, where you headed? And and when you think about your dad, what was the biggest thing you learned from him that you took into the business world? So of the three boys, I was the only one who took an interest in finance. I worked from the summary of basically like doing mailings and answering phones and stuff like that when I was 14 or 15. But I was interested. I always read the papers. I always read the business section. I read the sports section. I read the, so he nurtured that, you know, he didn't make anyone do it. Like I said, my older brother became a physicist, my other brother, educator, but which my parents enormously respected. But I was interested in that part of the world. And so he'd give me stuff to read. I remember reading a book that Merrill Lynch had done, like how to read an income statement and balance sheet. I read Graham and Dodd. There's a big thick one, but there's a one called the intelligent investor. I probably read it when I was 15. And I bought my first stocks and I got 14 or 15. And so that my interest was Pete. I wasn't heading to be a stockbroker. In fact, my father didn't want me to. His, his view, what you know, a lot of people like the grass is green on the other side. He didn't think it was what I should be doing or stuff like that. But, and I didn't head to be a stockbroker. But yeah, of course, it nurtured me interest. And, you know, I wrote a couple of papers in college about business and stuff like that. So I was interested. And, but the interest was more about building something, building something great. You know, I would read the stories about companies that had really done interesting stuff and built things and bought things and, you know, made, you know, made more employees and stuff like that. So, so yeah, it nurtured it, gave me stuff to read. I know a very hum bling thing. He came home one day a couple of times. I remember young brands would take a business you think you would understand like a restaurant, you know, and, and you can understand what the profits are and, you actually eat there as opposed to like, you know, chips, which is hard for a kid . But he would, he would take it back then, and he would report so much shorter. And he would rip out the page and had the price and say, read this thing and tell me you would pay for it. And for anyone out there, I don't care how smart you are or how good I think you are, you would be hum bled by that exercise. And so it becomes a discipline about what makes you think about things and how you think about values and, and, that's so cool. And so you grow up in this rough and tumble neighborhood, you get the street fights and here you end up going to Harvard. Okay. I don't really see you as a Harvard guy. I know you could definitely, you know, you know, do well there, but you know, that had to be a different kind of place for you. So I, so I went to Tufts University. I was one of those deferred admits. So you know, you're going to go, but back then you had to work for two years, I worked at a consulting company that doesn't exist anymore. And I, and I, you know, I did well school and I was, I didn't go in very nervous like that. But my wife tells this story because I met my wife in the second year there as you know, that you know, I was the guy in the class like wearing the leather jacket, a t-shirt, jeans, you know, not prep, you know, and I hadn't gotten a Harvard undergrad or Yale or Princeton or, you know, a lot of that. But I loved it because the Socratic method, you know, for those who don't know, you're sitting in a class with 80 people, you read cases and then the real world is messy. So this is not like theory anymore. You give me that talk about capital markets. It isn't like, you know, supply demand curves. It's like, why do things trade this way? And why do people do those things? Why do so many business ventures succeed and so many fail and, and be learned that in, and even today, if you and I went there and sat through a good case as your friend, Andy Pearson, taught, and I went there when he was there, you learn a lot from listening to other people. And that is a great, I still do that. You sit around the table, why, what, when you went to other companies, things. And so I liked it. I wasn't, you know, people afraid of public speaking had a hard time. People who weren't a little proficient numbers might have had a hard time, but I kind of, kind of loved it. Made some great friends there. So who I still speak to, you know, you know, Steve Burke. Yeah. My wife wasn't that happy with it. You know, it made some people are kind of nervous. But you know, when you settle in, once you see the people, you get to know them and they're having fun every day, it's, it's pretty good. So you, you, you meet your wife, Judy at, at Harvard. When was that aha moment? You knew that she was the one. So she was introduced to us by a friend, Mandel, you may actually have met at one, one point along the way. And, you know, I, I've, she pointed out to me, and Judy was very pretty, you know, very smart. And I was, so I was interested in treating right off the bat. She had asked to meet me, you know, and she thought I was just, I don't know, kind of cool or something like that. And I talked about wearing sunglasses and t-shirts and I really, really wear sunglasses. I'm not quite sure what she was talking about. But I called up her house. She lived with like six other women. One of them was the president of the finance club. I was a vice president of finance club. And, and I was speaking to her about some event we were doing. And then Judy got in the phone and said, Hey, do you want to play some tennis? I said, well, sure. We hit it off right away. She says went to have a molted shake or whatever that day. She says I made her pay, which I don't think is true. But, and then we, she had, she had a boyfriend, by the way, it wasn't at Harvard Business School. But we started seeing each other almost every day for dinner after that . And, and that, that was that story. Fantastic. And how long you been married now? Very 43 42 years. What would you say are the biggest learnings you've had on how to make a marriage work for that length of time and have the success you guys have had as partner? No, I mean, when you give advice in this, you know, that you, you, you learn a lot. You just do it well, like all the time. And so I'll tell you some of the things I think we did well. It was first of all, we were devoted to each other and kids. So we had, we want to have kids, we want to have a family. She had a professional career. But for anyone out there, the younger people who listened to this, that's when you have a job and kids and you're still like, you know, 28 years old. That's when you're kind of burning the can of both ends. And you, now you have a real obligation to family, your wife, your kids, and stuff like that. And I always tell people, those are the lessons. And I didn't always do these right. Is you need to make sure that you take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, your soul, your friends, your family. It doesn't happen automatically. And you and I've seen a lot of people professionally in any profession. And maybe not in profession, they start to neglect that stuff. And you're, you know, it's bad. It's bad for your health, it's bad for your family. You end up getting divorced. So it takes time and it takes attention. And that's the most probably the most important thing. I think we never did this, but I think it's very smart for, you know, I was working so hard that we took family vacations. My wife and I very, really took a vacation, just the two of us, which is now like a standard thing. You know, people now like they have the, there's a name for it. I've got the name for it. My kids do it. And I think it's just great. And then we also get the grandkids a little bit. But I think people should do that focus, you know, spend time. At the end of the day, it's going to be time and quality. So, you know, you meet your wife at Harvard, you get, you know, that education that everybody craves for and you loved every bit. Tell us the story of how you landed your first job out of Harvard. When I graduated Harvard, I was going to Wall Street, you know, not necessarily because I want to be an investment banker, but they pay a lot and you learn a lot. You know, I just figured that first couple of jobs just learn as much as you can. And I had office from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, which are three of the best. But Sandy Weil ran the firm that my father was at. And I knew him a little bit. I had met, I'd worked there in one summer when I was in college. You know, remember the old days, dad entry, I basically did dad entry for budgets. And I had written a paper on the merger Sheerson and Sheerson and Hayden Stone. My mother sent it to him and he sent me a letter saying this is a great paper. You know, would you come, would you want to come talk to me? So I went to talk to him and he offered me a job working, he just sold Sheerson, Hayden Stone to American Express and get a job in the investment bank. I told him no, because I, you know, Goldman, Goldman is basically pay me a lot more. And you, but more important than that is you get a lot more experience. And I thought, why would I give up, you know, great experience of Goldman and I repay and, and then he called me back. I become a Baker scholar at Harvard Physical, which was important to him. He likes that kind of stature and status, which is, you know, the top three or four percent of the kids at the school. And he then he said, you know what, I just sold a company here to American Express. He was very down to Earth back then. I don't remember if you knew him way back then. And America Express is more of a bureaucratic, you know, company. He said, I don't know how it's going to turn out. But I would, I would love to have you here's my assistant. You'll learn a lot, you'll see a lot. You know, you can always go back to Wall Street. And that really intrigued me because I'd never been in it. I'd really never seen a big corporation. I never, I thought, you know, he was interesting. He was very different in corporate America, the fund. He's like a Jack Wells type at the time. And I did figure out if it didn't work out, I'd go back to Wall Street or something. So, and I could tell you, my interest was in building something. It wasn't necessarily being an investment banker. And he had built Sheerston Hayden Stone. And then he had these big dreams about what's going to, what might happen to the American Express and financial services. So I took the crapshoot and joined him for a lot less pay. I mean, a lot less pay, but I didn't really care that much about that. I really cared about the experience. Tell us a story about where you think you picked up and gleaned the the biggest insight you learn from Sandy Well. And he was iconic. He was very much like a Jack Welch. You know, so I go to America. It wasn't the president. He became the president shortly after that. So Sandy, Sandy, he was down to earth. He, you know, he didn't, he worked all the time for the company. Me, he'd have breakfast, lunch, dinner, you know, selling, buying, hiring, recruiting, always thinking about mergers, always what we can buy, what we can buy. So like a lot of the mergers we did over the next 20 years were because relationships he had built up over a long period of time. He hated the bureaucracy of the American Express. And you know, one of the things that we all learn in life is when you like when you work at certain types of things, you know, like you also learn very good things would not to do. They were hugely bureaucratic. So they had, they had the board and they literally everyone prepared for the board meeting. And then they had the preboard prep and the pre preboard prep. And it took, it took every month. And you remember Bob Lip, who's still doing great. I speak to every now and then Bob Lip hated that stuff. A lot of the big banks had a lot of bureaucratic, a lot of politics inside and people didn't share information and who's up and who's down. And, and, you know, internally, it was less of a meritocracy, more of a who do you know and where did you go to school at least early on. And he just , he just hated all that stuff. And said, Bob Lip, of course, you may remember he, when we got to travel is when he joined us at commercial credit, is like, you couldn't make a presentation of the board with the PowerPoint. Like he just said, we're not doing it. And he not prepared. So I never prepared a presentation for the board ever. Not once. I've done it for big deals we did and stuff like that. And so, so Sandy was always hustling that stuff. Always wanted to know the facts and the BS and the bureaucracy. And, you know, it was a fanatic about expenses and growing. And, you know, we bought Lehman, we were there. He's always out with the salespeople shaking hands doing the dinners. You have a lot of CEOs just wouldn't do that. You know, they just they're too busy to actually hang out with their own people. And so you learn all those lessons. Do you think leadership has evolved in terms of what really makes a leader today versus in those days? And do you see a difference? There is definitely a difference. And, you know, when you ask questions like that, I always think about what is the same and what changed. So let me just do what's the same. Okay. Because I think, yeah, be very careful about it. Like, it's totally different. I think in all these things, you know, like Andy Pearson was one of the great CEOs of all time. You know, Jack Wells before Jack Wells. But the, the mind power, the analytics, the detail, the repeat, the rinse, the go out to the store, the observer is going on to listen to people to do it again, branch by branch, product by product service by service. A lot of companies don't do that. You know, and they literally, and then even politics inside a company stops, you know, a full undressing of your own performance. Like, how are we actually doing? Why, you know, if you're, if you're in Pizza Hut, you know, what, not why is just Taco Bell may be doing better. Well, why is McDonald's doing better? This company oversees doing better. And if you don't do that, it's very hard to become a great company. So I don't think that's changed. I think some companies rely too much on outside advisors and all that. Another thing that has not changed is, I'm going to say, great administration, meaning, you know, you look at, and you 've seen it where some people run companies, they're a hot mess. People don't know what their jobs are, meetings don't start in time. They don't return their phone calls. They're too busy. You know, and I always use as an example, a military example, but Eisenhower, you know, during Norman D&D Day, 150,000 troops, 7,000 ships, hundreds of aircraft, 30,000 power troops, food, guns, bullets, timing, planning, and you know, you got to run stuff. So you may, you may not be the greatest analyst in the world, but you got to run it. And the people have to know what their jobs are, how you're doing it. And the last part changed a bit, okay, and not for everybody, but, and I think it's the most important part, and you, you know, you were part of this too, but when I started working, there was a lot of the, you know, the panel, the table, and, you know, the politics, and I think what really makes a great leader is this part, which is heart and curiosity. You know, you, you, you, you, you, you, you're a recognition. I want to explain to your, your listeners a little bit about how I see recognition and what I learned from you, you know, heart is actually give a damn. It makes you authentic. You're not trying to be perfect. You make lots of mistakes, but they see people know you are, they aren't how you treat people, what you say, do what you say, do what you follow up. And for everyone on the podcast, you've all seen the besters out there. People, they think they're getting away with it. They generally aren't. And you know, people don't want to work for those people. And , and you know, you can read all these leaders, whether it's military or history or business, you earn trust and respect. You earn it by, by every day showing that you're going to work as hard as they do, you care as much as you're trying to do the right thing. You're not trying to be right. You're the first person to say, I made a mistake. You're the first person to share credit. You're not the first person to blame the other person, hang people high, make an example of someone unless they're doing some unethical, and curiosity is the same thing, which you 're always learning. So, you know, I used to go to some branches, you know, some stores with you every now in the restaurants, and you're always learning. You can go to any, I can go to any branch that Jay P. Werenche today and sit down with the tellers. I'm going to learn some about what systems you have, but Bank America does better. Why do we do this? Why does it take some as how come we can't do this in the branch? And, but there's a humility to that. There's a humility that being curious and learning. And I still see here a lot of people don't want to get in the road. They don't want to go out. They don't go to a call center. They don't because they don't want to hear about the mistakes they're making and what they can do better from someone who, you know, is junior and doesn't have the same pressure they have. But as you know, you know, the only reason you have these corporate executive floors, I love it. Home Depot does. They, for those of you who don't know in the podcast, Home Depot calls corporate headquarters. They don't call it global headquarters . They don't call it corporate headquarters. They call it store support center. That's why they're there because it's a store. And in that store, you have people coming in and, and then, you know, how you treat people, not just the customers, but how the employees are treated, reflects to how the customers can be treated. So it's that whole combination of heart, curiosity, giving a damn, which makes you authentic, which is why people want to work for you. And you have much more of that today. And in general, in the workplace, which I think is a very good thing, a little more empathy, a little more thought, maybe something gets overdone. But and then you, you're, you always talk about recognition, but you remember me telling you what I learned from you about what recognition really is? Recognition is really telling someone else what they did, acknowledging that you didn't do it. They did it. It's acknowledging to recognize someone else. You have to acknowledge you have to be curious. You have to understand that you're, you're constantly trying to figure out what you can do better. And then the, the boss's job is to do help them, everyone do the best they can. And recognition is this whole kind of part I was never good at early on in my career. But this whole part about the recognition that thank you, you know, sending a note to an employee who's, you know, customers sent a great letter about her. So it's constant learning, constant recognition, and people like it. Early on in my career, when I particularly was on Wall Street, I always thought recognition meant that people would be pairing the table for more compensation. But within, even with investment bankers, it was not true. They actually want to be appreciated for the job they did. It made them feel better as human beings. And they, they, you're acknowledging that they did something for a client that was great, you know, it made them feel important. It wasn't going to, you know, be, it may feed their ego a little bit, but it wasn't, it's just treating people respect. Remember you wrote that book? Oh, great one. Yeah. So the guy's trying to learn from everybody. And as he's learning and making mistakes, that's how you do it. And it's that humility and recognition. I remember when you had decided to ask the senior investment bankers what they should get paid. And, you know, I thought it might be a terrible idea. Because at the end of the year, all these terrible fights about stuff like that. And I said, don't put it in a memo. Just sit down with me, tell me, did you have a good year? What do you think? What do you do well? What do you do well? Just verbal conversation. It's amazing that most of them were much more honest that way. They literally said, you know, you know, I did this. I think this and I think my comps should be around A, B, and C. And it was when you didn't do that, that they came in with high demands. You know, and so I think just showing respect to people goes the hell of a long way. Like those you watch Ted Lasso, you know, that Ted Lasso, the beauty of that story is that Ted Lasso, what he didn't know anything about soccer, but he can get them to football, get them to play as a team, get rid of the demons each one have, get them to respect each other more, get them to fun doing it. As you were moving up with it and taking on, you know, new companies with Sandy while you and Lipp, you know, travelers, commercial credit, you were always, you know, buying these companies and then turning them around, you know, you know, what did you learn are the basics of fundamental turnaround? What do you have to do? Yeah. So if you look at what we did, we were quite successful, but it was not strategic. It was more opportunistic. So you're right. We bought companies that had nothing to do with each other sometimes and all cultures are very different. So the first thing I did was got to literally would sit down with the management team, like dinner, get to know them. What do you read? What do you look at? How do you run your joint? What reports do you have? Like, you know, what do you, what do you, and you could see instantly that a lot of people step up right away and they want to build a great company. They tell you what's wrong. And a lot of people, they defend themselves, they, they're black. They, they, they won't look at the numbers the right way. They look at them the way that makes them look better, which of course is, you know, is a disaster for any business and who's open. But the first thing is walk in their shoes. So and go to the belly of the beast. So when I remember travelers, the insurance company, I went to go get to know all the actuaries and all the underwriters, you know, when we, when we bought Simon Brothers, I put an office on the trading floor, the fixed income train for our, the belly of the beast right there. They were shocked. I started going through all their trades and all their positions and take them to dinner and and then start fixing it. I never, we never, I'm looking back. We never said we 're going to do a transformation. We just sat down with the business heads and said, what do you do? What are you doing? What are we going to build? What are you going to grow? How can we not go in the sales force? How come we're not doing this? How come this company is doing better? Should we should we fix the technology or expenses too high? You know, the bureaucracy slowing us down and then just start working at man just over and over and over and and of course, you know, strategy is important, but execution often is more important. They already existing companies that usually were doing something poorly and we got to buy them rather cheaply and we basically fixed them. It doesn't mean we did the best strategy. You know, we tried to do that, but and and you learn, you learn their cultures are different. You learn you shouldn't, you should never go into another place and just impose the way you do stuff on them. You know, because there's there, they exist for different reasons, you know, and the different regulations and laws and requirements and you're hiring different types of people and but one thing that I learned, all companies, a lot of companies have bureaucracy, bureaucracy is always growing. There's always politicians, they're always making it worse and they're always waiting to see are you going to be one of those where the politics is going to own you. So a lot of those companies, the corporate staff tried to own the bosses on the floor. Oh, we'll take care of that. Don't worry, you're pretty little ahead. There's no reason you go to the sales conference. You know, I remember I got to bank one. You know, I, when I found out they're having some major sales conferences, they didn't even tell me about it. I mean, I was living. I had to go, you know, and so you learn the cultures are quite different and then you start working it. And then also when you build things like, you know, if you, if you decide that their systems are terrible in some area, you don't go in and say, your system is terrible. I keep putting it in that stupid. I'm going to redo this for you and get McKinsey or someone to come and rewrite it. You form a team inside to do it. You bring in some outside people. So by the time it's built for the stores, the restaurants, they built it. You just nurtured it. And it came out of a way that everyone thought was the best way. And then you and I've learned all the tricks along the way to figure out the politicians, the BS's, it's the meeting after the meeting. You know, it's coming and presenting numbers in a different way than the company presents the numbers. It's backing out allocated expense when that includes rent, you know, or basic stuff. It's the people who, who you can see in the room, no one will disagree with them. It's the people who when they go on the road, you know, and you start asking the loan officers or salespeople or branch managers, hey, what can we do better? And they're kind of twisting in their chair. They don't like the fact the branch managers saying, well, you know, why can I change that my own hours? Why can I do this? And why can't I do that? And they get upset. And so you're seeing this all the time, these not good matters. Some are bad, some are political, some are just rigid. And so you learn along the way how to do all those things. Get the numbers right, you know, report it right, share it with all the management team. So a lot of lessons I got from doing that. I mean, I used to go, you know, literally sign checks, some of these companies. I look at every vendor thing for a month or two to see how they're spending money. And then you be shocked. They're buying stuff. They have no idea what they're buying, you know, agreeing. They're they're signing, okay, okay with me, but they don't even know what it is. And meanwhile, the person responsible for is not getting the bill. You know, I mean, I go on and on and on about the things you learned by going through these. Hey, everyone, it's Kula. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though. I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't, take 20 seconds right now, go to the app store, search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app in the app every day. You'll get a two minute video that'll give you a leadership inside from one of our amazing guests for our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your workday. So go to the app store, start our leaders lead, download the how leaders lead app and start your day every day with two minutes of leadership wisdom. It'll take 20 seconds. Go to the app store, download the app and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead. I've watched you in action and, you know, you clearly have high performance standards, but you have a ton of heart. I mean, you know, and you're right. That's why people basically do want to work with you and stay with you. And you said, you know, as you were building, you know, all these companies with Sandy Wild, you said he didn't really mentor you. You learned a lot by watching him and then applying what you saw to how you would go about leading. But you put a lot of heart into those businesses and then Sandy ends up, you know, terminating you, you know, you get fired by the guy, you know, and that had to be traumatic, especially when you've given so much of your heart to those companies, you know, what sticks you with you the most about that experience that you've tried to take forward and the way how you lead. So our relationship deteriorated from 1994 to 1998. When we did city, he set up a thing which I vehemently disagreed with, which was, you know, while they gave me the title president, which I didn't ask for, and he had told John Reed, Jamie, he's pushing me thought, which I never did. I don't believe in fake titles. I was going to run the Global Investment Bank and then they changed it to the be tri-heads of the Global Investment Bank. So this is a global complex business. I was like, try heads? Are you kidding me? So they had tri-heads and co-heads of almost every division reporting to co-heads, Sandy and John. So just take the complexity of that. And I told them this is going to destroy the company. And I said, you guys, John Reed wasn't used to being talked to like this by so on. So he liked me, but he thought it was a little too aggressive. I said, this will destroy the company. And the second we announced this, people would be digging trenches, stock-plined ammunition to see who's going to win these battles. Sandy, John, Jamie, this, this one, this. I said, but the time you joke is figured out, we're going to lose a lot of good people. And I actually was the first casual team. Sandy called me up. We have, I had 100 kids at my house recruiting for Solomon Smith Barney. And we had a magazine of four. He said, can you come at 12? I said, no, I'm having a big buffet breakfast for these people. He said, it's important. So I go up there, I go in a room like this. Sandy and John are there. They say, make a bunch of changes. And they list a change A, change B, and change C as it want you to resign. Which I said, okay. So I knew the game. They already talked to the board. They already lined it up. I was actually shocked about A and B. I was not shocked about C. And I should have known that, you know, and Sandy, you know, I look, you've got to ask them the motivation that John Reed wanted to leave. I was going to be the natural successor. That's one of the reasons John wanted me at the company. Sandy convinced John that if he and it's more important, these two guys get along. And I think a lot of people think a lot of the board members told me, because I knew them all. A lot of them is that, you know , he, that if you stayed, Sandy would had to go and he didn't want to go. And obviously, I think the board made a mistake. And this is where boards should do the right thing and not the thing that makes the boss happy. Lessons learned are in relationship gone south a lot before that. I called him up after a year. He didn't call me. I called him up after a year and said, you know, same as time we got together. He treated me, treated me terribly in the way out. Literally, they threw him on the street. Like, they gave me an office and then called me up right before Christmas. You got to leave the office. He said, well, why? They said, well, we're not going to give presidents of the company offices anymore. I said, yeah, but you already have five X presidents and vice chairman of the offices. They said, well, this moment going forward, not you. I said, really? And they said, yeah, and you have to lead by December 30th. Anyway, so a city a year later, I walked in and he wanted to do it the four seasons. He was nervous. I was not. I said to him, say , I'm going to talk just a minute about the past. I don't think you did the right thing for Citib ank. But I want you to know that I made a lot of mistakes. And when it was 60, 40 or 46, it doesn't really matter. And I listed some of my mistakes. And some of my mistakes were lessons, you know, forever. Like, I acted some of the things I did. I acted out of anger. I was so angry about some of the stupid things. It just flew out of me sometimes. And as you know, I thought that almost always backfires. It doesn't matter whether you right or wrong. And so I thought, you know, you learned that some, and you've seen this too, where some people, it just enough isn't enough. And it's not about being proud of the beautiful thing you built is being about, you know, what does it mean for you, as look for you and ultimately destroyed the company. After you got terminated, I remember you picked up boxing. What did that do for you? So what happened was I went, they asked me, would you want to do press that night? And I said, yeah, I want to do that from home. Do you want to see the press? I said, yes. I met the senior team. I wish them all the best. That night, maybe 50 or 100 people came to my home. You know, and they said, don't tell us any. And it was like going your own way. They were toasty me. And my net worth, not my self-worth, that was involved. So I never, I never felt bad. Some people outside treated me like a leper, like stay away from the sky. And other people like literally I'd be running through the park. Yay, diamond, you showed them. I was like, well, I got myself fired. But I immediately kicked me out right away. So all of a sudden, you're working 80 hours a week to zero. So I was like, what the hell am I going to do? So I made a list of stuff. So I bought like literally, I literally went to the bookstore, I bought like 30 or 40 books. And I really instead of reading the paper the morning for an hour and 15 minutes, it was two and a half. And then I made a list of those things I want to do visit my brother in Denmark. I drove across country by myself. I took my friend doing boxing at a hall in the wall gym downtown. And so I did all those things, you know, and the only thing that was on the list, I think I did not do is climb, kill them in JARL. I took my family in a long trip to Europe, you know, luxury leisure type of trip. Took them on RV trips and I was thinking about what I wanted to do. You know, I wasn't, you know, I mean, I was on your board. So it was fun for me. Yeah, well, I remember, you know, that that at that time, you agreed to go on the young board. And I remember Andy Pearson, who we've talked about a little bit, he was talking about putting this board together. And he says, you know, you got to get this young whipper sn apper, you know, Jamie Diamond to come on the board, you're going to be around for a long time. You and him would be a great team. And boy, was he right. And what'd you learn just serving on the young board? Because I saw such a different business than, than the financial world. Yeah, well, so first of all, I think it's great to see how someone else runs it . I love talking to yours. How do you run your joint? Because a lot of CEOs run it differently. And they're all good. Some are terrible. But like, how do you run it? What do you do? What do you spend your day? How much fun do you have? You know, like, and it's the same with the board. Like boards are like juries, man. They they could be, I've dealt with tons of boards and they could be bureaucratic. They could be politicized. But Andy, as you know, put together like one of the best boards of all time, you know, Ken Lando was on the board and Bob Ulrich from Target, who, you know, was a great company. John Weinberg had run Goldman Sachs and Bob Holland. And, and he ran it. I mean, Andy, Andy was, I still would say the best to watch of anyone I've ever seen about how he just ran the meeting. You know, all your guys would come present and how they're doing here. And he was, and he always had a very good way of saying, that's not exactly where it works. I forgot how exactly he did it. But it wasn't waste of time, got right to the point, was never rude, tough, but never rude. Always evaluating the people, how they thought about a problem, how they thought about an issue, how they attacked a problem. You know, you guys had tons of problems when we were there. And you know, each one, how you attacked it, you know, you had the GM, the, the GMS problem, then the distributor went bankrupt and, you know, all these things. But the real, you learn life, how do people deal with problems? The board was completely open . It was a lot of fun. We went to taste your foods and you always took us to branches, just restaurants. And you just learn how people think, you know, and even if you don't join another board, I'm not in the board now, I tell people it's a really good thing to see how other people do things because I go to anything I go to where other CEOs are there, you know, you know, the business round table or business council stuff that you've done. I'm taking notes when I hear someone did X and that's a neat idea. Why don't we do it? Matter of fact, at my board, I still do since we last met. So you did it every board meeting and I've been doing it. Every board meeting since bank one. I still do it today. And it was your idea, like how you, and for those on the podcast, it was telling the board honestly everything important since you last met good, bad, ugly. It could be the product, the food, the tasting, the profits, the China business , an honest assessment from the CEO, like I said, the good, the bad, the ugly, as a great tool. I still type it out, you know, and I still keep it. And in fact, I was speaking say about having some of my, this people run the business use doing it themselves since we last met as opposed to a presentation, you know, and so I still learn things from tons of other people . I had to do things better. So you were on the beach, as they say in finance terms, you didn't have the job, you come to the young board, you're working on that. What process did you use? And what you learned from it as you worked your way into the CEO job at bank one? I was very deliberate. Okay. So I was fired in December, but I had to negotiate out. It took me to March, April. So I decided I'm going to take the summer off, take the kids around the world and start kind of really thinking about September. But I did take a lot of phone calls. I gave, I took everyone respectfully somewhere you could call almost insulting what they were offering me. I made sure the head owners knew I wanted to work. You know, the major folks out there. When I came back in September, I was always polite and responsive to everyone. I had an office. I started seeing people all the time and I had ideas. I'm going to start my own merchant bank. I wrote documents. I spoke to people. I started working with people, gained partners, kind of wild in the idea. Didn't love it. I started, I could have just been my own investor, started talking to me. I went to see Canlon and go and what is it like? I didn 't love it. I went to I thought about just teaching and writing, you know, fundamentally. And you know, I realized I was ready. I wasn't done with the big game yet. And I had a lot of offers. Some were CEO. Some was, I was offered to run the global investment bank of one of the big European investment banks. I went there to see the people in London and had dinner with a bunch of them. And after doing I said, there's no way I'd work for these guys. I mean, Hank Greenberg called me up at AIG, you know, and I said, going from Sandy Wild to Hank Greenberg, you'd have to have your head examined. And Jeff Bezos, who I hit it off with in 1999, is looking for president. And he and I hit it off. I still talked to him. He's an outstanding guy. I just, it was just a bridge too far for me. I didn't necessarily fully understand the business. I had a movement company in Seattle. I love the idea of never putting a suit on it again. You're getting a houseboat somewhere. And there are tons of others that people actually spoke to me about, but it came down at the time to Home Depot and Bank One. And Home Depot, I love those people. I thought Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, I went down the mountain running with Blank and Ken Landgown, knees, knees. But when I first met them, I said, just so you guys know, because I want you to know this, until you called me, I'd never been in a Home Depot. I said, so it's not, this is not my natural habitat merchant. And they were very much like, we don't care about that. You'll learn. We want the guy at the heart and the soul and the way they think. And I went to storage with them and stuff like that. And I actually sho pped houses in Atlanta. I mean, we were taking seriously, looked at school for the kids. And then Bank One was there. Bank One, as you know, is a troubled Midwestern bank and probably would have surprised people. I went to it, but it was my natural habitat. When I look at a trading book or a loan book, I mean, I'm used to, I wasn't used to all the business they had. Moving to Chicago is going to be hard, but I wasn't done yet. And they offered me chairman and CEO and I decided I put half my net worth into at the time. I was kind of, I tied my shoes to it. I was going to go with the ship or not. And very much like we did with Sandy Wildback, a commercial McCrech and Primer ica, build it, make it where you can, build something great. Don't cry, I was build milk. And I still, I still deal with a lot of CEOs who they complain about their own companies endlessly. And I always like, you know, put your pants on. I mean, just grow up. The world was never perfect. You would know what ever said they're going to hand you everything in a silver platter. Business is tough. People disappoint you, you know, and so I decided to go for that. They made me chairman, CEO. I put half my money in, moved to family. I called you up, got you on the board. I needed some fresh blood on the board. That was a, that was a lot of fun watching what you did there. It was great. And, and then, you know, you, you turned around Bank one. It was a great success story. And JP Morgan Chase decides to, to come and acquire Bank one. What, what did you learn orchestrating that with the, with the JP Morgan Chase CEO at the time, Bill Harrison. How did you, how did you bring it all together? Yeah. So Bill Harrison had been , not my direct banker, but I knew him from way, way back. And as you know, Bill is a real quality guy. And so we did that deal at the end of the summer of, of '04, 2004. But he and I had started talking in '02 or '03. I'd go see him regularly. And I told you guys on the board that, that there are two or three very natural merges for us. One was Fleet and one was JP Morgan Chase. And, and, uh, JP Morgan Chase fell by the wayside because he got too big and they bought Chase and, but because Bank one did better and better and they were having some tough times, it kind of came in that target range again. And so I went to see Bill. Bill and I kept on talking. He said to me at one point, you know, I can't do a deal now. My shareholders will kill me, but it's so natural. I don't have a successor really. You know, when you promise me that you will call me if you're ever going to do something. And I told him, Bill, I cannot promise that. But I understand about the industrial logic and he and I started talking about the industrial logic, the people. Now, in reality, it was what it was called. He called it a merge of equals. We got the premium, but we also got the control. If you remember correctly, I was ordained to be the CO, literally from day one. So I wasn't the CO from day one, but the board was going to be 50 50. And I was going to be the CEO in two years, unless 80, unless 75% of the board said no. So that meant four of my directors have to vote against me. And you may remember the last minute, it was a little fight at the board, our board. You guys were a dinner at my house in Chicago. And you know, we had, well, I was a big part of that fight is a better fact. Yeah, like, but something like don't do the deal. You can't trust these New Yorkers. Oh, you know, if Jamie can't be the CEO and day one, we can't do that. Well, that was a good reason to keep the keep keep keep it in Chicago. They were coming up with all kinds of reasons. You know, and I said, I said, look, if Jamie can't work with Bill Harrison for two years and there's something wrong with Jamie Diamond. And they said, well, you remember, I'm not going to mention his name, he said, but well, you've never been in a boardroom, you know, like that, you're missing something here. I said, well, I do have a whole lot of common sense. And you know, there's a big fight. But anyway, the rest is history. Yeah, you're absolutely correct. And you make a judgment call in life and that we all thought we could, I knew I could trust Bill Harrison. And he wanted to leave, they needed a successor and they needed someone who's going to run it. And so they come neither bank wanted just gone from being a terrible company to a mediocre company. You know, Chase, Jay Beward Chase was part of it. There are a lot of deals to take in place, but it never completely performed. So in reality, we were putting, but the industrial logic was perfect to not great credit card companies and credit card North Carolina scale put together. We had a great retail system. They didn't, but they had great branches in New York. You know, we both had middle market businesses. They had an investment bank. We didn't, but we could bring those products and services to the clients around the United States. They were global. We were not, we just started working it. Like literally just been, and I remember starting these, like you've had the business reviews by business payment, systems, by country, by investment banking, middle market banking, consumer banking, credit card. And never said we were transformed. It just went to work at making it a better company, being honest assessment, setting real targets for ourselves about what we should be performing, removing the management. There's political and bureaucratic, but Bill and I spoke all the time. Like I, I was running most that stuff, but he was completely supportive. In fact, there was one time that a, at a meeting of someone said, you know, Jamie was very rude at his meeting we had, but I criticized them for these insurance deals. They thought they were doing to protect the company from auto warranties . And he went on and on and Jamie did this and Bill said, excuse me, that did not happen. He said, well, you weren't there. He said, I was. I was in the back of the room. And he was asking you a lot of very good and smart and tough questions. And you know, Bill was a little surprised the, how deep I went to all these businesses. At one point, he said to me, are you going to do this all the time? I said, yeah, I said pretty much like leave, you know, very often, he didn't always agree with this up. I was doing BCA. It's your company. You know, you're going to be CEO in a couple of months, whatever. But then it came to one guy that I wanted to ask leave, who I thought was a great politician, but a complete self-server, you know, took care of his, you know, the buddies of this and was kind of a hatchet man for Bill himself. And I went to see Bill, I said, he's got to go. And Bill said, well, I totally disagree with you. He's been key here, and I went home that night and I came back in the next day. And I said, Bill, I am, we've done everything together here. I'm really uncomfortably complete discreet. I would feel much more comfortable if you go ask some of the other senior management people about what I said. Is he trusted? Is this is that and Bill, this credit went out and spoke to four or five people and came back and said, you were right. And I should have known. And so we were kind of locked up every step of the way. Even since he left, which is now, you know, almost 20 years ago, you know, he's been anything you can do to help. And even guys like the guy who ran Dennis Weatherstone, I don't know if you him, you've been a former CEO of JP Morgan itself, you know, call me up and add a boy every quarter. You know, I mean, there's some very sweet guys at the John B. McCoy. Yeah. You know, the older guys started bank one and started with one branch to whatever 1000. He would come see me every now and then just to say, you're doing a great job, kid. That's great. You know, one of the things that, you know, being on the board and watching you in action, you know, you established gold standards, not within the financial industry, but also other other other categories that might be better at processing or you pick whatever measure that you're you're going after. And you really drove those gold standards home. And you talk about working it. You know, if somebody asks you about strategy in those days, it's I don't really care about that strategy. You know, I'm not, you know, our strategy is always changing. The strategy changes basis what we see. But you've never been one or maybe you've changed. You know, you were never one back then to be talking about your five year plan or your tenure. You know, you didn't spend a lot of time on that . You spent a lot of time working the business up against gold standards is how do you how do you think about strategy? Yeah. So the first thing I always do, the first thing we're not and you've seen this before in some of these big companies, they're always talking about I call it a strategic rate. So instead of like, are you doing a good job or in your business? You know, remember Bob, if you say about strategy, it works just do more like don't know. And they had outside consultants. I got rid of all that kind of stuff. And so my first goal is just run the place well, consolidate the systems, branch by branch, then you develop plans. They were strategies. These things work, do more of these branches, close these things down, take all the products and services, JP Morgan, you know, like into the middle market, like the middle market is 35% of our US domestic investment banking now. And that was a strategy. You already have the engine and just get more products across this, you know, this very costly enterprise. It got rid of I got rid of lots of the company that didn't fit. And you may be so I sold this, closed it down, but every part of the company fits and they feed each other. You know, private bank and middle market use the consumer branches. The investment bank is hugely benefited by the private bank and by middle market banking. You know, payment systems are hugely benefited by being in the consumer business and the wholesale business. And so there are these large strategies, but you know, I didn't let people spend that much time BSing about it. Like we set the strategy and now we have a plan. So, you know, even like, you know, we started building the chase, well, this and they have to do this. We have a lot of skunk works going on. We always have that. So like one was probably started when you were there was, you know, we had these branches and the wealthiest parts of the world, but we didn't do very much money management, like wealth management. And I had wanted to do a test in white planes. We were the wealthiest, you know, zip codes in the country. And we did the test and it didn't work. And then people here, you got to clash the valuation money. I was like, well, let's try again, did the test, didn't work. You know, and sometimes you have to just keep modifying it, like just keep turning the dials a little bit. Okay, that that business now manages a trillion dollars . And so once we got the strategy, right, but this was by testing. So sometimes you should kill these hobbies and sometimes you should, but there's like 10 of those, like how we built, you know, we're in all 50 states now, you know, but building branches, how we, when we bought WAMU, which is all consumed, we put on top of that private banking, middle market, small business. So they cost the branch system was all of a sudden fee and lots of the businesses. So there are these big strategies, but I think the problem with strategy, when people overdo it is a, they spend a lot of time making excuses for why they're not running a good business. It's sort of like the way I would describe what you just described is you work, you keep working on what's working, and then you work on what is it, and they just keep evolving that as you go forward. Yeah, I've always very questioned. I see, you know, we have to transform the business because you are doing that over time, but you're doing it. You have to do it at a very detailed level and a strategic level. And, but you know, a lot of businesses, you've seen this, you know, if you have a second rate execution, you're in trouble. You know, if you have a first rate execution, you can run a pretty good business. Whether or not you have a perfect strategy. We'll be back with the rest of my conversations with Jamie Diamond in just a moment. You know, talking about his college days, Jamie mentioned Steve Burke, who was the chairman CEO of NBC Universal. In Steve's episode of How Leaders Lead, he talks about the same ideals of humility and curiosity that Jamie does, including this concept I love about seeing your team as a symphony. What we have tried to do is make sure that our executives don't have big egos and that our executives don't run around saying it's all about me or I'm indispensable or, you know, I did this and did that. And what we have a philosophy that we call symphony, which is, I don't like the word synergy. I think synergies become almost a, you know, an MBA, you know, catch phrase. We call our effort of working together symphony. And one of the advantages our company has for someone with a good idea is if you bring a movie to us and we think it 's a great movie, we will make sure that it gets supported on USA, sci-fi, entertainment in the Olympics. And when we identify the priorities and we go to our executives, it's non-negot iable. Everybody's going to get behind these big events. And what we found is we have 22% of all television viewing in America. When we get behind promoting a new theme park ride or the Olympics or a new movie, it works. And one of the interesting side benefits of the symphony program, it was a message, a cultural message to everybody in the company that no individual business is important, more important than the company as a whole. And teams do better than individual performers. And I think one of the ways that you get really creative people to work with you and for you and bring you great ideas is if they feel like what you're going to be doing is going to be about their idea, not about you. So I'm very much on the watch for people inside our company who get too carried away with themselves and forget the reason why we're here, which is bringing great ideas to America and people. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Steve, episode 18 here on How Leaders Lead. Jamie, you're famous for a lot of things, but I think most famous for how you navigated our country and JP Morgan Chase through the great recession of 2008. What was your big takeaway from all that took to really get that done? Well, first you got to go before the crisis started and it goes back to my upbringing and with my dad is I had seen Marcus go up and down. I remember him coming home and people's incomes went down. I remember in 1974, in the 1982 New York City was desperate. So this great Wall Street, it was desperate. Restaurants were closing, stores were closing, apartments were being sold for back maintenance literally. People forget that 1982. And so I even way back then, when I was with Sandy Wile at a traveler's, a primary et cetera, I used to do presentations for all the stock bros about how we have to be able to deal with all these ups and downs. And part of the name of the game, it just continued, served your clients do a great job in the downs, not just in the ups. And I don't over celebrate the rising tide, but be prepared for the tide going out when I got to JP Morgan. I was very tough here about capital, liquidity, profitability, because I knew that the shit at the fan early on, we would have had a real problem. So before that and then get real risk management in place. So if you talk to the folks here, they were shocked at the detail I'd go into, every position, every risk, the what ifs, how bad can it get? And I made them do stress tests that they were like, I'll never happen. I said, I don't care what happens . And they're by it. It's like kind of what happened, by the way. I said, I want to know if it happens that we survive to serve our client, because you can't tell me it's not going to happen . So risk management is much more being prepared for a whole range of outcomes and what ifs, then the shit at the fan. But we were ready by that. We had more liquidity, more capital, more profitability. And you may remember the risk committee, the board at one point, I left you guys at the board. I said, I had to go to the risk committee. And we were going through literally client by client and country by country and loan by loan and helping people. We went and watched that. You actually had us come watching. You watched the sources get made, but people say, what did you do different, nothing other than, we already had teams. We already had an army. We already had things to go. So the risk committee used to meet once a week for a couple hours. And all of a sudden it was meeting , and it was kind of more formalized, reviewing certain things. And all of a sudden it was meeting five times a day, every day for a year. And I mean every day. And I mean going to 10 p.m. and 5 a .m. because you had Asia. We had to be up for that. And we were on calls all the time with regulators and governments and clients. But the machine was working. And then the formality, when you were there, the formality went away. It's like, hey, David, don't come up and make us a presentation about the mortgage problem in Denmark. Bring up whoever you need to describe and tell us what they want to do. And so we were making battlefield decisions to help, mostly to help clients because JP Morgan was actually in quite good shape. And then you just learn how people operate on the stress and strain. I mean, some people are great and some are just children. And so you literally help take the country out of this crisis. What was the single biggest, darkest moment that you had during that period? And how did you, you said, some people don't really know how to handle crisis. How did you personally handle it? First there was bear's terms. So the world was rocky. Subprime was going down. Some hedge funds had problems. Quad funds were having problems. Markets were down. Bear's terms stock had fallen from, I think it had a market cap 20 billion to 15 billion to 10 billion, which is a real sign of a prominent financial company. And then I got the phone call on March 13th, Thursday, 2008. I was actually having dinner my parents at a Greek restaurant down the street here. And it was maybe nine o' clock at night. I had to leave the restaurant because I couldn't hear. And Alan Schwartz, the CEO of Bear Stuent said, Jamie, I need 30 billion dollars tonight. Otherwise, we're gonna go bankrupt in Asia in the morning. And even I said, Alan, I don't even know how to get 30 billion dollars. But let 's have you spoke to the secretary of treasury and he had, I called up literally our senior people. I said, get dressed and go to the office. And we had hundreds of people come in that night, start going through the books of bear's terms. And we told Hank Paulson, look, let's just get them to the weekend. That gives us 48 hours to figure out if we could save bear's terms. And so we had this lifeline, which I won't go through with the Federal Reserve about how we're going to do that. That was our idea, by the way. And now I had a thousand people, 2000 coming in, doing what you call due diligence, every loan, every asset, every real estate, HR policies, litigation, can we handle it? You know, what are the integration, which is going to cost, how much would it write down? And we did probably six months of work in two days. And the boy bear's terms that night signed the thing that night, that is that kind of things the moment where you 're breathless. It was the same way I felt when I signed the document, it's like one signature, merged bank one and JP Morgan. So I sit in my office late at night, and I'm signed that piece of paper. I know I'm taking an extraordinary amount of risk, which we think we can handle. And I'm also subjecting my people to a tremendous amount of work, because people forget it's not the deal. You know, the press writes about the deal, the deal, the deal is the next day 30 or 40,000 people are working on stuff that is brand new to them. People are going to lose their jobs, they're worried, they're nervous, it's, you know, you're literally working seven days a week. And then, but the worst moment was, so bear's terms was bought. And we thought that might be saving the system, but six months later, Lehman didn't make it. Lehman didn't get bought. Lehman disintegrated. And that caused disruption around the world of payments and systems and money and things shouldn't happen that way, as they did fix by the way. But even after that, AIG, the largest insurance company, City, you know, Bank America is one after another. But the Fed finally, and we did a lot of stuff, but there was really the Fed at one point putting all these programs in place that by March of the '09, the markets were hitting all time bottoms. But I knew it was getting near the end because the problems were going to work. And it was going to release stress in the system, markets stopped going down, people were going to take a deep breath, clean up the crap from the past, but, you know, go on. But that was a lot of stress. And I do, I think I just do it the same way, which I try to, you know, I, this is where I find with stress, okay? The only thing that really satisfies me when I have stress from work is to work. Like going to work, I mean, I could get depressed and really stress down to Saturday. But like come to the office in the Saturday of Sunday, I start working on the problems. It immediately goes away from it because I'm doing something, stuff like that. And so, but then, but away from that, it's just to get your sleep, get your exercise, you know, do something that takes your mind over for a while with some, you know, stupid TV show or something like that. When you have little successes, even the middle of a crisis, get the people together for a cocktail party to thank them. Yeah, like, a little things like that that just relieve it. And you've had so many successes. If you build, you know, JP Morgan Chase into the, by far and away, the number one financial institution in the world. And one of the best companies in the world, you know, looking back, what would you say has been your biggest disappointment at JP Morgan Chase? And what did you learn from it? You know, people would probably point out the well, you know, we lost billions of dollars, this terrible, in-a-adict training thing. And I was, of course, heavily criticized legitimately. And, you know, and of course, at one point, someone asked me on an analyst call , is it just a tempest in a teapot? I said, yes. But at that moment, I didn't know how bad it was. I had been told something which was not accurate. And I remember coming back late one night, I said, I want to see the actual positions, the actual what-ifs, the actual stuff, reading the stuff, and my heart stopped. But I realized, what were you done? And I immediately got on a call with analysts and said, we've lost $2 billion. We're going to lose more. We made a, it was badly managed, a bad strategy, badly reported, badly done. It's my fault. And I'm sorry. It's something that had gotten away wasn't properly reported. I won't go into. But I do remember, but again, I don't consider that my worst moment, just terrible. And I told, I actually got all the PR people and communications people together, the manager said, you know what? They're going to crucify me. They're going to crucify our company. I said, forget that. We're going to lose some money. We've got clients around the world. When we wake up tomorrow, we're going to serve our clients around the world. And I remember driving in the next day, I was very early like 6.30, when they called me, I said, Jamie, all the TV cameras out and all the newspapers and go into the basement. So you can avoid them. I was okay. And the closer I'm getting to the building, I'm saying, wait a second. Why? I'm not going to do that. So I got out of the car. I come running up to me and they say, what are you going to do? We're going to lose your job. I said, you know, we're going to fix this problem. I said, I looked up the building. I said, I want you to know how proud I am of the 7,000 people in this building serving their clients around the world every day and the great job they do. And that's how I felt. It wasn't, that was like a stupid problem. It wasn't. But I've learned so many lessons, you know, like, and you look, you've been part of it, you know, how to run meetings and how to notice politicians. But the biggest mistakes are always the same. People. When you put the wrong people in the job, you know, that means that you've, it takes a while to figure it out. You know, bullshit was a pretty good act. They've been bullsh itting for 25 years. The people who reports them are going to be hurt. The company won't do a good job. It takes you a while to figure out to replace them. And that's, and you get better at that. You just get better at that over time. You see the pattern recognition. Are they respected? Are they treated? Are they honest? As opposed to the best chess pounder and the best salesman and they work their ass off and things are maybe important, but that doesn't mean they're a good leader. So the whale was what everybody would go to. Would you look at it? What was your biggest disappointment then? You know, the whale was an event. You knew where you could get over it. Did you have one bigger than that or was this? Yeah, there was, I would say there's some people ones. I don't want to mention their names because I think it's very important you're not shittled over people that I missed. You know, there was one at Bank One who you might remember and I missed it. And remember my management team coming in and it was late at night. They said, four guys, which I think this is fine. But most people would allow this. Four of them said, I said, Jamie, sit down. I said, okay. They said, we're going to tell you something. Don't say anything. Just listen. I said, okay. And they proceeded to tell me how this person we had hired, wearing this part of the business was a bad guy, a liar, dishonest. You know, said things and did things and I listened and I didn't know. And I didn't, you know, and sometimes you can't tell people. So what I said to him is, I hear you, with a smoke, there's fire. Thank you for saying this to me. It's now my problem. And they were right. And then there were a couple of ones that the JP Morgan chased, where I made the decision, I hired that person in Bank One, or I made the decision, I missed it. Boy, I took too long. And I hate it when I make a change and people say, thank God you did that. You know what I say to him? Well, why didn't you let me know earlier? You may be the boss, but I love reading history and I love reading some military history. And you see the same thing where there are bad generals. You know, Ron Daniel, who ran McKinsey, always said, David, you said, you're going to learn and you learned this. It sounds like it's your biggest, you know, disappointment is it said, you know, the business will always run. Your results will vary. But the thing that will disappoint you the most are the people that you put your trust in. You know, so I think that's basically what you're saying here. You know, I know many people have asked you to run for president. You know, I, I, I even told you once, I remember we have a dinner at some Greek restaurants and I will, I will quit whatever I'm doing right now. I'll be your campaign manager. I'll do whatever you want. But we need you to run for president, you know, what do you, what do you learn about yourself that kept, that's kept you from jumping into that briar patch? I'm not sure I learned a lot about myself, but like I do think there are skills that people have that in business world that may translate to the political world. But I think it's a mistake to automatically think that's true. So I think working hard, being authentic, having these skills is true. But there are also these political skills and and you've seen a lot of business people run that fail immediately. And, and you know, I may be better than them, but I still don't have, doesn't have all those political skills. That's one. The second is, I think I literally think you should kind of have a warm up before you go for president, you know, and a warm up, you know, could be Congress or Senate or governor. You've seen people like learn those skills before you go for the big enchilada. You know, I know the world from this position I have. So I think that's important, but I would have had to have started earlier. And I also have this unbelief, unlike some other people, I have this unbelievable job. You know, I think, you know, my country's very right, but next to my family is my country. And this, this company, I'm just so proud of what it does for 80,000 Americans, 6,000 company, American companies around the world are markets, cities, schools , states, hospitals, the community outreach program. I'm damn proud of it. So I think I add a lot here. I'd be giving that up for kind of a wild goose chase. I tell people, how do I run and one, when I was walking into that White House, I'd be waving goodbye to my family for four years. They'd be saying, see you, dad. I'm not sure. I'm sure my wife would have gone with me there. And so I just, and it is subjecting your family to some very tough stuff. And, you know, some people are prepared for that. I was unprepared for the time. And so I would never, I would never rule it out. I mean, I don't like making privacy. I'd be like, I 'm not making any promise to anyone. If I change my mind, I change my mind. But I think it's hard . I'm 68 years old. I've had a health problem or two. So I just, when you put it together, it just didn't seem like the right thing for me to do. And you've traveled the world and, you know, JP W erenchez has such global impact as you mentioned, and as you've met global leaders and you've met the top leaders in the world, who, if you had to pick out one person, who's impressed you the most and why? There are several, I mean, several are terrible. And I'm not going to give you their names. And these may surprise a little bit. Macron, very smart, very tough, says the same things publicly privately, very complicated politics. You could say, made some rights as the wrong decisions, has the right vision for France, you know, getting entrepreneurs, business growing, stuff like that. The guy, Greece was a basket case. The guy who runs Greece, Miss. He's done an unbelievable job. And he did. And he would tell you, basically, he was, I figured out what policies we needed. And then I did the politics, whereas most politicians do it their way around. It's all about politics. And they try to fit the policies into what they promised, which, you know, policies badly done don't work. And so, and then a lot of them from history, you know, I mean, I've been reading a lot about Ike Eisenhower, just the competence of the man. He surrounds all the great people that he ran that everyone spoke up. There was no game play. And he got rid of all the policies, able to deal with all the complexities and George Marshall. I mean, so I get a lot of inspiration from people, not just existing. This is his grant. I mean, you know, you know, they write him up as a drunkard. He was extraordinary. But he, but his president, you know, one point, the clue class clan comes back and I think it was Mississippi. And he used to this guy, the principled ethics, he said that the black people, they weren't called blacks at the time, are citizens of this country and they're going to be treated with all the same rights as everybody else. And he said, I think it was Sherman or Sheridan down with troops to remove the governor. There was no prevericating. There's no game playing. There 's no of its bad. I mean, it was terrible politics for, for if you wanted to win the Southern States. And so, there are a lot of people, Abe Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, they just learned from watching what they do and how they handled difficult situations, difficult people. As you think about, you know, the situation that the world faces today, it's very complicated. You know, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a very scary world we live in today. You know, describe the world you see five to 10 years from now. I mean, you know, you think we're going to be in this for a long, long time or, you know, the China relationship, but you know, I mean, how do you, how do you see the world and, and you know, there was a time when, you know, the global economy was everything and China needed us and we needed China, you know, everything seems to be, you know, I'm very shifting sand. How do you look at it and how should we think about it? It's, it is really complex. And I think the way I look at it is you, it's Russia Ukraine war. It's the aiding and abetting of Iran and North Korea of what's happening in Ukraine. It's Iran's nuclear program. It's the terrorism in the Middle East against Israel. And then, and then China's part of that kind of not with it and not part of the evil part, but they're aiding and abetting it with microelectronics and buying oil and gas and all these various things. It's dangerous. And you're talking about this is not the economy I'm worried about. This is the future of freedom and democracy in the world. And, and, and the only way to deal with something like this, if you read history is deal with it. Don't just pray it goes away. It may not go away. You know, when this war started, I told people at Dan's there, that's almost on three years, you know, and you know, you're talking about Iran being very close to have a nuclear weapon. You know, China is trying to divide the Western world by quite openly. They saying it, you know, well, we don't want the American system to prevail. We don't want the reserve currency and, and we want every country not to be part of the American economic system. And, and the, I think the public should understand that the military alliance we have and the economic alliances are very deeply related. And our national power is based upon our moral power, our economic power, in addition to our military power. And the moral power is still real. We have the greatest country in the planet, the freedom of speech and freedom of religion and freedom enterprise. Those freedoms for if you took down our barriers, the immigration for billion people move here because they want those freedoms. And then they'd invent companies and I think Americans underestimate the power that yes, we've had flaws of a country and we should focus on some of that, but we should denigrate. This is a shine light, the shining city on the hill. And so to conquer these things, you need to make sure America stays strong. So America, when I talk about China, we have all the food, war and energy we need. We have peace in North America and South America. We got the Atlantic and the Pacific in China. Our, our GDP per person is $80,000. There's this 15. They import 10 million barrels of oil a day. They've got terrible demographics and their neighborhood is a very complicated area. They're surrounded by people who've been enemies in the past and they're pissing them all off, not because they're not the Americans, dumb, by the way, but the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea , India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Russia. It's a tough part of the world and they're kind of hemmed in. And so we have the better hand. The question to me, I worry about is we need to play that ham. There's there's no, if only American leadership can keep the world free and safe for democracy, only American leadership. And we've got to keep together the military and the economic alliance because the economic battlefield and these are directly related is about national security. Like, you know, where do we get our penicillin from and where do we get our graphite from and where do we get our rare earth from and stuff like that. But it's also about unfair economic competition because that becomes better than neighbor. And you know, you have Europe in a very tough spot now because they have very high energy costs. We have very low energy costs. So it makes it very hard for the industry. And then China is, you know, can sink their car companies. So, you know, you have a very complex situation. So, you know, my view is build America, remind, start with our own civics. You know, we owe our country why it's so important, what freedom of democracy about build our economy and at the economic power is the root all those things that allows you to do all the other things and then have a very sophisticated role about how we're going to maintain American leadership. But for America, we're not doing it, you know, out of the just the goodness of our hearts. And I also think it needs to be more real positive. You know, we lecture our, and I go all around the world as you did, you know, we're constantly lecturing people about their labor laws and their climate and their all these things. And I'm not against further in human rights, but it, but it should be subordinated. So it needs to be subordinated to national security interests. And, and you know, real politic is a great quote when Stalin was telling FDR and Churchill at Yol ta, I think, or Potsdam, and he was Yolta, that he wanted to do something. And FDR said, Mr. President, the state pope wouldn't agree with that. And Stalin leaned forward and said, exactly how many divisions does the pope have? You know, and that's the game we're in. And we do these dumbest things in the name of good that actually make us weaker and make our allies weaker. And so we have to be very thoughtful and I'll be reaching out to the new administration and that we reached out to the old administration. We've hired national security experts to help us help our clients. And then, you know, a little bit of a mea culpa, we met, we all made a mistake and this isn't, it should be acknowledged isn't something you have to, we have to whip ourselves about. We should have, all of us should have been a little more thoughtful about China going back about 10 years. And, you know, at one point, they entered WTO in 2000, but they were started abuse it by 2012, you know, and we should have been more thoughtful than they were really thinking through and we were just kind of happy, go lucky. We all of us, you know, and so was the government, you know, so, but now's the time. It's okay. You know, they can't be mercant to us. They can't, you know, beggar thy neighbor economically. They can't do certain things they 're doing. We have the better hands. I'm not telling Americans, you know, worry about it. Let's just make sure we build a really strong company. Let's make sure we have unparalleled military strength that is unquestioned because the best way to avoid a war is to be strong. I can borrow other things. So, and so, so I just think we got to fight for that America and remind ourselves and educate our kids and educate people why it's important, educate people what the interlinked between those things. You know, it's, you know, we've covered a lot of fronts here and it's been fun, you know, having this conversation. I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions and are you ready for this? I'm ready. Three words to best describe you. Tenacious, relentless, tenacious and relentless. I love to learn all the time. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Hey, Blinken. What's your biggest pet peeve? bureaucracy. Who would play you in a movie? My wife would want Harrison Ford or George Clooney, but they are obviously better looking at him. What's a Greek delicacy everyone should try? Mushika. The last time you put on boxing gloves and punch someone. Oh, God. That was 15 years ago. Your favorite memory from the US Open Tennis Tournament? Opening a business week one day and seeing Steffi Graph serving in a picture and then I looked really closely what was behind her. I could see my little daughter who's eight years old looking at her. That was fun. The best moment for me. My daughters, my granddaughters have been in a big, they call it Telet rons, whatever. They've been on that a couple of times when they're watching the... I try to take them every year. What's the one thing you do just for you? Read history. Your most prized possession. My family. If I turned the radio on in your car, what would I hear? Just music, you know, just general music. What's something about you a few people would know? I'm actually a pushover and I'm actually quite easy and a pushover with you. I think that might be just a little bit of a sense. No, no. If you ask all my family members, who's the easiest one when it comes to where you eat, where you travel, where you do, when you get up, they would say, "Dad, I just want to do whatever makes me happy." What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? Read the papers in the morning. All right. We're out of the lightning route and I just got a few more questions and we'll wrap this up. I got to ask you, tell us a story of what it was like when you had your first child. Well, that's... I think for everyone, that's like an unforgettable experience and I remember my wife had some complications with that, so it was a cesarean. So she came out looking good, but I remember holding her, my little daughter, with a little teeny rib cage, and then she stretched. You know, and just holding this little stretching baby, and then she yawned and hiccup, which, you know, she did quite a bit. And holding a new life in your hands is extraordinary. You know, you now have this incredible family with three daughters and seven grandchildren and you've now got a two-year-old grandson. You have all these daughters and what was it like when you finally got the grandson? Well, first of all, I love... I have two wonderful son-of-laws and you have a daughter. You probably worried like I did early, like, "What if you don't like the son-of-laws?" Like, "What if they get married?" And you know, I adore these kids. They're both wonderful fathers and husbands and son-of-laws and they're delightful to be with. We all travel together. We like their families. So we're like, "One happy go lucky." When we five found there was a boy. I mean, I didn't see a party even to contemplate it for us because I never had a baby boy. And so, but he's quite... I put him in a quite a pampered category. You know, all 60 other kids, you know, pick them up and carry them around and play with them. And I don't think it has any idea how he's... I have to learn to grow up with. I mean, I could imagine all those girls, you know, whenever he brings home a girlfriend eventually, they're gonna want all one of that to girlfriend. I bet so. You know, you and I both had our health issues and you 've struggled with cancer. And, you know, how is that... How much did that really change you or did it? It did. You know, and I think it changed me over time. I don't think you realize immediately what it does, you know, but as you know, when someone says, "You have cancer, your life changes." And I tell a lot of people, "Everyone knows they're gonna die." But that... When they say it, all of a sudden, it's like in your face. And you have to contemplate dying all the time until even now, you're a survivor. But all the time until they say you're in remission. And of course, you know, radiation and chemo could be absolutely devastating. And I remember I wouldn't go tell my parents. I told my wife, "You have to tell them because I didn't want to tell my parents . I may die before them." And so the thing to change is it does make you live a little more deliberately about how you run your life and what you do and how you spend your time. It wasn't like I was gonna change... I love working. I love my country. I love... It didn't change that, but it did change how you deal with certain people and certain issues. And I think because of that, when I had the second health issue, I was being grilled into the surgery. And I knew it was maybe not even 50-50 I would survive, that I didn't have any regrets. Because the ones I might have had actually fixed the first time around. You know, a mutual friend of ours, you know, it's the late head of Goldman Sachs, John Weinberg. He had this line which I love. He said, "Either grow or you swell." You know, how do you manage not getting a big head? I mean, I mean, just think of what you run and everything you've accomplished. This is my belief, and I always quote him too in that because that when people get the big job, it's shocking sometimes how they act. And all of us who get the big job is actually more... creates more humility because how little you know about certain things. And yet you're responsible for them for other people. But I think it is how you 're grounded. And that grounding comes from your whole life experience. But it's the insecurity. It's the insecure people who when they get that big job, it makes them so insecure that the way they fix it is by controlling the meetings, by having friends of Bill, by having friends of this, by everyone knows this, what they want. They never want to be embarrassed. They never want to look bad. They're the ones who won't go on some of these trips because they're afraid of being criticized. And you see these traits. And you see them with... And that doesn't have to be the CEO of a company, it could be the CEO of a division. And other people, there's none of that. You know, I tell people and you know how insecure your listeners may understand that when you run a company, so make believe I'm running a trading desk that does mortgages. And if I want to do more, I have to call that guy who runs it. He knows more about it than I know anybody else. I say, hey, what about this? What about that? Why don't we do this? But maybe he gets promoted. And now he's running six divisions, mortgages and credit and equities and stuff like that. Well, all of a sudden he's an expert in one and he's learning five. And then he gets promoted again. Now he's an expert in six and he's learning 30. And so the higher you get, the more insecurity breeds, which is why I think that some people, they turn inward, they get scared, they block it, they have, they cover up their anxiety and other people. They're more like, you know, they realize they don't know that stuff and they reach out for help. And they have that curiosity and recognition and all those things that are about heart and curiosity. But I think it's how you're grounded. I don't think, I don't think it's just, it happens. Yeah. You know, and, you know, one of the things about you, Jamie, you've been in position for a long time at J.B. Wargachay said, you know, many would call you like the John Wooden of financial expertise, coaching, whatever. I mean, you are the John Wooden. I mean, and, you know, it was very difficult when John Wooden retired to ever replace John Wooden. I mean, how do you, how do you think about replacing your, your, your self? And do you give yourself high marks on your process that you have for that? Yes, I so far, you know, obviously the decision is the most important, but the board is fully engaged. That my board knows everybody. They see them freely. They take them out. So there's no blockage of those folks. We have the same list everyone has about, you know, all the skills you need and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, and, you know, I put character in culture as a, you know, that's a cinequanon, heart, curiosity, work at drive, grit, you better have a little bit of grit. This is basket of things that make up a human being. It's not one thing. And we have people great skills across the board. And I think the board believes that and I believe that I took the board through successful succession planning, unsuccessful session planning. So like, what worked and what didn't work, several people, my board have been through it. So they've , you know, told the board how they approached and stuff like that. So I'm doing it pretty systemically. And we think we've got people who've got that full broad range of capabilities. I don't like it when someone says, you know, what are you looking for? Our technologist or marketing person? No, no, you're looking for that whole set of stuff that they carry the culture, they got the energy they bring people with them. They don't have to be perfectly anyone thing. But they have to have that spectrum of stuff where people actually want to work at the company, they get the best out of the other people. And I think we have many people can do that. You know, last question here, you know, if you could give one piece of advice to any leader, what would it be? I would go back to make sure you have heart and curiosity and give it them and understand that you don't know it all and you're not even the expert anymore. Jamie, I want to thank you for all this time. And I want to thank you for your friendship. You know, you're always there. You're always there. I mean, you know, we, you know, we don't get together all the time. But what we do, we pick up where we last left each other. And, you know, last year, my wife passed away in February, you and Judy were there. And you're there for people when they need them most. And I thank you for being that kind of friend for me. You're an amazing guy. And I'm blessed to have you as a friend. David, you 've always been there for me also. And both you and I love you. And it's great spending some time with you. Yeah. Thank you very much, buddy. Appreciate it. You know, there's just nobody like Jamie Diamond. He's my friend. And I know I 'm biased, but I believe he's one of the best business leaders of our time. And I can tell you, he is the absolute real deal. He doesn't just talk a big game about giving a damn and having heart and grit. I've seen it close up and personal by myself. And he is not afraid to roll up his sleeves and dive into the work no matter how hard that work may be. And I know you picked up on this, but Jamie has no patience for the BS and bureaucracy that might get in the way of the work. That's a powerful mindset and one we need to all learn from. So I got a question for you . What's getting in the way of the work that's really going to move your organization forward? Is it too much bureaucracy, internal politics, endless, this week, beyond the lookout for it and push back against it? Because if you want to get results, you've got to get past those distractions and do the real work of running your business. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders get to work. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Harris Barton. He's the founder of managing director of H Barton Asset Management and a three time Super Bowl champion with the 49ers playing alongside grades like Joe Montana and Jerry Rice and Steve Young. You don't have all the answers. I promise you don't have all this. But there's somebody out there that has a bunch of the answers and you should start listening. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be.