Jamie Dimon Wants the Bad News First
Twenty years into running JPMorgan Chase, one of banking's longest-serving CEOs says the real threat to leaders isn't arrogance. It's insecurity.
Jamie Dimon has run JPMorgan Chase long enough to see a lot of executives get promoted, and a fair number of them stumble. This summer, on the Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost, he offered a diagnosis that cuts against the usual story. The problem, he said, usually isn't ego. It's insecurity.
Dimon became CEO of JPMorgan Chase on January 1, 2006, and chairman a year later, according to the bank's official biography. Before that he ran Bank One, and earlier still he was president of Citigroup. He has spent two decades at the top of the largest U.S. bank, headquartered on Park Avenue, and his views on leadership come from watching that machine up close.
“The bigger job you get, the less you know—literally—about the job”
I.The bigger the job, the less you know
Dimon's starting point is a simple observation about promotion. "The bigger job you get, the less you know—literally—about the job," he said, as reported by Fortune. A leader who was an expert in one business wakes up responsible for five, most of which they've never run. Business Insider reported that he used the example of a star mortgage trader promoted to run all of a bank's trading. "Now he's got equities, commodities, fixed income, Asia," Dimon said. "He's an expert in mortgages, but not in the other ones."
How that person handles the gap is what matters. Some go looking for people who know more than they do. Others start managing appearances. Business Insider captured his version of the fork: "When some people get a big job, some grow into it, and some swell into it."
The ones who swell build a filter around themselves. "It becomes PowerPoints, you know, make them look good, don't tell them the bad news. And that is what causes the problem," Dimon told Frost. From there, he said, the picture gets worse: "Reports start being modified to look good, as opposed to undressing what's going on in your company."
“It becomes PowerPoints, you know, make them look good, don't tell them the bad news. And that is what causes the problem”
II.Complaints as information
His fix is to make bad news cheap to deliver. "You're not going to hurt my feelings by telling me we have a crappy product," he said. "If you're right, I'm gonna thank you for letting me know."
Business Insider reported that he described customer complaints as "a gift," and that he watches how his own managers react when junior people describe problems in meetings. If a manager is twisting in their chair while someone below them speaks honestly, Dimon takes that as a sign about the manager.
He has also built structural guardrails against his own blind spots. For 20 years, he said, he has left every JPMorgan board meeting so directors can talk without him in the room, and when executives disagree with him, he has them make their case directly to the board.
III.A character test for promotion
The most memorable line from the conversation is a hiring question any leader can borrow. When Dimon considers someone for a big job, he asks: "Would you promote someone to a big job that you wouldn't have your child report to?"
It's a test that skips the résumé entirely. It asks whether the person makes others better or smaller, which tends to show up fastest in how they treat people with less power. Dimon has framed humility as part of the same picture. Giving credit to others, he said, is a way of saying the work wasn't yours alone.
IV.Why it lands
None of this is new advice, and Dimon would probably say so. What gives it weight is the source. Fortune noted that his "fortress balance sheet" approach helped the bank come through 2008, and that he has grown it by buying competitors in distress, from Bear Stearns in 2008 to First Republic in 2023. Those were decisions that depended on hearing hard news early and acting on it.
His warning about what kills companies has stayed consistent for years. Fortune summarized it as "bureaucracy, complacency, and arrogance." The newer piece is where he locates the root cause. Leaders who are secure enough to admit what they don't know tend to get the truth. Leaders who need to look like they know everything tend to get PowerPoints. As Dimon put it to Frost, "I'm not trying to do the thing that I want to do, I want to do the right thing for the company."
Sources
About the Featured Leader
Jamie Dimon
Related Features
Executives · Nashville
Dave Ramsey's Case for Saying the Hard Thing Out Loud
From a Franklin, Tennessee, campus, the radio host and Ramsey Solutions founder has built a large company around one blunt idea about leadership: clarity is a kindness.
Executives · Florida
Ken Griffin Moved Citadel to Miami. He Says It Wasn't the Taxes.
The founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities brought two of finance's most powerful firms to Brickell. In his telling, the decision was about speed, safety and a city that says yes.
Founders · Nashville
Reese Witherspoon Built the Room She Couldn't Find
The Nashville-raised actor turned a frustration with the scripts coming her way into Hello Sunshine, a media company built on women's stories and one very simple test.