Impressive.
I’ve heard a lot of things about him over the years. How could you not - he’s an extremely successful and high-profile financial executive. But not just from the press, also from people I know well and respect and who have or do work for him. And these people have always painted a universally positive picture of the man: as a banker, a manager, a leader and a person. Is it an indictment of modern corporate governance and organizational politics, that the pillars upon which his has built his success and reputation: transparency, truth, forthrightness, conviction, humility, passion, empathy…are seemingly the exception and not the rule? Perhaps I am too forgiving and too harsh at once. Hmmm. Perhaps you would be justified in calling out my hubris, but from what others had told me of him, I suspected we might get on famously; in particular he seems to share a similar intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge, which to be frank was - in its all too frequent absence - probably my single biggest source of disappointment in an otherwise very rewarding and enjoyable 16 year career in investment banking.
In any event, when I heard a couple days ago that he’d done an interview with Charlie Rose, despite being flat out on 16+ hour days, I made sure I carved out an hour to watch it, which I did while eating my lunch today. I had never heard him speak before. He didn’t disappoint. Take a look:
It certainly made me smile when he said the first thing he did after being fired from Citigroup was to go buy 10 or 20 books. And his comment about one of the sources of disagreement with Mr. Weill:
…remember I had been fighting with them for years…we set up an organization at Citi…now don’t ever do this ok? And if I ever do this at the job I’m in, just shoot me… we had tri-heads and co-heads reporting to co-heads. Globally. I told them early on it’s crazy…
(Ahem)..yes, well, moving on…
I’m sure the shareholders and his colleagues at JPMorgan would be annoyed, and I’m sure there are a million reasons why it would never happen, but watching him gave me an idea for what just might be the ticket to beat all tickets: Obama/Dimon ‘08. Talk about shoring up your weak flanks. Wow. If this ever came to pass I might even go long dollars. Well, at least close my shorts… 
July 25th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Sincere thanks for pointing to this. Its the first time I’ve heard him speak. Inspiring.
Your Obama/Dimon ticket meme is another great Sixth Paradigm idea. Let’s set up a group on LinkedIN and/or Facebook and see if it catches a buzz!