'Work Your A-- Off and Give a S--t': Jamie Dimon Offers Advice to His Future Successor The Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase detailed his feelings on the ideal traits of his successor at JPMorgan Chase's 2023 Investor Day.
By Dan Bova
During JPMorgan Chase's 2023 Investor Day yesterday, Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon was asked what he thought were the important characteristics of who would eventually replace him. Dimon, who perhaps has been glued to HBO's "Succession" like the rest of us, seems to have had a little Logan Roy rub off on him and answered rather bluntly: "I think the most important traits [are] that you're trusted and respected by people, that you work your a-- off, that you give a s--t, that you know you don't know everything."
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Dimon went on to discuss what he says are keys to great leadership, signaling out curiosity, courage, and grit. "That you're willing to change direction, you're willing to go in front of your shareholders and say, 'We screwed up, we made a mistake, we were wrong about that,'" he explained.
These are the kinds of attributes that we can all aspire to, but in Dimon's words, they are not things that can be learned or taught. "[I]f you don't have grit, you don't have it. [If] you don't have courage, you don't have it," he said.
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The New York Times declares that JPMorgan Chase is "dominant" right now. It has nearly 4,800 branches in the continental U.S., and the investment bank "regularly outperforms" the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
While Dimon isn't expected to step down soon (almost certainly not before he is scheduled to collect a $50 million payout in 2026), the Times gave a scouting report on who might come next, picking Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak, who jointly run Chase's consumer operations, as the frontrunners.
We'll likely have to wait until 2027 to find out which of them gives a s--t more.
