JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has a surprising message for disgruntled clients: keep the complaints coming.
The Wall Street Titan recently said that he welcomes criticisms because they help open his eyes and ears to what thousands of his other customers are probably experiencing.
“I always tell a client, ‘When you complain to us, you’re doing us a favor. If we’re torturing you, we’re probably torturing another 10,000 or 100,000 people,’” Dimon revealed in LinkedIn’s “This is Working” video series last week.
It’s why, he insisted, that leaders can’t do their job from their corner office.
“Leaders have to get out,” he added. “They have to get out all the time. They have to be curious, ask a million questions.”
Dimon offers no sympathy for leaders who claim to be too in demand to leave their desks: “Any business leader who can’t get out [because] they’re too busy, they’re making a huge mistake.”
Change with the world or stagnate
Having led JPMorgan since 2006, Dimon is acutely aware of how customers’ needs and wants change over time—and that leaders who don’t remain on the pulse of what that means for their business get left behind.
Just look at Blockbuster’s ex-CEO, who’s still plagued as “the guy that failed to keep up with technology” after passing up the opportunity to acquire Netflix.
“It’s amazing how many times I see people don’t have realistic assessments going on,” Dimon said.
“If you don’t have an accurate assessment of the real world out there, what’s changing, what they’re doing, you know, what the ideas are, you will eventually fail.”
The chief of America’s biggest bank added that bureaucracy can get in the way of moving fast and breaking things like a Silicon Valley startup.
“I’ve always thought bureaucracy leads to politics, leads to stasis, leads to death,” the 68-year-old warned. “The antidote to that is that you’re open-minded to everything. Always learning, always curious.”
‘Learn and Be Curious’
Dimon’s antidote to stagnating is a leaf out of Jeff Bezos’ book—the Amazon founder famously penned 16 leadership principles for the tech giant’s employees to follow, one of them being “Learn and Be Curious”.
Even the company’s current CEO, Andy Jassy, agrees that being eager to learn is what has separated those around him who have “grown their careers substantially versus those that stayed stagnant.”
“You have to be ravenous and hungry to find ways to learn,” the 56-year-old Amazon veteran recently said in a company YouTube video.
“The second you think there’s little left for you to learn is the second that you are unwinding as an individual and as a learning professional.”
Barack Obama’s former speechwriter, Aneesh Raman, echoed that ambitious workers should forgo titles completely to focus on skills development—until they reach 35 years old, at least.
“This is the time to find out what you’re excited about, what you’re good at, and what you want to get better at,” Raman said.
Even outside of the corporate world, 20-time Grand Slam winner Roger Federer credited his success to constantly improving his technique, studying his opponents, and learning new ways to beat them.
“I didn’t get where I got on pure talent alone. I got there by trying to outwork my opponents,” he added. “Most of the time, it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit.”