Jamie Dimon doesn’t trust hierarchy to tell him the truth.
The JPMorgan Chase CEO, who runs a $4.5 trillion bank with 300,000 employees, still reads customer complaints himself, a habit that, he says, keeps him connected to reality inside one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions.
“I still read customer complaints,” Dimon said at the America Business Forum in Miami on Thursday. “If they ask you a question, you’ve got to respond to me directly and not go up that chain of command. The chain of command starts to edit it and fine-tune it. The bureaucracy does want to control you, so you’ve got to kill the bureaucracy.”
For Dimon, bureaucracy is a reflex that creeps into any large institution and shields leaders from reality. He sees it as a constant fight.
“If you’re in a position like mine, you’ve got to break down those barriers all the time,” he said.
