pay for it themselves. He ordered all company cars to be returned or bought by those using them. And he canceled a contract with a plant service, telling employees to water their own plants.
The core lending business, too, needed an overhaul. Once Bob Lipp got proper reporting systems in place, Weill saw that the cost and incentive structures at the company’s lending branches were hampering profit growth. He announced that the poorest-performing 10 percent of the company’s branches would receive no bonus whatsoever, whereas the top-performing 10 percent might receive 100 percent of their salary as a bonus. Believing it the best way to motivate employees, both Weill and Dimon continued to utilize this carrot-or-stick method over the years.
After a while, the executives realized that with not a single one of them living in Baltimore, they were not connected to the company. Weill started a drumbeat of, “One of us has to move,” which the team properly understood as, “One of you has to move.” After some discussion, all eyes focused on Dimon, who as the youngest member of the team had the fewest roots to pull up.
Because Judy was then pregnant with the couple’s second child, it actually made sense for Dimon to bring his wife and daughter to Maryland with him—he didn’t like being away from them. So he was the “volunteer,” the only member of the executive team to do time as a Baltimorean. Judy, like many people who have lived in New York, was used to walking pretty much everywhere she needed to go, so the couple moved to Cross Keys, Baltimore’s first “planned” community. “It was really hard for me to picture myself living in a suburban environment,” she recalls. “So we found this ground floor apartment where Jules and I could walk wherever we needed to go. The only issue was that everybody else was twice my age.” Jamie Dimon wasn’t in Baltimore to make friends, though. He was there to whip Commercial Credit into shape. He didn’t much care where he lived.
• • •
Working with this group of veteran executives, Dimon soon earned the nickname “the kid.” But he was a notable kid, exceptional in his spongelike capacity to understand the intricacies of financial, accounting, and tax issues, while equally adept at analyzing the trade-offs between risks and returns in the company’s various businesses. Bob Lipp was impressed at Dimon’s ability to apply ethical standards in the gray areas of accounting rules. Dimon also managed to revive the company’s commercial paper funding program, which had faltered under Control Data, bringing costs down in the process.
He also seemed perennially a step ahead. (Fowler considered him as “quick as a hiccup.”) Dimon knew the company’s books better than anyone else. “Not long after you started talking, he’d interrupt you, saying, ‘I know, I know, I know,’” recalls his longtime colleague Marge Magner. “And he usually did.” His colleagues tolerated such impatience because of his obvious focus.
It was also at Commercial Credit that Dimon cemented his reputation as hothead, engaging in frequent screaming matches with Weill. The vitriol was not reserved just for his boss. Indeed, he challenged other executives as well. One executive remembers a senior committee meeting in which the 30-year-old Dimon stabbed his ballpoint pen inthe air toward Bob Lipp and said, “Bob, you’re wrong on this!” All present were dumbstruck. Here was a kid just a couple of years out of business school lecturing a former president of Chemical Bank. Weill said nothing, and just chewed away on his cigar. “From that point, we could tell how tough he was,” recalls the executive. “And how nobody but nobody stood up to him.” (Lipp doesn’t recall the specific incident, but says he had no problem with a young Jamie Dimon challenging him on anything.)
Part of what made Dimon’s temper tolerable, however, was that he treated everyone exactly the same
The core lending business, too, needed an overhaul. Once Bob Lipp got proper reporting systems in place, Weill saw that the cost and incentive structures at the company’s lending branches were hampering profit growth. He announced that the poorest-performing 10 percent of the company’s branches would receive no bonus whatsoever, whereas the top-performing 10 percent might receive 100 percent of their salary as a bonus. Believing it the best way to motivate employees, both Weill and Dimon continued to utilize this carrot-or-stick method over the years.
After a while, the executives realized that with not a single one of them living in Baltimore, they were not connected to the company. Weill started a drumbeat of, “One of us has to move,” which the team properly understood as, “One of you has to move.” After some discussion, all eyes focused on Dimon, who as the youngest member of the team had the fewest roots to pull up.
Because Judy was then pregnant with the couple’s second child, it actually made sense for Dimon to bring his wife and daughter to Maryland with him—he didn’t like being away from them. So he was the “volunteer,” the only member of the executive team to do time as a Baltimorean. Judy, like many people who have lived in New York, was used to walking pretty much everywhere she needed to go, so the couple moved to Cross Keys, Baltimore’s first “planned” community. “It was really hard for me to picture myself living in a suburban environment,” she recalls. “So we found this ground floor apartment where Jules and I could walk wherever we needed to go. The only issue was that everybody else was twice my age.” Jamie Dimon wasn’t in Baltimore to make friends, though. He was there to whip Commercial Credit into shape. He didn’t much care where he lived.
• • •
Working with this group of veteran executives, Dimon soon earned the nickname “the kid.” But he was a notable kid, exceptional in his spongelike capacity to understand the intricacies of financial, accounting, and tax issues, while equally adept at analyzing the trade-offs between risks and returns in the company’s various businesses. Bob Lipp was impressed at Dimon’s ability to apply ethical standards in the gray areas of accounting rules. Dimon also managed to revive the company’s commercial paper funding program, which had faltered under Control Data, bringing costs down in the process.
He also seemed perennially a step ahead. (Fowler considered him as “quick as a hiccup.”) Dimon knew the company’s books better than anyone else. “Not long after you started talking, he’d interrupt you, saying, ‘I know, I know, I know,’” recalls his longtime colleague Marge Magner. “And he usually did.” His colleagues tolerated such impatience because of his obvious focus.
It was also at Commercial Credit that Dimon cemented his reputation as hothead, engaging in frequent screaming matches with Weill. The vitriol was not reserved just for his boss. Indeed, he challenged other executives as well. One executive remembers a senior committee meeting in which the 30-year-old Dimon stabbed his ballpoint pen inthe air toward Bob Lipp and said, “Bob, you’re wrong on this!” All present were dumbstruck. Here was a kid just a couple of years out of business school lecturing a former president of Chemical Bank. Weill said nothing, and just chewed away on his cigar. “From that point, we could tell how tough he was,” recalls the executive. “And how nobody but nobody stood up to him.” (Lipp doesn’t recall the specific incident, but says he had no problem with a young Jamie Dimon challenging him on anything.)
Part of what made Dimon’s temper tolerable, however, was that he treated everyone exactly the same
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