JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon runs the biggest bank in the U.S. by total assets ($4 trillion as of December 31, 2024) with more than 300,000 employees globally. He’s maintained his leadership position for nearly 20 years, since January 2006.
So how has he navigated the role for almost two decades? In a fireside chat with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen at the Adobe Summit on Wednesday, Dimon told an audience of 12,000 executives, marketers, and professionals how he does it. In particular, Dimon highlighted four principles that have helped develop him as a leader.
First, he said, though “a lot of companies” don’t follow this rule, he recommends assessing everything “honestly, directly, forthrightly” about performance. Dimon told leaders that, when giving feedback, they should avoid starting with a pre-formed narrative about where the company is going and how well it is doing, and then fitting performance numbers, like revenue and yearly growth, into that narrative.
Related: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Says Only One Group Is Complaining About Returning to the Office
Instead, he told them to begin with the numbers and honestly assess where the company is headed without a prior bias.
“Don’t try to use numbers to prove what you think,” Dimon said. “Try to use numbers to understand what you are doing.”
Dimon recently called his company’s corporate workforce back to the office five days per week after assessing performance in meetings and career development.
Dimon then told his fellow CEOs to assemble their leadership teams carefully. While some employees might be good people, there’s a chance that they may not understand the demands of leadership.
Leaders who are always late and not doing their jobs weigh the whole company down, Dimon cautioned.
“A lot of people who run stuff, they’re a hot mess,” Dimon said. “Don’t let them run something because they’ll be a disaster.”
Dimon’s third and fourth leadership tips noted inner traits. He specifically advised executives to have humility and grit. Humility means showing employees that you genuinely care about them and treat them with respect, “whether it’s the person cleaning the bathrooms in the office or a CEO,” Dimon said. Grit, meanwhile, is about quickly making decisions, sticking to them, and managing whatever arises throughout the day.
“You have to say ‘absolutely not,’ or ‘absolutely, take the chance—go for it,'” Dimon said.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
How JPMorgan Is Using AI
Dimon told the crowd that JPMorgan found at least 700 use cases for AI, including advertisements and marketing. The bank has more than 2,000 AI specialists working on everything from data science problems to natural language processing.
For example, one AI agent inside the company can go through billions of pages of internal documents to answer questions about the bank’s inner workings.
Dimon said “hundreds” of employees, including JPMorgan branch staff, use the AI tool.
Related: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Isn’t Worried About AI Taking Over Jobs — Here’s Why
