105th Edition
Pedal Harder
There is quite a lot of controversy surrounding RTO and Jamie Dimon’s outburst about it. RTO stands for Return to Work. Why that phrase should cause any controversy tells you a bit about the culture we live in. Back in the days of Covid, companies started to allow, and in some cases encouraged employees to work remotely. The positive spin included keeping people safe from Covid and that it would increase productivity and quality of life by reducing commuting time. Several years past the Covid lockdowns and hysteria, what can we conclude about working remotely?
First of all, it failed completely in preventing people from catching Covid. I know very few people who didn’t get sick whether they worked remotely or came into the office. As for increasing productivity and enhancing quality of life, the jury is still out, as those two metrics are definitely harder to measure and evaluate.
In my experience, in the early years of my investment career, informal, face-to-face meetings with more experienced associates was how I learned the business. I was fortunate enough to have a great mentor. Jim and I would go to lunch several days each week and often spent hours talking about the investment markets in his office. Trust developed between us. Having his undivided attention for hours each day was invaluable to my development and understanding of how the markets worked. I never could have built a 40-year investment career without his mentorship. Could all of this coaching and transfer of knowledge have been accomplished on Zoom? There is absolutely no way. It seems ludicrous to me to even ask that question.
WSJ columnist Matthew Hennessey recently wrote an insightful article on RTO and Jamie Dimon – “Remote Work and JPMorgan’s Mole.” In the article, Dimon makes the following statement – “The big losers from remote work are employees at the beginning of their careers.” He is 100% correct on this. Moreover, corporations are losers too, as the wealth of knowledge isn’t being passed on from veterans to younger employees. The vast majority of successful veterans spent their career relying on face-to-face interactions. Most, prior to being pushed out to pasture, as large corporations tend to do, were never comfortable with virtual meetings. Instead of trying to train the veterans to be tech savvy, it would have made much more sense to sit down face-to-face and listen to them. From my experience and from conversations with peers across different industries, this tends not to happen. Sadly, once these wise old sages are gone so too is their wisdom.
Meanwhile, corporations run by metrics instead of focusing on building trustful relationships, will never realize what they have lost. Asking an experienced sales or client service person to count the number of calls made each day or week undermines trust. In most businesses, establishing trust internally and externally is vitally important to long-term success. It simply can’t be done remotely. Jamie Dimon understands this. Many corporate leaders today do not.
Virtual meetings, endless texts and emails dominate communication within corporate America today. Yet the level of trust and commitment in both directions is deplorably low. It may be a stretch to say this is causal, but it is definitely correlated. Leadership by wandering around has become a lost art. During the first week of my career, my boss, the Chief Investment Officer, invited me to go on a bike ride that Saturday. Bob was tall and lean, and I was told he was an avid rider. I noticed early on during the ride that his bike had only one speed. I asked him what he did when he came to a hill. He said, “Pedal harder.” That told me a lot about Bob. He was a straight shooter, a man of few words, and we got along great. Effective communication involves tone, body language, intonation, and other non-verbal signals, all of which are more accurately measured face-to-face.
If you are in a leadership role, if you really want to understand and motivate your associates, if you hope to build a culture based on teamwork, commitment and trust, turn off Zoom, mute your phone, and walk to lunch with one person. Listen more than you talk. If you really want to be impactful, lead like you’re riding a one-speed bike. Be transparent, say what you mean and mean what you say. And when you come to the proverbial hills in your career, pedal harder. It just might inspire others to do the same.
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Michael Kayes
*These views are my personal opinions and are not the viewpoints of any company or organization.