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In response to yesterday’s post on Jamie Dimon, one reader asked why Dimon would have done what he did. Risk his own reputation and that of the bank by keeping for as long as they did a customer as potentially damaging and even dangerous as Jeffrey Epstein.

While the answer would appear at first glance to be obvious, it is not money. At least not directly. Jamie Dimon has never been especially greedy. His appetite has never been primarily for money -and then more money. Instead, his appetite has been for success – and then more success.   

Todd Pittinsky and I describe the syndrome in our book, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy.*

• Our definition of lust is simple, even prosaic. We define lust as a “psychological drive that produces intense wanting, even desperately needing to obtain an object, or to secure a circumstance. When the object has been obtained, or the circumstance secured, there is relief, but only briefly, temporarily.” And so, the wanting and needing continue, indefinitely.

• Leaders who have a lust for success have an unstoppable need to achieve. Which perfectly describes Jamie Dimon. This is a man who ten years ago survived a bout with throat cancer. And who five years ago survived sudden surgery for a near fatal heart event, a tear in his aorta. Did either life-threatening condition stop him? Not at all. Both times he got back on his horse and to his desk as soon as he could. Again, his passion is not for money. He is not, for example, like Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, who thrives on accumulating all sorts of trinkets including numerous, enormous swaths of real estate. In contrast, all Dimon seems to care about is his achievement. He has reached the pinnacle of success and is hellbent on staying there. Unless of course he can scale still higher.

*Cambridge University Press, 2020.

As indicated in my post of August 21, I am giving a very short course, specifically on this site, on the classics of the literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The posts will be drawn from my edited collection, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). While here I can provide only short bursts of texts, my hope is they prompt you to dig deeper.

The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.

In the coming weeks, the entries are in Part I. They are About Leadership.

Today we turn to John Locke.

Locke took Hobbes a step further. Much further. It is not too much to say that Locke went a long way toward balancing the scale between leaders and followers. According to Locke, followers had much more than just the right to life, and to concur on who should be their otherwise all-powerful leader. Locke maintained that followers’ rights – your rights and my rights – included liberty and the all-important right to property. To own it. It could reasonably be argued then that Locke – a figure of the early Enlightenment – built not just the foundation of democracy but of capitalism.       

There are good reasons then why Locke was the ideological rock and intellectual bastion on which America’s founders chose to stand. Bernard Bailyn, author of the classic, The Ideological Foundations of the American Revolution, observed that the influence of the European Enlightenment on eighteenth century Americans is “profusely illustrated in the political literature.” Moreover, Locke especially was quoted everywhere in the colonies, by everyone who claimed to be politically aware, especially in the 1770s. Bailyn writes that “in pamphlet after pamphlet the American writers cited Locke on natural rights and on the social and governmental contract.”   

The importance of Locke ’s contribution to the idea that between the governors (leaders) and the governed (followers) should be a contract – a social contract – is impossible to overestimate. For among other things it assured that those without power and authority had the right to unseat those with. Ideas like these were critical to American political thinking. And to the documents on which the American system of government since has been based: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

This short course will give evidence of how over time the balance of power gradually shifted – from leaders to followers. The beginnings of these stirrings are evident in these excerpts.

From Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690):

• Every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.

• There remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them…. [Power] may be placed anew where [the people] shall think it best for their safety and security.

• [Power can have no purpose other than to] preserve the members of that society in their lives, liberties, and possessions, and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over their lives and fortunes, which are as much as possible to be preserved …. And this power has its original only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.  

Today’s piece is one of several I’ve posted on Jamie Dimon – CEO of JPMorgan Chase – indisputably one of the most effective and influential business leaders of our time. See, for example, these, including one in which I eat crow.

In the crow-post I admit that though as a rule leaders should linger no longer than about ten years, there are exceptions, of whom Dimon seemed one. For when measured by the usual yardstick, the stock price, JPM had been and continues to be a clear winner.  The company’s shares have jumped by about 250% in the last five years – outpacing every one of its rivals.

Now though we know that Dimon is a mere mortal. He made a mistake that other leaders make, especially when they are extremely ambitious and exceptionally successful. They fly too close to the sun – and then pratfall on their pride.

Dimon did two things wrong. First, he always assumed he was right. Second, when it turned out he was not – that on his watch was a grievous lapse in judgment – he tried to cover it up. But he failed. It has become abundantly clear that Dimon was indirectly involved in one of the biggest scandals of the 21^st century. The scandal that surrounds Jeffrey Epstein.

No need here to provide details. They’re easy to find, notably in this remarkable piece of investigative journalism.

The Times article has just been published. So it’s not clear if it will impact either Dimon’s short-term performance or his long-term reputation. Both seem unlikely. Still, what Dimon did is not a good look. He pretended not to see what he did not want to see. On his watch the bank continued , for many years, to milk to the max one of its most lucrative clients. This despite said client being fully engaged in activities that were unquestionably illegal and profoundly immoral.

Perhaps the piece in the Times is wrong. I did not witness what Epstein did nor what the bank did and did not do in response. But the apparently deeply reported story would have to be wrong in almost every detail to give Dimon a pass. To believe that during the bank’s 15-year relationship with Epstein Dimon had no idea whatsoever that Epstein was high on the list of JPM’s most questionable if not reprehensible clients.

Epstein’s checkered history within the bank and outside it was a closely guarded secret – but it was not that closely guarded. Red flags about Epstein were repeatedly raised inside the bank and several of Dimon’s top lieutenants knew or strongly suspected at least some of what was going on. So, to believe that Dimon was entirely ignorant of the bank’s long relationship with Epstein is to strain credulity.  

Dimon resorted – and still does – to what social psychologists call “plausible deniability.” It’s when people high on an organizational ladder deny knowledge or responsibility for decisions made by those lower down. The higher ups get away with their denials because there is no hard evidence to the contrary – even when their protestations of ignorance are ridiculous.

Jamie Dimon is now as he was before – an exceptionally good leader. But he is imperfect. He had a connection with Jeffrey Epstein that, no matter Dimon’s denials, will never be fully believed or forgotten.

As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is that they will prompt you to dig deeper.

The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.

In the coming weeks, the entries are in Part I. They are About Leadership.

Today we turn to Thomas Hobbes, to his book, Leviathan. I have always had a special interest in Leviathan – I am almost tempted to write fondness for it- as the book is one of the first important works to emphasize not just the importance of leaders but of followers. Given that I consider followers as important as leaders it’s heartening that, even preceding the Enlightenment, one of the major political philosophers focused on the rights of ordinary people.

To be clear, their rights were modest enough. First was the right to life which, however, given the time in which Hobbes lived, the assertion of which was no small thing. Think of it this way. Not much more than a hundred years passed between the publication of Prince and Leviathan. But whereas Machiavelli was nearly entirely focused on the near boundless rights of the prince, Hobbes insisted on the all-important right to life not just of the prince, but of his subjects.

Further, though Hobbes declared that once there was a leader that leader had to be all powerful, there could be no leader without the consent of those who were to be led. During a time when monarchs still strode the world like the kings and, sometimes, queens they were, this was, itself, revolutionary.

Hobbes’s was, however, disposed to be dark. His view of human nature was bleak, his view of the human condition even bleaker. Because we were not to be trusted, because we, you and me, were fearful and rapacious, selfish and dangerous, we had no choice, really, but to be governed by a super strong leader of a super strong state. Otherwise, we were destined, doomed, to do each other in. To put it differently, though directly, Hobbes believed that for even our right to life be realized, we had to surrender nearly every other right to the state.

From Leviathan – “On the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning their Felicity and Misery”:

• The difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. For as to strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.

• Therefore, if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.

• Hereby it is manifest that men [must have] a common power, a [strong state, a leviathan] to keep them all in awe [lest there is a war] of every man against every man.

• [But] nor can any law be made till they [the people] have agreed upon the person that shall make it.

I define followers by rank. Which is to say that in my lexicon followers have less power, authority and influence than leaders. And sometimes they have no power, authority or influence at all.

The victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s by now all too well known predation were then, as I define them, followers. For many years that’s all they were. Bereft of any resources they were where the wind blew them. But in the last 24 hours this changed. Summoning their courage in tandem they put their foot down. They are insisting they will stay silent no longer. They are taking control of a narrative that for decades had controlled them.

If they succeed in shifting America’s political dynamic even some would that transform this band of followers into leaders? Yes. But this will not now or ever diminish their origin story. For a very long time they were followers who had nothing and no one.

As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is that they will prompt you to dig deeper.

The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.

In the coming weeks, each of the entries is in Part I. Each is About Leadership.

Today we turn to Machiavelli, to The Prince, which scarcely needs an introduction. The Prince was described by Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, “the most famous book on politics ever written.” So famous is the book, the manual really, that the adjective, “Machiavellian,” has come over five centuries to be part of the English language. But Machiavelli’s mind was far more nuanced, and The Prince far more complex, than the charge “Machiavellian” seems to suggest.  

I refer to The Prince as a manual because it was written as an instruction. As I wrote in the above-mentioned book, “Machiavelli believed that rulers require education of a special sort and training of a certain kind. So, think of The Prince as a primer, a how-to-book if you will, particularly for Lorenzo de’ Medici, who became Duke of Urbino in 1516.”   

The Prince is utterly pragmatic. It is a deeply personal manual, intended for the prince, the duke, the leader, only. Who, Machiavelli presumed, had lessons to learn on how to preserve his power. This is not to say that the prince’s subjects – the leader’s followers – are slighted. They are not. In fact, Machiavelli makes clear the preferred way for the prince to preserve his power is to keep his people content, or at least content enough. Still, the prince must always, without exception, put his interests above everyone else’s. This applies even when he concludes that he must be cruel as opposed to what is preferred, which is to be merciful.

From Book XVII:

• I say that each prince should desire to be held merciful and not cruel; nevertheless, he should take care not to use this mercy badly.

• A prince, therefore, to keep his subjects united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more than those who for the sake of too much mercy allow disorders to continue… for these customarily hurt a “whole community.”  

• From this a dispute arises whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The response is that one would want to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to put them together, it is much safer to be feared than loved…. For one can say this generally of men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evades of danger, eager for gain.

• I conclude, then, returning to being feared, and loved, that since men love at their convenience and fear at the convenience of the prince, a wise prince should found himself on what is his, not on what is someone else’s. He should only contrive to avoid hatred, as was said.

As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is that they will prompt you to dig deeper.

The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.

In the coming weeks, the entries are in Part I. They are About Leadership.

Today we turn to Plutarch, to Lives. Plutarch. a Greek, who lived circa 100 CE, can be considered the first biographer. He understood that life histories are perhaps the most compelling of all narrative forms, so he composed fifty short studies of Greek and Roman statesmen, soldiers, and patriots for the express purpose of comparing them. Contrasting them so they might serve not just as examples but as instructions. Examples of good leaders and instructions on good leadership. On what constitutes leadership that is not just smart but wise, leadership that is not just effective but good-hearted.   

The selections that follow are from his comparison between Dion, a Greek, and Brutus, that great but flawed Roman drawn so brilliantly by William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. As I wrote in the above-mentioned text, “”The Comparison of Dian and Brutus’ is Plutarch at his best. In the writer’s equivalent of just a few short strokes, we learn what we need to know about the two men, and we learn what we need to know about what Plutarch considered important.”

What emerges most vividly from this text is how well Plutarch understood the intricacies, the inconsistencies, of a man like Brutus. Plutarch understood that humans are not widgets – rather they are complex beings who have mixed motives and yield mixed results.   

• The greatest thing charged on Brutus is that he, being saved by Caesar’s kindness… did yet lay violent hands on his preserver. [Brutus was among those who murdered Caesar, stabbed him until he died.] Nothing like this could be objected against Dion; quite the contrary.

• Does not, however, the matter turn the other way? For the chief glory of both was their hatred of tyranny, and abhorrence of wickedness. This was unmixed and sincere in Brutus, for he had no private quarrel with Caesar, but went into the risk simply for the liberty of his country.

• But the very enemies of Brutus would say that he had no other end or aim, from first to last, save only to restore to the Roman people their ancient government.

As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is that they will prompt you to dig deeper.

The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.

In the coming weeks, the entries are in Part I. They are About Leadership.

Today we turn to Plato, to The Republic. Plato is of course one of the most prominent and widely esteemed political philosophers of all time. The Republic, in turn – said to have been written about 380 BCE – is acclaimed as the most widely read of all political texts, even into the 21^st century. This is not by any stretch to say that The Republic is usually read in its entirety. It most certainly is not. Still, parts of it remain grist even for our modern mill.   

The fact that Plato wrote The Republic in dialogue – as a series of conversations – helps us understand it. The seemingly informal exchanges bring life to his ideas in ways that would otherwise be impossible. Given my own special interest in bad leadership, and the fact that in the contemporary leadership literature “bad” remains widely ignored, Plato’s explorations of bad, or even evil leadership are, to me, of special interest. So, the excerpts below include, briefly, of course, some of Plato’s ruminations on the dark side of the human condition.    

• From Book V

Unless philosophers become kings in our cities, or unless those who now are kings and rulers become true philosophers, so that political power and philosophical intelligence converge… I believe there can be no end to our troubles, my dear Glaucon, in our cities or for all mankind….

We must still consider the tyrannical man himself. How does he evolve from the democratic man? What kind of a life does he lead? Is he happy or miserable?

          You are right. These are questions we still haven’t answered.

          I think we have neglected one thing in particular.

          What?

          We have still not given a full accounting of human desires….

          What desires do you mean?

          Those that stir when the soul is otherwise asleep… Then the wild and brutish part, sated with food and drink, becomes restless and goes on the prowl in search of anything that will satisfy its instincts. You know that in such a state it will shrink from nothing because it has been released from reason and a sense of shame.

As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is they will prompt you to dig deeper.

Given that we are on to the second selection – the first was Lao Tzu – I should point out the selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership. Each entry in the coming weeks is in Part I.

Today we turn to Confucius, to Analects. As scholar and translator Simon Leys put it in his introduction to Analects, “No book in the entire history of the world has exerted, over a longer period of time, a greater influence on a larger number of people than this slim little volume.” Leys’s statement is compounded by what has transpired in China in recent years: interest in Confucius and Confucianism has been revived, even actively encouraged. This is due virtually entirely to the leadership of Xi Jinping, who since 2012 has governed both China and the Chinese Communist Party with an increasingly tight fist. For Xi’s own reasons and ambitions, Confucious has served him well.

Analects is a collection of sayings and ideas that were not compiled by Confucius himself, but by his disciples. They reached their final form circa 200 BC- 200 AD. Above all, Confucious extolled the virtues of what today we might call law and order. How were they to be achieved? By holding firm to hierarchies in which everyone knew their place and acted accordingly. This applied to everyone equally – to leaders and to their followers.

This is not to say that leaders were to have a free hand. They were not. On the contrary. As followers were expected to fall into line, leaders were expected to rule wisely and well.

• From Chapter 1:

A man who respects his parents and his elders would hardly be inclined to defy his superiors. A man who is not inclined to defy his superiors will never foment a rebellion.

• From Chapter 20:

What are the four evils? The Master said: “Terror, which rests on ignorance and murder. Tyranny, which demand results without proper warning. Extortion, which is conducted through contradictory orders. Bureaucracy which begrudges people their rightful entitlements.

As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how I define “classic.”)

The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. Perhaps they will prompt you to dig deeper.

We begin today at the beginning, with Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu.

Approximately 2,500 years ago he wrote – or reputedly wrote – the foundational text of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching. The text is mystical and philosophical, spiritual and psychological. It is moreover not easy to decipher, to understand. Still two things are evident. First, Lao Tzu’s interest in leaders – in how people do govern. Second, his interest in followers – in how people should be governed.  

Here two excerpts from two “chapters.” For our purpose “sage” should be read as “leader.”

• From Chapter Seven:

The sage stays behind; thus, he is ahead.

He is detached, thus at one with all.

Through selfless action he attains fulfillment.

• From Chapter Nine:

Better stop short than fill to the brim….

Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.

Retire when the work is done. This is the way of heaven.