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Who said that the art of writing letters is dead? JPMorgan’s CEO and Chair Jamie Dimon’s annual mission to shareholders ran on 57 pages and footnotes.
In the Financial Times Lex column, Dimon’s letter, described as a “master class in management” by US President Donald Trump, saved some of the most keen criticism of poor business communication and management practices, not politicians.
“Speak as you speak – remove the terminology,” wrote Dimon in the region published this month, anti-minded tariffs, global economic outlook, and did more with less. “Avoid the Management Pablum.”
Dimon’s biggest anger was aiming for a meeting. “I’ll kill you,” he wrote. If they happen, make sure they have a hard start and end times and a clear purpose. Organize them so that only relevant participants will participate. “Sometimes, we just think it’s great by inviting people to meetings where we don’t need to be there.”
Calls to meet Cal are generally received warmly. A few years ago, e-commerce company Shopify attracted widespread attention for cancelling a Wednesday meeting and two or more people’s meetings.
The cries of the end of such gatherings have only been ratcheted up after the pandemic. “This meeting could have been an email,” became the appeal of Clarion, a white-collar worker whose calendar groaned under the weight of his colleagues to be together on Zoom.
Between 2020 and 2023, Microsoft surveys showed that the number of meetings tripled. People complained of inefficient virtual meetings with 55% saying the next step at the end of the meeting was unknown, with 56% saying it was difficult to summarise what happened.
As a result, employees spent a long day focusing on getting the job done, in addition to participating in these time-consuming gatherings.
The insidious meeting creep means that Dimon is far from the sole business leader. When I spoke to a company that was about to do a four-day week, the first thing I should go to was a meeting.
Perhaps unfortunately, other experimenters include Masters of Technology, which sees the answers to encounter bloating.
Otter, a Transcription service, offers AI Conference agents that promise to answer questions verbally, especially in meetings. Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan predicts the future in which employees can go to the beach and send digital twins to meetings. “You can send a digital version. You can send a digital version,” he told The Verge.
There are already a variety of consequences for the current use of AI to record and create meeting overviews. It may save you time, but you will never notice the nuances of the conversation. It’s almost not the worst crime. I’ve heard one marketing team recently discovered that after a client left an online call they were late to continue recording their conversation. He was unable to receive a transcript listing his various shortcomings.
Dimon has a different focus. Participants must completely discard their devices. “We see people who are receiving notifications or personal texts or reading emails constantly attending meetings. This has to stop. It’s rude. It’s wasting time.”
Some of this bad behavior comes from the dark times of the pandemic. As Dimon bluntly said at the previous leaked address, other workers can squeeze the pip of pleasure, but by “sending each other what other people hate.” It’s also about workers who handle messaging volumes of unmanaged, from email to Slack to WhatsApp, through countless platforms.
However, Dimon’s intervention should be welcomed. Over the past few weeks, there has been a rapid rise in vigilant conversations about smartphone use in children, particularly following adolescence. That’s when someone checks out an adult because of their dependence on the device.
The issue of carelessness also doubts not only WhatsApp, but also the boring content and drone participants in the meeting itself.
“If your meeting or audience are looking at your phone, it’s half the introduction at best. I want to see a leader focused on treating illnesses rather than symptoms,” said Beth Sherman, a communications consultant who will address the conference show later this year.
emma.jacobs@ft.com
