JPMorgan’s Dimon Adds Fresh Twist to Argument for Keeping Teams Small

(Bloomberg) — Jamie Dimon joins chief executive officers extolling the virtues of small teams.

Echoing anti-red tape statements from corporate leaders including Amazon.com Inc.’s Andy Jassy and HSBC Holdings Plc’s Georges Elhedery, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Its CEO devoted a section of his annual shareholder letter to the idea that large companies should organize into smaller units empowered to take action.

Dimon’s argument went beyond standard reasons like speed, agility or a flatter management structure. He suggested that teams tasked with innovation should be tightly sized to match the tight focus expected of them.

“True competitive battles are fought at the detailed segment level,” he wrote. “It’s not just about investment banking or investment banking healthcare; it’s also about having the right team to win in healthcare drugs or medical devices. It’s not just credit cards or even wealthy brands; it’s the Chase Sapphire card.”

Expanding bureaucracy is not inherently suited to this level of focus, he said, so it must be constantly kept at bay. The tactic he suggests: Creating small teams dedicated to the task at hand.

“When a management team wants to accomplish something new, like creating a digital account opening process that covers nearly every area, often everyone on the team says ‘we’ll get it done,’ which means they’ll add it to the long list of tasks they already have on hand,” he wrote. “But when the effort is 1% of most people’s work, it will never get done. You need a team that is 100% dedicated to the mission, and everyone else is supporting them.”

Support for teams comes in the form of centralized systems such as data platforms or AI tools. Dimon noted that these resources “must be company-wide and easily distributed, which may necessarily mean they’re large.” Dimon wrote that if consensus was reached on which systems to invest in, they would be more likely to be “reusable and highly efficient,” reducing the risk of them becoming artifacts of bureaucratic bloat.

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