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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has had enough of managers who let bureaucracy<\/a> \u2014 excessive red tape, overly complicated approval processes and rigid rules \u2014 thrive, calling the issue a quiet threat that slowly destroys organizations and creates problems. <\/p>\n \u201cBureaucracy, complacency and arrogance will take down a company,\u201d Dimon said<\/a> during the Norges Bank Investment Management\u2019s investment conference earlier this week. \u201cBureaucracy is like the petri dish of politics and everything else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Dimon has led JPMorgan since 2006 and grown it from a $130 billion company into an $830 billion giant and the world\u2019s largest bank by market value. He said that internal dysfunctions often determine whether a company survives or fails.\u00a0<\/p>\n While bureaucracy tends to spread in massive organizations like JPMorgan, which employs over 300,000 people globally, Dimon noted it can just as easily take root in smaller companies or individual departments.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dimon said the fix is to address the issue starting at the top by removing poor managers. In other words, \u201cget rid of the jerks,\u201d or those who prioritize following procedures over achieving results.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey admire a problem,\u201d Dimon said. \u201cI say they\u2019re like good bureaucrats. They like the process, not the outcome. Whereas I like the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n One telltale sign of bureaucracy is when people withhold information, Dimon said. At JPMorgan, he ensures all relevant materials are shared with meeting participants in advance to prevent this. According to Dimon, keeping information from colleagues can create needless friction.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf [information] isn\u2019t shared properly, I generally just cancel the meeting,\u201d Dimon said.<\/p>\n Even though he runs one of the world\u2019s biggest banks, Dimon has always favored giving critical work to small, tightly focused teams. Tech companies have been moving toward flatter structures with fewer managers overseeing more employees \u2014 Meta\u2019s applied engineering team, for example, reportedly operates with a 50-to-1<\/a> employee-to-manager ratio. Dimon takes the opposite approach. He builds smaller teams because he believes they deliver stronger accountability and better results.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGet the people in the room and work it out. Don\u2019t allow it to go back and forth with groups for six months or nine months or a year,\u201d Dimon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amazon has been fighting bureaucracy under CEO Andy Jassy, who took over in 2021 with the intention of turning the company into the \u201cworld\u2019s largest startup.\u201d In September 2024, Jassy announced plans to increase the ratio of employees to managers by at least 15% by early 2025, requiring managers to oversee at least eight direct reports instead of six.\u00a0<\/p>\n Also in the same month, Amazon launched a \u201cbureaucracy mailbox<\/a>\u201d email, which employees could use to report slow processes and unnecessary rules. In its first year, the tipline received over 1,500 complaints<\/a>, leading to changes to 450 processes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI would say bureaucracy is really anathema to startups and to entrepreneurial organizations,\u201d Jassy said at the company\u2019s annual conference for third-party sellers in September 2025. \u201cAs you get larger, it\u2019s really easy to accumulate bureaucracy, a lot of bureaucracy that you may not see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has had enough of managers who let bureaucracy<\/a> \u2014 excessive red tape, overly complicated approval processes and rigid rules \u2014 thrive, calling the issue a quiet threat that slowly destroys organizations and creates problems. <\/p>\n \u201cBureaucracy, complacency and arrogance will take down a company,\u201d Dimon said<\/a> during the Norges Bank Investment Management\u2019s investment conference earlier this week. \u201cBureaucracy is like the petri dish of politics and everything else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Dimon has led JPMorgan since 2006 and grown it from a $130 billion company into an $830 billion giant and the world\u2019s largest bank by market value. He said that internal dysfunctions often determine whether a company survives or fails.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nCanceling meetings and favoring small teams<\/h2>\n
Amazon is also cracking down on bureaucracy<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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