Jamie Dimon says the bigger your job gets, ‘the less you know—literally.’ The CEOs too insecure to admit it are the ones who get into trouble

Jamie Dimon, one of the banking industry’s longest-serving CEOs, has thoughts on why some CEOs rise to the occasion while others flounder—and it has little to do with how much they know about business.

Dimon, who has served as CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank by market cap, for more than 20 years, said on the Master Investor Podcast earlier this year, that more than anything, insecurity is one of the biggest threats to a CEO’s career and their company’s success.

As Dimon puts it, when executives climb the corporate ladder, they often go from being an expert overseeing one area of the business they know well to a generalist responsible for other areas of the company they know less well. 

“The bigger job you get, the less you know—literally—about the job,” he told the podcast’s host, Wilfred Frost.

Some CEOs handle that transition well, he said. They seek out people with expertise in areas they lack and don’t get embarrassed when they don’t know something.

But for others, this change is a recipe for insecurity. 

“It becomes PowerPoints, you know, make them look good, don’t tell them the bad news. And that is what causes the problem,” he........

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