I think one
of the most important things is to find individuals who look at change as really
a time of opportunity, rather than fear that change, as most people
do.
Worth: You write that you expect more consolidation in the
banking sector. Do you foresee banks merging with banks, or situations that are
more along the lines of the Citigroup model, in which institutions come together
and offer more than one type of service?
Weill: We’re going from a period where it was an opportunity and an advantage
to manufacture the products you sell, to a period where it’s an advantage to
have distribution, but with the ability to buy and distribute third-party
products. With open architecture, you might not even sell your own products. So
that’s why we’re getting out of the asset management business, by and large,
from the perspective of manufacturing, although not from the perspective of
managing people’s assets.
If you believe in globalism, like I do, then a
company has to be a low-cost producer of good, quality services and products,
and that will lead to consolidations among companies within countries, and it
will lead to consolidations across countries. You need to be able to reach the
ultimate consumer with the lowest possible price.
Worth: Talking about consolidation, one of the ways you can look at the last
third of your book is as an account of your experience learning to control a
large, sprawling organization with a lot of moving parts, while undertaking
mergers and experiencing other sorts of turmoil.
Weill: I don’t think mergers are turmoil. Mergers need a good leader who can
make decisions and who is fair, to end up with the best quality management.
Nobody knows better who is a good manager than the people operating out in the
field. If they think you can’t make up your mind, if there are two people
sharing the same job and they think one is awful and they think one is
unbelievably good, I think that causes a lot of other people to leave. I think
you’re better off making decisions soon, even though some of them will be wrong,
because you can move forward.
Worth: Is there any limit to the size of an organization that can be overseen
effectively?
Weill: There may be, but I don’t think we’ve come anywhere close to that
point. If you think about the growth opportunities, when our market share is 2,
3, 4 percent in some countries that are growing at double the rate of growth of
the U.S. and four times the rate of Europe, there’s the opportunity to get much
bigger.
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