An Efficient Use of Time
I’ve always thought Bloomberg LP’s success was driven as much by paying attention to the customer as building technology.
There’s a good story that illustrates the emphasis Mike Bloomberg puts on clients that I heard this week.
It came from Lloyd Blankfein, the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, who shared the take on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast with hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway.
Blankfein said that early in his career the firm where he worked leased a Bloomberg terminal and put it on his desk. It was meant to be shared with others and initially he couldn’t figure out how to operate it.
So instead of leveraging the terminal for data, Blankfein started using the screen real estate as a kind of bulletin board to tack up Post-it notes and calendar reminders.
One day the trading desk got a call from someone at Bloomberg asking to speak with Blankfein. Initially, Blankfein declined to take it, probably assuming it was a sales rep.
But the colleague who answered the phone explained it was from Bloomberg the man, not Bloomberg the company.
“We noticed you haven’t turned on your machine,” Blankfein recalled Mike saying.
Blankfein said he was shocked that a) Bloomberg the company was monitoring terminal usage and b) that Mike would take the time to call.
Blankfein remembers telling Mike that it didn’t seem like an “efficient use of his time” to call a junior trader.
Mike explained the company had a policy of calling clients to check in. He said the lessons gained from those calls were invaluable in improving the product.
Blankfein walked away with two lessons in leadership that I think are invaluable.
First: “Everybody on our floor knew that Mike called and that he cared. The guy whose name was on the door cared about whether we were using or not.”
Second: “Here I am 35 years later, telling the story and so now you’re hearing about it.”
His conclusion: “That was a very good use of three minutes of Michael Bloomberg’s time.”
Blankfein said that that story explained to him “how Bloomberg got built.”
It’s a management and leadership lesson that works at any time in any industry.
And it’s particularly timely during the age of AI because it’s a reminder that a personal touch has a long-term impact that can’t be matched by a machine.
That story rings true based on the three decades I spent working at Bloomberg. I saw Mike make internal calls to employees when he had questions and those calls had a similar effect.
Mike would on occasion call the News Product team I ran for almost a decade with feedback about applications our group oversaw. Oftentimes, the observations or questions were about the smallest of details.
But the impact was disproportionately large.
Everyone on the team was aware of those calls because it reminded them that “the guy whose name was on the door cared.”
BRIEF OBSERVATIONS
CUSTOMER SERVICE: Tom Goodwin is a freqent voice talking about how companies are missing the boat when they replace human interation with technology.
WRITING CREATES VISIBILITY: Patrick O’Shaughnessy recently interviewed Dan Sundheim on his podcast and Dan explained that a key signal for him that Anthrompic was a company to watch was reading the essays CEO Dario Amodei publishes. It’s always amazing to me that more executives don’t leverage that tool.
BEING YOURSELF: Love this advice from signull on X. It makes more and more sense the older I get.
THE DOORMAN: Aime Leon Dore is a fancy menswear store in Nolita. They have a guy outfront with an ipad to take reservations. The day I walked by the wait to get in the store was 90 minutes. And of course it wasn’t crowded inside at all. Just selective.
NEVER EAT ALONE: Not sure how in the span of a couple decades we went from “Never Eat Alone” to always eating alone. But it’s clearly not healthy.
Please reach out if you have any thoughts about today’s newsletter. I enjoy hearing from readers. Send me a message if you want to talk or meet up if you are in NYC.
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