Brian Moynihan's Playbook for Leading Bank of America

**Brian Moynihan** (0:00)
In a big company like ours, if you have to make the decisions, you're dead. So you have to manage by process. Even the strategic development has to be a process.

**Alan Murray** (0:06)
The WSJ Leadership Institute Presents Leaders. I'm Alan Murray. For nearly 17 years, Brian Moynihan has been at the helm of Bank of America, steering the company through the grueling aftermath of the financial crisis and into a period of record-breaking growth. That makes him one of the longest-serving CEOs around. How did he do it? Moynihan said in this interview that his job is not really about making decisions. At a bank as large as his, he says, most of the decisions should get made by people further down the line. Instead, his job is about creating the right culture and the right processes, so the right decisions get made. Moynihan also has a lot to say about technology. Over the last decade, he's been able to double the amount of revenue his bank generates per each employee. And it's done that partly by reducing employees, but also by growing revenue. But let's let him tell you the story right after this break.

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**Alan Murray** (1:37)
I want to talk a little bit about the past of Brian Moynihan.

**Brian Moynihan** (1:41)
Like the ghost of Christmas past years?

**Alan Murray** (1:43)
A little bit. I mean, you've been doing this job for 17 years, which is almost unheard of in CEO land. It's a pretty small group of people. The average these days is around five or six years. So what's your secret? How have you managed to survive 17 years as CEO?

**Brian Moynihan** (2:01)
Well, I think the number one thing is you have to stay fresh and current, relevant and you have to challenge yourself because across that length of time, from the post financial crisis recovery to where we are today, the environment's changed, the technology's changed, the customers have changed behavior, the team has changed and you always have to be thinking about what's next. At the same time, you have to create a level of consistency that people could not think you're changing the company every few years. So I think the lesson I learned looking back or thinking I learned looking back was, we've had a consistent set of principles. The company is very different how it operates under them. But if you ask people, they'd say, oh, you're doing the responsible growth and these types of things, 10, 15 years later and you are, but it's changed dramatically from what it was. You have to change, but you have to keep it consistent.

**Alan Murray** (2:49)
So if you talk about the change, there's a good book, by the way, written by Claudius Hildebrand on the life cycle of the CEO, that showed that people who've been around for as long as you have, get the best returns for their shareholders. But it's because they have mastered the art of constantly changing.
What's your secret? What are your tactics for constantly refreshing yourself, and your ideas, and your view of the business?

**Brian Moynihan** (3:13)
Well, you start from the couple of pieces. One is you have to have a great team, and you have to be willing to reinvent that team that could help you see the outside. The second thing is we spend a lot of time thinking about from the customer in, and everything we do is from the customer in, that's from the teammate in, from the people who were going to provide the products and services to, and from the person who's got to do it, as opposed to idea out. I was raised as a strategist, I went in business, I did all kinds of deals and everything. It's easy to have an idea, it's a lot harder to get it done. So if you start with a customer, the insights you get, the information you get, whether it's a trading client, a corporate client or a consumer, and you start with your team, listen to who's doing the work. So even on AI, we started with 4,000 teammates have gone through listening sessions just to say, what do you think this is going to do for you? While we're implementing to make sure we're relevant to them.