Kudos to Gregory Smith for being honest about the changes he’s seen at Goldman Sachs. In their defense, I have several friends who started out with Goldman twenty-five years ago and they believed it to be a place of high integrity at that time. However, if what Smith says is true, and there is no reason to doubt him, the culture has drastically changed.
Smith states that during meetings at Goldman “not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.”
Goldman, and likely many other investment firms, need to revisit one of the golden rules of business:
Nothing matters more than high integrity and excellent customer service.
As Smith so adeptly argues, the client needs to become the focal part of Goldman Sach’s business again. Without that, the business will die. Without that, all businesses die!
We are wise to learn from their mistakes and ensure that we are all doing whatever we can do provide excellent, honest customer care. This is the only way to achieve real success in business and it’s the only way to truly feel good about what you do every day.
