Bonus: Rick Rieder on Collaboration and Culture

I noticed several times you didn't just say I did this. I decided to do something. You kept going back to the plural. You said we. — How important is that team part of it? How much are you able to tap in the breadth of the institution? How does that work with like the actual people on a day-to-day basis? — You know, I don't think anybody's ever asked me and to talk through that and think about like I have a lot of people have been with me. My uh co-cio's been with me for 34 years. It's pretty extraordinary. — That's a real strong statement. — 34 years. And then I've brought a lot of people from when I was at the cell side of hedge fund. And so that's been, you know, creating that consistent fabric that we all like I know if I'm out of the office or I know if you had to make a decision like I know there's a cohesive thought process but then we've meldted that with a lot of young people that have come through and you know I've always been a believer in the way you hire is you know you bring people up organically and then you hire very specifically for a certain role at a senior level but you build a sense of culture around if you're growing training young people and then could very much see the succession plan in front of me in terms of gosh there's so many people that I rely on that I look at you know we'll make a decision on you know we should add more mortgages or sell credit or what have you and then I go to my team and say okay where should we do it in what portfolios and then they go to work and I don't know I'm very lucky makes it fun and particularly you know what I've learned in this uh business there's a lot of downs and you know when you go through the downs and we said, you know, we were in this idea and, you know, was our was our strategy flawed? Was our implementation flawed? — And I don't know, it's good to work through it. And — it's good to know who's in the foxhole with you when things hit the fan. — Oh my god, for sure. — You said you don't know how it happens. I think you actually described a bit how it happens because you came back to the culture of it — and I will say I'm now not quite at five years at Morgan Stanley, but that's one of the things that Morgan Stanley really emphasizes that the culture of the place. You know, it's funny. When I was first interviewing for job, I'll never forget people would say, "Make sure you fit in with that culture or this culture. " I thought it was all garbage. Like, I thought it was, you know, and I'll find my place, some pretty gregarious person, area, what have you. — But then you realize there is distinct culture and uh, you know, by the way, cultures within cultures, — and it is a real thing, and it, you know, it's how you run your whole franchise that it's integral. Hard Lessons is an original series from Morgan Stanley. For the full episode with Rick Reer and an extended audio version, visit morganley. com/hardlessons.