Tony James

Army or Costco or a huge Swiss bank, for that matter.

And I think my style is, there's certain principles that I have around which those kind of smaller elite investment organizations react well to.

I mean, one of them is robust debate.

There's, you know, lack of hierarchy, lack of status hierarchy, not just organizational hierarchy.

So that if we're talking about a business, I want you to argue with me.

I want you to challenge me, but you've got to be able to, and I want to be able to challenge you, but I got to do that so that you don't get insecure or hurt feelings and creating a culture where you can have robust debate because you're all in it together in a search for truth.

And people don't take it personally.

Um,

is not so easy.

And you really want to be very direct about this because the more indirect you are, it's so inefficient.

You're not really saying what you're thinking.

It takes weeks to get around to it.

So robust debate is a big one.

Lack of hierarchy is a big one.

I feel so strongly that you have to model the behavior that you want your people to have, which means you've got to work as hard as they do.

And it extends into personal values and things as well.

I think it's running an investment organization like Blackstone, I think you almost have to be a really good investor.

I know there'll be exceptions to that.

But our firm, where you earn your chops, your respect is being able to talk to some of the best investors in the world on an equal footing and you're not losing a step with them.

And similarly, when I go over those investment committees, I mean, if I'm not going to go over them carefully, then the sloppiness will go up a lot, you know, the same amount of care.