Tony James

Totally.

I completely agree with that.

And I always bent over backwards to minimize bureaucracy and process and hierarchy.

Yep.

And so I had, at one point, I think 56 direct reports.

Oh, wow.

You were the Jensen before Jensen.

Trying to minimize hierarchy.

because with hierarchy comes bureaucracy.

And I'd learned from DLJ that, in contrast to Credit Suisse, that putting more controls in doesn't necessarily protect you.

That a lot of it, if you have good people and you trust them and you hold them to very high ethical standards and that becomes the behavioral norm,

That's much better than having lots of watchers and watchers of watchers trying to check every little thing that you do.

Totally.

And so Credit Suisse had all kinds of ethical lapses.

DLJ had none.

But they had immense controllers and processes and whatnot.

DLJ was scalable.

Totally.

So I kind of brought that attitude to Blackstone.

Well, I'm glad I did because if I hadn't committed myself, I probably would have been harder to let go.