The key to Blankfein's success?

September 13, 2009 | By Jim Kim

The PR folks at Goldman Sachs can pat themselves on the back for the interview the New York Times did with CEO Lloyd Blankfein. It was certainly free of controversy and burnishes the image of Blankfein as only a Times spread can. But it did contain one quite interesting nugget: When the going got tough, Blankfein spent more time talking to the troops.

"In the last year and a half, and particularly in periods of peak stress, when people were wondering what was going on, when the press was as bad as it was, when they were talking about chaos in the markets, almost every day I would send a voicemail to the whole firm."

Blankfein has never been stereotyped as the chatty sort, but this may have set him apart from some of his CEO peers who didn't survive. Granted, Goldman Sachs was in better shape, but perhaps the CEOs of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers would have generated less internal anger had they done the same.

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