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The Apocryphal Fifth “Commandment” of John Whitehead


Matt Levine again mentions the “commandments” 1 laid down by former head of Goldman Sachs John C. Whitehead and linked to a Business Insider post spelling out the nine such commandments.

Wait, nine? Why nine? It should be ten! 2

I had copied my list from the The Partnership, by Charles Ellis. The 2008 book which I have viewed as fairly authoritative on all things Whitehead related.

Never content to be a one-trick pony, Whitehead put out another set of guidelines or tactics for IBS business development in 1970—and these were ten commandments :

  1. Don’t waste your time going after business we don’t really want.
  2. The boss usually decides—not the assistant treasurer. Do you know the boss?
  3. It’s just as easy to get a first-rate piece of business as a second-rate one.
  4. You never learn anything when you’re talking.
  5. The client’s objective is more important than yours.
  6. The respect of one person is worth more than acquaintance with 100.
  7. When there’s business to be done, get it!
  8. Important people like to deal with other important people. Are you one?
  9. There’s nothing worse than an unhappy client.
  10. If you get the business, it’s up to you to see that it’s well handled.

Business Insider helpfully lists their source, Whitehead’s 2005 autobiography, which I own and cite below.

To clarify our objectives, I set down this advice to new-business men in a memo, one that one of our all-time best new-business men still has on the wall of his office:

  • Don’t waste your time going after business we don’t really want.
  • The boss usually decides—not the assistant treasurer. Do you know him?
  • It’s just as easy to get a first-rate piece of business as a second-rate one.
  • You can never learn anything when you’re talking.
  • The respect of one man is worth more than acquaintance with 100.
  • When there’s business to be done, get it!
  • Important people like to deal with other important people. Are you one?
  • There’s nothing worse than an unhappy client.
  • If you get the business, it’s up to you to see that it’s well handled.

And lo and behold, nine it is. Ellis’ fifth seems to be rehash of the first business principle 3, for whatever reason. Given how much more I like the Whitehead version, I’m sticking with it going forward.


  1. Scare quotes as the term commandments is super apocryphal. Per Ellis, Whitehead explicitly avoided the term in his original business principles, even going to fourteen from ten to not come anywhere near the religious term. Ellis' use of it to describe the later IBS memo seems to be for color for modern readers. ↩︎

  2. In a particularly dorky past life, I even had a copy of the ten printed out and kept in a folder on my desk at work. ↩︎

  3. Citing the Partnership again:

    • Our clients’ interests always come first. Our experience shows that if we serve our clients well, our own success will follow.
     ↩︎

#goldman #quotes