Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs

From the long-tenured head of an institution legendary for its far-sighted culture of success, a candid memoir of global leadership in an age of extreme turbulence

When Lloyd Blankfein was attacked as a Wall Street fat cat, he had to smile, thinking of his precarious childhood in the notorious public housing projects of East New York, Brooklyn, and a high school so chaotic he didn’t feel safe enough to use the bathroom once in his time there. Harvard was a total moon shot, and his outsider status never wore off, there or at Harvard Law. When he struck people as street-y, it wasn’t Wall Street they were thinking of. But if the chip never quite left the shoulder, neither did a wry, resilient spirit, and a lucid, democratic intelligence that saw through airs and found talent and ideas in unlikely places.

Street Wise is a delightfully honest, sharp and often very funny reckoning with the author’s education—in finance, human nature, and the workings of the world. It abounds with lessons—about leading teams of brilliant, aggressive, competitive people and harmonizing them around shared goals; about changing when times are hard and when they’re good; about managing risk; and about knowing a crisis is at hand before it swamps you, and guiding your team to the farther shore. Blankfein is famed for his calm hand on Goldman’s tiller during the global financial crisis, and that story is told in full here, among many other decisive episodes.

Suffusing Street Wise is the author’s deep and abiding respect for the partnership culture of Goldman Sachs. We follow the never-ending work to protect and preserve that culture through all sorts of tumult—the challenge behind every other challenge. He is open about when he and the firm got it wrong, which was often enough, but the creative, risk-taking spirit was never snuffed, even as the failsafes put in place to protect against downside risk to the firm and its clients held when they were needed the most. A marvelous blueprint for the wise stewardship of a cause that is larger than yourself, Street Wise will inspire and inform readers throughout the global business community, and beyond. View Less