Like Jamie Dimon, AT&T CEO says if you attend a meeting, you need to show up prepared—he ‘craves’ people who don’t just sit back and observe

AT&T CEO John Stankey has little patience for meeting-room wallpaper. In a recent joint interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on LinkedIn, he said he wants people who arrive ready to contribute, not just take a seat and nod along. One of the company’s cultural rules, he said, is simple: don’t walk into a meeting without doing the homework.

His standard is blunt. A point of view, in Stankey’s telling, has to rest on facts, information, and data. Otherwise it’s just noise. And if someone has nothing constructive to add, he suggested the bigger problem may be who was invited in the first place.

Dimon agreed with the basic premise and took it further. He said leaders should make room for disagreement and uncomfortable comments, even the kind that put the “dead cat on the table.” He also said he’s never bothered when someone tells him he’s wrong, because the real goal is to do the best job possible for clients, the country, and the company.

The two men also compared notes on how AI is changing preparation. Stankey said he is starting to question whether reading is still the best approach, since AI-driven conversation lets him consume information faster in a more directed way. Dimon said he uses Gemini or Google to “deep dive” quickly, though he still tries to do his previews before meetings.

There’s a useful tension here. Dimon has spent years preaching preparation and attention, and Stankey is pushing for sharper, more active participation. The stock charts in the background make the contrast harder to ignore: JPMorgan is up more than 17% over the past year, while AT&T is down about 12%.