Postcards

Power Point: Have faith in financials

"We will end up with a bank, there is no doubt about that."

-- Wilbur Ross, Chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co. to cnnMoney.com. A major player in private equity, Ross said that although the government rescue of the banking system had delayed his company's purchase of a bank, it was inevitable. Last year the supersmart investor bought H&R Block's (HRB) subprime mortgage servicing unit, and also acquired bond MORE

Execution, execution, execution!

I'll say it again: Execution! It's always been the No. 1 reason why CEOs fail, as my colleague Geoff Colvin and management guru Ram Charan have preached over the past decade. But particularly right now, as growth is so hard to come by and countless bosses are blowing it, there's a rising appreciation of this most critical thing.

At least among the really smart bosses. I noticed it at last week's MORE

Jamie Dimon: No bonuses for you!

"I feel like I'm riding a bronco and holding on for dear life most of the time." That's how JPMorgan Chase (JPM) chief Jamie Dimon described his life last Thursday when he picked up a "Legend in Leadership Award" at the Yale CEO Summit in New York.

No boss, in banking at least, is as candid as Dimon -- as we've learned at Fortune over the years, and the Summit attendees MORE

CEOs step up to a higher calling

Is the role of the Fortune 500 CEO changing? I think it is. Of course, we've never seen so many corporate chiefs gain fame by testifying in the halls of Congress -- and then get skewered on Saturday Night Live. Any leader's nightmare, indeed. But as the world spins out of control, even the admired CEOs (a rare breed!) are feeling a need to step up and broaden their traditional MORE

Can Citi shrink its way to transformation?

That whopping reduction that Citigroup (C) announced Monday -- 50,000 jobs, representing 20% of its work force -- turns out to be the biggest cut by a corporation in 15 years. So say the job-trackers at Challenger Gray & Christmas. The largest reduction before Citi's: IBM (IBM), which set out to eliminate 60,000 jobs in 1993.

Vikram Pandit's shrinking of Citi -- part of "one of the greatest transformations in history," MORE

Power Point: Promote people you would work for

"One of the questions I ask when we promote people is, "Would you like to work for that person yourself? Would you let your kid work for that person?' Very often, companies promote people--they're terrible. Management is hard."

-- JPMorgan Chase (JPM) chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon on the Charlie Rose Show in July. Amidst today's bloodbath in the market, JPMorgan Chase surprised Wall Street with a quarterly profit, and the MORE

Warren Buffett, Meredith Whitney, Carol(s) Brady and Burnett

Featuring Warren Buffett and beyond, there's a wealth, so to speak, of video from last week's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Especially now, with the markets in turmoil, these video segments are worth checking out. There's Buffett on the $700 billion bailout. Buffett on why he expects to make a hefty profit on his recent $3 billion investment in General Electric (GE), and Buffett on gender equality (wise and amusing MORE

Most Powerful Women: The list about the list!

We've spent the last three months slicing and dicing the accomplishments and career histories of the most powerful women in business -- far too many facts and figures to fit into our Most Powerful Women package in the magazine. Here are 10 intriguing facts that we couldn't find space for in print:

Youngest woman to ever appear on the list: Marissa Mayer, VP of Search and User Experience at Google (GOOG). MORE

Power Point: Wear the company jersey

"You want honesty, decency, a work ethic, you want a compassion, you want a deep knowledge about the business. You want them to sweat, wear the company's jersey every day. Very often I also run into corporate executives who talk about the company like it's a third party. You want them to read customer complaints and say, 'God, that's embarrassing,' and call the customer up and say 'I'm sorry.' "

-- MORE

Power Point: Embrace the imperfect capital market

"I think we've got fabulous capital markets in this country, and they get screwed up often enough to make them even more fabulous. I mean, you don't want a capital market that functions perfectly if you're in my business. "

--Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BERK) and billionaire investor, to Fortune's Nicholas Varchaver in his cover story, "What Warren Thinks..." On Tuesday Goldman Sachs (GS) announced that it will receive MORE