The Strategist
The long view, patient, analytical, playing several moves ahead.
Stephen Schwarzman reads as The Strategist, a leader who treats every decision as a move within a longer game. As Blackstone's co-founder and chief executive, and in his appearance on The David Rubenstein Show, he presents as someone who thinks in structures, positioning, and time horizons that outlast any single deal.
“And they can build enormous businesses where there's none, or they can take an existing business and dramatically accelerate its growth. So that's a 10. They can play all positions at the top level. A nine is like really good person. They can execute anything. They're clever. They're hardworking. They're reliable.”
“The structure of the deal, you learn how to protect capital pretty easily. That's not so hard. The first rule is never meet a maturity. So if you're borrowing money, you can almost always pay the interest.”
“If you're negotiating something and you get more money for your team, that means the other side gets less. So my biggest fall short because I really was more of a deal person and not really trained as a manager. You know, sometimes you'd have problems with people.”
“Well, you train them and you coach them and you have them discuss with you difficult situations where they're not sure where to go because sometimes being executives has to do with making the best bad choice that you can. There are two or three different ways to do it.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Stephen Schwarzman”
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