Fight

hen Dick Fuld took over at Lehman Brothers in 1994, he inherited a contentious culture. Traders and investment bankers would not share ideas and competed for business, putting their own interests above the firm’s in nearly every instance. In Fuld’s own words, published in Knowledge@Wharton in 2007, “The early Lehman Brothers was a great example of how not to do it. It was all about me. My job. My people. Pay me.” But by the mid-1990s, the financial services industry had shifted toward an integrated sales model, and such blatant disregard for teamwork didn’t fly any longer. Fuld made unity and collaboration priorities at the firm, nudging them along with employee incentives. By the time of its collapse, in 2008, Lehman reportedly had one of the strongest cultures of teamwork and loyalty on Wall Street. As Fortune had noted in April 2006: “Fuld has incongruously turned Lehman into one of Wall Street’s most harmonious firms.”