When Lloyd Blankfein was attacked as a Wall Street fat cat, little did people know of his precarious childhood in the public housing projects of Brooklyn, and a high school so chaotic he didn't feel safe enough to use the bathroom. Harvard was a total moon shot, and his outsider status never wore off. 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 an intelligence that found talent and ideas in unlikely places.Street Wise is a delightfully honest, sharp and often very funny reckoning with Blankfein'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 harmonising 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. Blankfein is famed for his calm hand on Goldman's tiller during the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, and that story is told in full here among many other decisive episodes.A marvelous blueprint for wise leadership, Street Wise will inspire and inform readers throughout the global business community, and beyond.
