At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the late Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel, Catch-22, over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have – enough.”
Fallen Heroes
Rajat Kumar Gupta, Managing Director of McKinsey & Company from 1994 to 2003, had a career to envy for. IIT Delhi, Harvard alum, he was the first foreign-born director of the storied management consultancy firm, McKinsey. He was on the Board of Directors of companies such as Goldman, P&G. He is the co-founder of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. At his peak, Rajat Gupta’s net worth was north of $150 million. Like I said, a career to envy for with one small difference.
He was convicted of insider trading and spent two years in an American prison and one year in supervised house arrest.
Chanda Kochhar, the former MD, and CEO of ICICI Bank, was the role model for people across the country. She joined ICICI in 1984, was a part of the core team at ICICI. She was instrumental in setting up ICICI Bank, rose through the ranks swiftly and became the MD and CEO of ICICI Bank in 2009, first woman to become CEO of a bank in India. She had broken the glass ceiling and inspired a generation of bankers. Again, there was a twist in the story.
In 2018, there were allegations of corruption against her by an anonymous whistleblower. She is now being investigated for fraud running into thousands of crores. Suffice to say, her legacy is tarnished forever.
We have just discussed two cases. There are so many cases where smart people who are in no want of money choose a course of action and see their life’s work come undone.
This is why Heller’s response “Enough” is very important.
WHY DO SMART PEOPLE DO DUMB THINGS
You are generally the average of five people you meet. This is where the age-old wisdom of having good company starts. Now, you may think $150 million is a good amount of money and it is but it may not be for someone like Rajat Gupta. He regularly interacts with people who are global MNC CEOs, promoters, silicon valley wizards, and all of a sudden that net worth does not sound like much. We generally compare ourselves to people we aspire to become, not to someone lower on the totem pole.
Other times, people just want to game the system and see if they can get away with it. There are a lot of people who it seems have gotten away with ill-gotten wealth and continue to elude law makers across the world. Sometimes, you think you are smart enough to game the system and take a shortcut to increase riches.
It also ties in with how you identify yourself. If your identity is deeply embedded in your net worth, you will do everything in your power to acquire more.
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH
The question remains though, How much is Enough?
In a world that increasingly pushes the envelope when it comes to consumerism, excesses (Wolf of Wall Street movie is a good example), how much is really enough.
I do not have an answer to the part, How much is Enough, but maybe a better approach could be to invert the problem.
Like I wrote here, can we reverse engineer the solution to this problem? Instead of asking How much is Enough, can we ask
How much is the bare minimum that you absolutely cannot compromise on?
What is that one thing that you will not compromise on?
Or the best test, Can I sleep peacefully?
Once you have set the benchmark, you can keep improving on it, add to it incrementally and increase your margin of safety. Though I do not have an answer to the “Enough” part of the question, I do believe if we have the lower threshold in place, it will help us stay grounded, lest we cross some lines which we are not supposed to and end up becoming cautionary tales.
Awesome article… Today I felt your article is short, the way it kept me attended to read more and more…
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