Bra artikel av Morgan Housel som kastar ljus på det här med att man måste ta vissa människor med alla deras egenskaper. Man kan inte gilla Musks visionära sida och sedan tycka att hans löfte till aktieägare är viktiga, eller Steve Jobs kreativitet och hans sociala (in)kompetens etc. Läsvärt som vanligt:
People love the visionary genius side of Musk, but want it to come without the side that operates in his distorted I-don’t-care-about-your-customs version of reality. But I don’t think those two things can be separated. They’re the risk-reward trade-offs of the same personality trait.
Same for John Boyd.
Same for Steve Jobs, who was both a genius and a monster of a boss.
Same for Walt Disney, whose ambitions pushed every company he touched to the razor’s edge of bankruptcy.
Former U.S. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy once told President John F. Kennedy that trying to go to the moon was a crazy goal. Kennedy responded: “You don’t run for president in your forties unless you have a certain moxie.”
Part of this is realizing that people who are capable of achieving incredible things often take risks that can backfire just as powerfully.
What kind of person makes their way to the top of a successful company, or a big country?
Someone who is determined, optimistic, doesn’t take “no” for an answer, and is relentlessly confident in their own abilities.
What kind of person is likely to go overboard, bite off more than they can chew, and discount risks that are blindingly obvious to others?
Someone who is determined, optimistic, doesn’t take “no” for an answer, and is relentlessly confident in their own abilities.
Reversion to the mean is one of the most common stories in history. It’s the main character in economies, markets, countries, companies, careers – everything. Part of the reason it happens is because the same personality traits that push people to the top also increase the odds of pushing them over the edge.
This is true for countries, particularly empires. A country determined to expand by acquiring more land is unlikely to be run by a person capable of saying, “OK, that’s enough. Let’s be thankful for what we have and stop invading other countries.” They’ll keep pushing until they meet their match. Novelist Stefan Zweig says, “History reveals no instances of a conqueror being surfeited by conquests,” meaning no conqueror gets what they wish and then retires.
Perhaps the most important part of this topic is gaining better insight into who we should look up to, particularly who we want to be and who we want to emulate.
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