Wisdom, Virtue and Some Common Sense
In one of the best TED talks I've seen, here is Barry Schwartz:
The talk applies to everything we do but (staying on subject) I'm going to talk about its relation to business.
In my post The Real Causes of the Financial Crisis, I talked about how misaligned incentives led the system astray. But even if you properly incentivize people to do the right thing, that doesn't mean everything is going to work out. In my previous post, I left it at "However, there's no perfect solution." But now I'd like to elaborate.
Dick Fuld, Jimmy Cayne and other financial execs had significant share ownership relative to their personal net worth. In other words, their interests were strongly aligned with shareholders. But that didn't stop them from making bad decisions that were not only harmful to their company, but bad for society as a whole.
Optimally, you want management that doesn't need incentives to do the right thing. Good incentives can help, but they aren't going to cut it. Financial managers in particular need risk aversion ingrained in their personality. They need to be willing to stray from the herd and not follow the crowd. They need to have the wisdom, as Barry Schwartz described it, to do the right thing.
In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you. ... If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy. — Warren Buffett
In terms of business and finance, you can't find a better example of a wise person than Warren Buffett.
As an investor or an employee, you want a business leader who is passionate about their company and the product they are selling—not about the money.1 Qualities like this can be very difficult to determine. Buffett not only shares them, but he's good at seeing them in others (one of the major reasons he is so successful).
In business school, you're not taught to have character. You're given the numbers, the statistics, the "how to" in a step-by-step fashion. But sometimes, its better to focus on common sense instead of what the figures say. Wisdom, virtue and common sense: all things that can't be taught, no matter how prestigious the school.
One last note — if I were the shareholder of a company that has received TARP funds, and will now have salary/bonus caps at $500k, here's what I'd think: 1) if management gets paid a little less while we're receiving a safety net from our government, that's fine. 2) If one of my managers wants to jump ship so he can get paid more somewhere else, then great. It turns out I didn't want him at the company in the first place.