After a recent article in NY Times, I realized that it’s a perfect analogy. The smartest people, when motivated by money, get so high that they venture into unsafe territory. They kinda know its unsafe, but even internally it doesn’t feel like crossing the red line.
It’s not even about the strength of characters, when incentives are aligned 99:1 against your biology, you can try to work against it, but you most probably stand no chance.
It takes enormous willpower to quit smoking explicitly because the risks are invisible and so “small”. It’s not only you have to fight against this irresistible urge, BUT there’s also nobody on “your side”, except for intellectual realization, of which you’re not even so sure of.
In the same vein, being a CEO of a big startup, being able to single-handedly choose direction, and getting used to people around you being less smart, less hard-working, less competitive, you start trusting your own decision-process much more. That’s when incentives start to water down through the cracks in the shell. You don’t even remember what feels right anymore, the only thing you know is taking bold actions brings you more power, more money, more dukka. And you do those.
After a recent article in NY Times, I realized that it’s a perfect analogy. The smartest people, when motivated by money, get so high that they venture into unsafe territory. They kinda know its unsafe, but even internally it doesn’t feel like crossing the red line.
It’s not even about the strength of characters, when incentives are aligned 99:1 against your biology, you can try to work against it, but you most probably stand no chance.
It takes enormous willpower to quit smoking explicitly because the risks are invisible and so “small”. It’s not only you have to fight against this irresistible urge, BUT there’s also nobody on “your side”, except for intellectual realization, of which you’re not even so sure of.
In the same vein, being a CEO of a big startup, being able to single-handedly choose direction, and getting used to people around you being less smart, less hard-working, less competitive, you start trusting your own decision-process much more. That’s when incentives start to water down through the cracks in the shell. You don’t even remember what feels right anymore, the only thing you know is taking bold actions brings you more power, more money, more dukka. And you do those.