Some of my expectations which I had before
reading the book were met. As a founder of Vanguard company John C. Bogle
allocated significant part of the book describing advantages of the mutual
funds and greed of the active managers.
The book is
intentionally simplified, there are no numbers, calculations or anything else.
Its targeting emotions.
There is an
interesting statement on the greed: “… the rampant greed that threatens to
overwhelm our financial system and corporate world runs deeper than money. Not knowing what enough us subverts our
professional values. It makes salespersons of those who should be fiduciaries
of the investments entrusted to them. It
turns a system that should be built on trust into one with counting as its
foundation. Worse, this confusion about
enough leads us astray in our larger lives. We chase false rabbits of success;
we too often bow down at the altar of the transitory and finally meaningless
and fail to cherish what is beyond calculation, indeed eternal”.
With internet at our
fingers, waiting online to serve us, we are surrounded by information, but
increasingly cut off from knowledge. Facts (or, more often, factoids) are
everywhere. Wisdom, the kind of wisdom
that was rife seventy – one hundred years ago is in short supply. Soon we shall
know everything that does not count and nothing that does.
Leadership and
values
A difference between a
leader and a manager? Managers task is to do things right, then as leaders, whose task is to do the right
thing.
