What Do We Believe In?

What Do We Believe In?

I used to work with a guy named Josh.  I had an unusual history with Josh because I was never quite sure who worked for whom.  Don’t get me wrong, Josh was never insubordinate, it was just that he had his own agenda and I was never quite sure whether he was following his agenda or the team’s agenda as set by me.  I have always preferred to have independent–minded and strong people working for me, so we managed through it all.  One of the things he was fond of saying was that we had to establish firmly what we believed in.  I’m not sure I really understood what he meant by that, but as I reflect on it, it is a critically important notion.

Josh was my deputy for six or seven years.  That wasn’t an official designation for most of that time except at the end, but everyone knew he was first among equals of the people who worked for me.  I need to explain who he was and what he was about to give the full picture here.  Josh grew up in Orlando, Florida, the son of a modest and mostly humble stock broker.  He always said he learned from growing up in Orlando during the boom years that it was valuable to grow up in a place that was itself growing.  There is much truth to this.  Stagnant and waning places give off a negative vibe that permeates its citizenry to be likewise dour.  Growing and vibrant places breed optimism.  Josh was an exuberant optimist.

Josh and I shared a common alma mater in Cornell.  Now Cornell is not in a particularly growing area, but it is in an enlightened area, made so by its enlightened and well-educated residents, most of whom worked for the University. I met Josh early in his career and thought he was a nice outgoing guy who wore his thoughts and humor on his sleeve a bit in excess.  I believe it was that feature of his personality that caused him to be less mainstream than others and probably relegated him to a less central arena in the bank in which we worked.  He was sharp as a tack, but perhaps a bit more effusive than the system generally tolerated.  As often happens, the banking world pivoted and it did so in the direction where Josh was placed.  About that time I was put in charge of that area and Josh became one of my managers.  Josh found himself in the arena which spawned the alternative investment products that dominated the financial scene ever since.  For those unfamiliar with the banking lingo, alternatives are mostly hedge funds and hedge funds were becoming big.

One of the things I liked most about Josh was his directness and honesty.  He was self-deprecating to a fault and that made him fun to be around.  There was a humbleness about him that reminded me of his father from the few times I met the man.  It is a strange juxtapositioning that a humble man should be a stock broker, but it is an even stranger one that he should work in the hedge fund space.  What I believe kept Josh grounded was his wife Robie.  Robie was also a Cornell graduate.  Though I know little about her up-bringing, I do know that she is all about family values and keeping it real.  My favorite story that helped me understand Josh’s continued humility involved him coming home late one night from work.  His job at home was to wash the dishes.  When he got home late the dishes were in the sink waiting for him regardless of what he had been confronting on the work front.  He had not eaten yet, so as he started on the dishes, he picked up the kitchen phone and dialed the Chinese restaurant for take-out.  Just then, Robie came in and heard him and hung up the phone.  She told him he was not to be vending out his life.  If he chose to come home late, he needed to prepare his own meal or go hungry…and do the dishes as well.  That always struck me as particularly harsh.  But Josh laughed when he told the story because while he found it an extreme and funny example of life with Robie, he had a hidden respect for his wife over that stand.  Robie knew what she stood for.

When 9/11 hit NYC, I had already left the bank but was still living in NYC.  I called Josh that night because he and the gang that had worked for me worked down in BT Plaza on Liberty Street.  It was the building that had suffered the eighteen story gash in its façade from the collapsing World Trade Center 2.  I wanted to be sure Josh had gotten out intact. He answered his home phone and said he had had a harrowing exit, leading his team out and around the waterfront to the ferry landing for New Jersey.  Indeed, the next day he was pictured on page 3 of the NY Post covered in soot and walking with his briefcase with his team following him.  When I asked Josh about his plans, he said Robie forbade him from ever working in Manhattan again, so he would talk to the bank about setting up his business in New Jersey.  If they refused, he would quit.  He was going to talk to them about it the next day.  I counseled him against it and said it would be too much for them to handle the day after a calamity like 9/11.  He did not take my advice.

Several years later, Josh sold his highly successful hedge fund business back to the bank (he had gotten a big piece of the equity in the deal when he relocated it to New Jersey).  It basically set him up for life at a very young age.  Knowing Robie and her strong ethical backbone, I always wondered what she thought about all of that.  There are lots of ways to look at a fact set like that.  Josh was now off running the Food Bank of New Jersey.  Knowing Josh, he had plenty of rationales for why the outcome was just.  Knowing Robie, Josh was still not allowed to order Chinese take-out with his winnings.

I recently heard a news report about something going on in the Trump Administration.  One can barely turn on the TV these days without hearing about Trump shenanigans.  In fact, today’s conversation on Morning Joe was about what to make of the fifty (50) tweets rendered by President Trump over the weekend.  Even for him, that’s a lot of tweeting.  And of course, most of it was to denigrate others, starting with the deceased was hero, Senator John McCain.  John Meacham, presidential historian and author of The Soul of America was saying that there comes a point where we must all decide what we believe in.   I think America needs a Robie.  We need someone who can be crystal-clear about what we stand for and what is right versus wrong.  We have lost our compass and need Robie to reset it for us.