Jan Simon's Management Lessons

Upon the last day of ADVIN class, Jan stood up and congratulated us for our hard work and determination. Then he gave us some words of wisdom when managing people, some words that resonated with me in his ALTIN hedgefund class. They are as follows:

1) Care for your employees
2) Take the role of mentoring seriously
3) Understand your responsibilities
4) When you have friends, think you have treasures
5) Management is not a popularity contest; your relationship with subordinates will not be the same as your relationship with your best friend
6) People make errors
7) If people don’t play ball, fire them
8) Stand up for and protect your employees
9) Choose your battles wisely
10) Be very selective when making enemies.

I knew that kind of thing came naturally to me. And that got me to thinking again about my life path, especially upon reading a paragraph from one of my books that goes a little like this:

“The main reason people get stuck in a rut is that they can’t let go of an unhealthy goal, a goal that is not truly in their hearts. Often these goals are core aspects of our self-definition.”

And I thought about my love-hate relationship with banking. It’s all I ever grew up believing that I was. It had become my identity, and it’s pretty scary to leave something like that behind. I think a lunch with a first year helped clarify my dreams. He was asking me for advice on attaining an internship with Pala Investments, the company I worked for over the summer. And as we got deeper into the conversation, he said something surprisingly honest, and genuine: “I just wish I could open up a bar in a great city, and relax, make drinks all night, take it easy.” And then I tilted my head up to the left, my day dream stance, and replied, “I wish I could just campaign for someone I really believe in. Travel around the world, promote him, meet new people everyday, get to know what they are interested in, and find out how my candidate can help them. The energy all around me. That would be really thrilling.”

And that’s when I thought…. I’m making progress.

Annex:

Yang’s Trading Words of Wisdom (from presentation in Jan Simon’s ADVIN class, one which the class could not keep from laughing the entire time - me the loudest):

“The Market is king and the devil. You are nothing.”

“Intrinsic value is crap…You don’t have to know everything about a company. It’s not your love.”

“You know what the 8th Sin is? Overconfidence. Never trust yourself. Just trust the market.”

And some Words of Wisdom from me:

“Considering all that’s happened in the markets these days, we often forget that the truly fortunate are those that wear their gold in their hearts and not on their sleeves.”

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays.