A couple of weeks agoI read the latest book about Tony Hsieh: Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley. I was in a down mood for a few days after reading the devastating story. Last weekend, WSJ published another devastating story about Bob Lee. I don’t know Tony Hsieh or Bob Lee personally. But I do know people like them in Silicon Valley. Frankly, I am not too surprised by the Tony Hsieh story. But I also believe what happened to him is mostly not his fault. He was simply not skilled enough to navigate his extreme success. In fact, most extremely successful people have trouble coping with their situation. Tony is one of the most extreme cases but extremely successful people are often depressed and isolated. However, the world needs them to be functional so humanity as a whole can move in the right direction.
There’s no doubt that Tony Hsieh is a tech visionary and genius who built Zappos and revolutionized customer service. He also seems to be a genuinely nice person who has great intentions to make the world a brighter place. When people become rich and famous, they mostly want to remain the same hard working and kind people. What they don’t realize is that people start to treat them differently. All their ideas suddenly become amazing. People are nicer to them as they become symbols people aspire to. In other words, they are not treated as humans. They are treated as symbols and icons. And that’s the problem. There’s actually a term for it: the Halo Effect. People with the Halo are experiencing a very different world from you and me. Overtime, this could make them less grounded. A common symptom is that they start to think that people are “rude” to them when they don’t get the five star treatment. They could also get harshly criticized because people have unrealistic expectations or simply have different opinions. In a nutshell, the normal feedback loop of human interactions is often broken for the extremely successful people. This Halo Effect affects their judgment overtime and can put them on a path of extreme behavior. Namely, if they start to develop some bad habits, they may not even realize what they are doing is bad and people around them mostly will not stop them from self-destructive behavior until it’s too late. As Jewel said in her letter to Tony Hsieh: “When you look around and realize that every single person around you is on your payroll then you are in trouble.” This is THE sad truth. Now, let me remind you that a non-trivial number of leaders who run our world live with this kind of situation. If we don’t help them to become more self-aware or remove them from a position of power, they are going to make disastrous decisions that have a lot of downstream effect.
Is there a fix for this? In the book, the author mentioned that the visionary Tony knew his own weakness and had right hand men on his side to counter-balanced his impulses in the early years. But his right hand men moved on with their own lives and he couldn’t find a new replacement. I suspect new candidates were intimidated by his enormous presence and if hired, would not have been as effective anyway. Tony was left alone to run his empire and battle his own inner demons. In the end, he became a victim of his own success. I don’t know if there’s a solution, but I do know having people in your life who are willing to tell you the hard truth and keep you accountable could help a lot. We can all use an honest friend to keep us grounded.
No matter what happens good or bad, everyone needs people in their lives to keep them grounded.