What if your mom worked on Wall Street?

Kids only a Wall Street mother could love
Commentary: Success depends on how we define achievement
By David Weidner, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/story/print?guid…

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Chinese mothers, if you weren’t aware, are superior. Wall Street has the same kind of problem. Bankers and brokers are superior too.

If you haven’t read it yet, Amy Chua’s weekend essay in The Wall Street Journal makes the case that the singular focus of Chinese parents, especially the mothers, to make their kids accomplished students and musicians is better than the Western Wii-first method of raising kids. The essay has caused a stir in suburbs across America. Read Chua’s essay on WSJ.com.

Chua, a Yale Law School professor, argues that keeping kids from playdates, sleepovers, videogames and TV, and accepting nothing less than being No. 1 in every subject except gym and drama, produces the “stereotypically successful” kids.

If this rubs you the wrong way, chances are you don’t have Chua’s hard-driving personality. You also probably aren’t a hard-core Wall Street disciple. Recognizing this is the key to understanding why people in big finance do things that don’t make any sense to us.

Much like the children raised by Chua and those of her ilk, the Wall Street culture is focused on its own brand of stereotypical success. The majority, say 90%, of this success is about money — having it, flaunting it, using it as a gauge for self-esteem.

Like Chinese children, it isn’t enough for Wall Street types to be good at their business; they have to be No. 1. If they’re not or they protest, they’re “garbage,” as Chua once told her daughter. If a banker who falls short isn’t humiliated by his or her bosses, you can bet that competitors are trashing them.

Under this kind of pressure, it’s no wonder competition is so intense, and no surprise that many on Wall Street are surprised and belligerent when challenged about their practices and pay. Reward, after all, isn’t just the measuring stick; it is the validation of superiority.

Consider some of the great names of Wall Street, like private-equity king Henry Kravis, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s (NYSE:JPM) Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS)

For them, the accumulation of wealth and power is paramount, but it’s deeper than simply a career goal. Dimon, for example, learned early on that friendships were less than necessary. He became estranged from his mentor Sanford “Sandy” Weill at Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) in 1998. It shocked him and sent him into a tailspin for the better part of a year.

It’s not that Dimon doesn’t have friends now, but it appears he wants more control. Witness his support and then trashing of President Barack Obama over the last two years. Maybe it was a lack of playdates.

Dimon isn’t the only cold banker. Have you ever seen Kravis smile? Does Blankfein have any deeper beliefs other than the fact he’s doing “God’s work” at Goldman?

By and large, Wall Street’s most successful and powerful have a devotion to their work that is fanatical. They work 24/7. They skip the kid’s soccer games and graduations. They are distant fathers and mothers. They make sacrifices for the job; everything else is negotiable.

Yes, Dimon plays guitar. Blankfein loves the Yankees and Kravis has done some charity work. All are involved in politics, but isn’t that a part of the job? A lot of bankers play golf. Does that make them well rounded?

Affluent or isolated
Surely, all of these financial elites would scoff at the notion that they somehow aren’t balanced in the way that overachieving Chinese children are, that they’re missing something because they are socially limited, athletically stunted or just plain boring.

But I’ve met enough bankers and read enough of their books to know many want to be defined by wealth and power. What else have they got?

Also, I agree with Chua that, like her assessment of the “Chinese mother,” suggesting that everyone is one-dimensional on Wall Street is a sweeping generalization. Given the poverty in China (and the fact that only one student is actually No. 1), it may be true that the “Chinese mother” referenced by Chua is actually a tiny subset of U.S. parents.

Most Wall Street professionals I find are searching for a balance. They want and make time to go to the soccer games. They don’t want to go to work before the kids are awake and come home when they’re asleep. If they’re trading off bigger paydays and promotions, they’re willing to do it.

Like the Chinese kids, they don’t want to spend three hours a day practicing violin or cold-calling potential clients. And some give up altogether.

A few months ago, I profiled six financial professionals who left big institutions for what they saw as greener pastures. Read related commentary on bankers who left Wall Street.

Living the unbalanced life
Nor is the unbalanced life limited to Wall Street. Some people are eminently talented, but many devote every waking hour working for success — whether it be on the playing field, the concert hall, the political arena, the emergency room, the kitchen, the pulpit, you name it.

There’s nothing wrong with this kind of fanaticism, I suppose, as long as it’s honest. We feed the Wall Street brand of success through our cultural lust for money and power. So in a sense we’re partly to blame.

But in the end, whether it be a Wall Street banker or a Chinese mother, there are some big questions about tying self-esteem to values imposed from cultural convention.

Even if we attain success, does it make us better people, and even more to the point, does it truly make us happy?