Happy, Yes. But Satisfied ?..
Some Personal Reflections on Tocqueville’s Twentieth Anniversary
2005 was the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of author of “Democracy in
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Throughout thirty six years of marriage, which coincided almost exactly with my career on Wall Street, my wife periodically asked me the same question: “Are you happy?” Just as regularly, I answered “I am happy, but not satisfied”.
Early on, as my income was still low, the lack of satisfaction certainly contained a monetary element. But soon, it became more complex – a yearning for accomplishment.
There is something tragic, almost terminal, in the state of satisfaction. It irresistibly reminds me of an obscure character of French literature, who claims to have found the secret of happiness: “I gave up”. This is why, during all these years, I have carried my dissatisfaction with some pride, as the sign of a healthy ambition.
Hence, it is with mixed emotions that, in the last few years, I have greeted a growing sense of satisfaction. It has come from measuring progress, if not full achievement, on two fronts:
On the working-environment front: With our President
In an industry environment that has become overwhelmingly driven by “product” marketing and “corporate” strategies, I consider this growing uniqueness a significant achievement, and my first source of satisfaction.
On the clientele front: When I started my career, I almost never talked to clients. My boss and, later, partner Christian Humann did this and let me play the “mad scientist” in my corner -- identifying and analyzing investment ideas, and filling the portfolios with them. Intellectually, this was a thoroughly engrossing period. But it was all abstract: I dealt with portfolios, not with persons. Following Chris’s untimely death in 1981, I was suddenly confronted with a large clientele that hardly knew me. Professional survival demanded that I begin to care about the families beyond the portfolios. As time passed by, I began to learn about their financial affairs, the legal and fiscal structure of their patrimonies – and about their often-complex family relationships.
Today, for many clients whose fortunes we manage, we have become the cornerstone of both their long-term planning and their daily problem-solving. Receiving thank you letters telling us how clients “could not do without us” or that, for the first time, they feel “totally taken care of” does give me a unique sense of accomplishment and, yes, of satisfaction.
As these achievements set in, my personal work life has also changed in a “satisfying” way. I constantly travel between the
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Fortunately, I am not yet completely satisfied. I still need a challenge and I yearn for further achievement.
Two books, in particular, have helped me define what “achievement” really means to me.
One is “The Hungry Spirit”, by Charles Handy. This former oil-company executive, university professor and social thinker argues that everyone, at some stage in life, reaches a point where he or she has “enough”. This means having accumulated enough earthly possessions to enjoy whatever a “comfortable life” means for them and enough money to provide for their future. From a material point of view, they are “satisfied”. The big question, then, becomes what to do with the rest of one’s life and how to satisfy what Handy calls our “greater hunger”. One way to answer that question, according to him, is to ask ourselves what we would like our best friend to say about us at our funeral.
After reading that book for the first time, I had visions (nightmares, really) of my tombstone saying:
François Sicart
1943-20??
He Beat the Dow Jones
Of course, there is nothing wrong with securing families’ financial future. In fact, it is the whole purpose of professional portfolio management, my primary, chosen mission. Somehow, however, to beat a stock market index seems inadequate as a single lifetime goal.
Fortunately, our accomplishments in the service of families, in recent years, have radically deflated my existential fears. Now, I truly have the conviction that it is in good part thanks to our efforts that a number of families have been able to function better, beyond both internal conflicts and external accidents.
But, this is an unending task and a firm’s culture of service needs to be constantly nurtured and shared with new or younger colleagues. This can only be done effectively by personally showing the way.
Another influential book in my life has been “Beyond Survival” by Leon Danco. Danco made a career of advising large, family-owned businesses, and his books document these businesses’ inherited shortcomings and new challenges as they succeed and grow. In particular, he focuses on the how the Founder, historically all-powerful but lonely, needs to change himself and his firm’s organization as the business grows and succeeds. I feel confident that these changes have been largely made.
Case in point: Robert Kleinschmidt, who spearheads our search for new talent, likes to describe our organization today in terms of Tocqueville’s culture of individualism and empowerment:
“We are a confederation of entrepreneurs who work well collegially but who would not work well in a corporate, hierarchic structure. And, while our partners are financially interested in the firm’s profitability, the bulk of their income is tied to the advisory fees paid by their clients. So, rather than thinking they report to me, they know that they work for and are responsible to their clients: it is more the case that I (and all Tocqueville) work for them.”
One interesting exercise Danco performs in his books is to divide an entrepreneur’s life in ages, which he tallies in months, somehow creating a sense of urgency. For example, from memory, the Learning Age is about 300 months, from birth through apprenticeship. I, approaching my 750th month, have entered the Age of Teaching.
Today, there is very little that I can teach my partners and colleagues about the skills of business management or portfolio investing. They are at least my equals and, in many areas, probably more astute or more efficient than I am. But a leader is more than a boss: he also is a cheerleader and a transmitter of values and principles. These ceaselessly have to be infused into an organization if it is not to lose its soul in the constant grappling with the realities of daily business life.
For an “accidental” entrepreneur like me, one of the luxuries of having built a successful organization is a newfound ability to disengage from the tasks that one has been performing out of necessity rather than taste, such as managing people and operations, and to return to his original avocation. In my case, this means spending more time on investment research and client service.
Fortunately, our status as an independent firm allows me to take a long view of these commitments. In July of 2003, we published a letter entitled: “Sometimes Say Never: Why Tocqueville is not for sale”. One of the main reasons for this decision is that none of our partners intends to retire any time soon, and it would be almost impossible to find a place where we have as much fun working – regardless of the income we might generate. We also feel strongly that we have a moral obligation to our clients and particularly to our new and younger partners not to sell out from under them the firm and the culture into which they have invested themselves.
In a world that seems to be taken over by investment supermarkets, our preserved independence, quest for investment excellence, dedication to proactive client service and permanence of our personnel (we have next-to-zero turnover) are an integral part of our uniqueness. It is those qualities, rare as they are becoming, that attract new partners and new clients, and will help ensure our continuous success. With all of my partners, I intend to work hard to see that these unique qualities remain solidly ingrained in our firm.
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Private banking (the personal, service-oriented side of patrimony management) is the area of our business to which I feel closest and the one where I believe we truly can make a difference. It will never produce the huge (though often ephemeral) profits or bonuses of some other areas of banking. It is the tortoise to the hares of investment banking, leveraged buy-outs, private equity and the like. On the other hand, it offers the prospect of a truly fulfilling career to those who engage in it.
Jay Hughes, a well-known lawyer and adviser to wealthy, global families, once told me that “one should enter private banking as one enters religion”. Every religion needs practitioners and preachers. Hopefully, I intend to be both practitioner and preacher at Tocqueville Asset Management for a long time to come.
François Sicart
February 15, 2006
New York, NY 10019