How NOT to Lead

CHAPTER 8Money, the Root of All Evil (But It May Yield the Fruit of Success)

I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.

—Steve Martin, The Jerk

In the comedy classic The Jerk, Steve Martin plays a jerk; well, a raging idiot is more accurate. Anyway, he does this exceptionally well. One of the funniest things that his character, Navin R. Johnson, does is stumble accidentally upon an innovative way of keeping a customer's glasses from sliding off their nose. The customer tells Navin, a gas station attendant, “The damn things keep falling.” Navin, who lives to please others, immediately jumps into the gas station garage and affixes a bridge to the client's glasses that will keep the glasses in place on his nose. The client tries them on and is so impressed with them that he tells Navin, “I know people who invest in this type of stuff.” Fast‐forward a bit in the movie, and Navin has a giant house, a beautiful wife, nice socks, and all kinds of useless, stupid crap. He is instantly rich because of the investors and the sales of his little eyeglasses stabilizer. The problem is that the small bridge in the center of the glasses causes the wearer's eyes to drift to the center and focus on the glasses stabilizer, and millions of people become cross‐eyed as a result.

It's a great movie, and if you ...