Aug

10

10 10 10 by Suzie Welch is a fructiferous but deeply flawed book whose purpose is to help people make decisions. The basic idea is to take any decision, pose the decision as a question, gather data, whether in work, romance, or family and look to see what happens 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years into the future.

Many anecdotes from friends, students, and personal life are given to illustrate the technique. The author in every case decides to make the decision that leaves one in the best possible light in 10 years. No account is taken of the discounted value of time, the randomness of possible outcomes, and the much greater uncertainty of 10 year predictions, or the completely opposite views that intuition and snap judgments a la the pseudo scientist M.G would lead to opposite decisions.

One read the book with pleasure for the insights it gave into Jack Welch's persona and management style. Here he is after 20 minutes of an interview with Suzie saying,"do you have a guy?". There he is telling her having never met her before that her Dr. boyfriend is too boring. Or that he'll kill the people that liked to pleasure themselves at her shift 20 years ago when she was a boss in the night shift of AP. Everything we learn about Jack is consistent with the persona that emerges from his penchant for having Saturday bull sessions with all his assistants and never understanding why some of them would like to spend it with their family instead of talking about golf, deciding which companies or divisions to sell from the silo, or figuring out how the finance company could once more pull a rabbit out of the hat to maintain the earnings streak, ( even in the face of 9/11 where their 3 major divisions were devastated).

One can't help but think what an intelligent all around personage such as S. Welch, who doesn't play golf could have seen in such a person considering the skepticism that she greets every one else with. Some insights in this direction are provided by the opening example where she laments taking her kids to Hawaii for a lecture and can't understand why the wives of the attendees are not friendly to her. The benefits of the trip to the kids, the memories of seeing their mother in a productive activity, the exposure to Hawaii at an early age are not taken into consideration, but she rues the one or two catty remarks about working mothers that the wives make without in any way seeming to realize it's because she is attractive and productive that they dis her.

The book leads one to apply 10 10 10 to market situations. Where will you be in the near term if you put your position on? Will you be close to a point where you can be run out? But more important, where will you be 1 hour from now? Will your set up change? And will you wish to get out with a frictional cost that will offset any expectation that you had at inception? And most important of all, will you ever be able to exit the position if it goes in your favor. One wishes one had applied such decision making to all his positions in derivatives in his career. And the 10 10 10 approach is very good for such things.


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