I share excerpts from his Commencement speech at USC.
"What are the core ideas that helped me? The safest way to get what you want is 🏀 to deserve what you want. Earn the deserved trust of the people we work with."
Deliver what you'd want to buy. (Would we want our child to play for that coach?)
At the funeral service, with people there to celebrate the person being dead, the minister said, "It's time for someone to say something about the deceased...nobody came forward...still nobody...finally someone said, "his brother was worse.""
Confucius said, "Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty." It means you are hooked for lifetime learning...without it, you aren't going to do well. 🏀 Learn the game.
🏀 Skillsets required constantly change. Berkshire's achievements followed Buffett being a learning machine..."you can progress only when you learn the method of learning." He advises us to know the edge of our own competency.
Half of Buffett's time is spent reading and another large amount is spent talking with talented people.
🏀 Learn big ideas in big disciplines. Danger! You may know more and upset specialists and cause offense if someone else loses face. ("Now I'm just regarded as eccentric.")
A senior partner told a brilliant young lawyer, "behave in such a way that the client thinks he's the smartest person in the world...or make the senior partner think he's the smartest person."
Cicero said, "A man who doesn't know what happened before he was born goes through life like a child." (Know history of our discipline.) Big ideas need context in a mental latticework.
Think about the inverse. If you want to know what will help India, think what would hurt it. 🏀 If we coached against our team, what weaknesses would we exploit?
What do we want to avoid in life? (Invert) - sloth and unreliability. 🏀 Avoid selfishness, softness, sloth (laziness). Avoid intense ideology as it "cabbages up one's mind." Putting ideology out pounds it.
Iron proscription: "I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject" - lacking enough knowledge about both sides of an argument. 🏀Having an opinion on everything means sharing our lack of information and perspective.
"Avoid self-serving bias." I'm entitled to do what I want. If Mozart couldn't get by with overspending, we shouldn't.
"Envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought." A friend carried cards, reading, "Your story has touched my heart. Never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you." Self-pity is not going to help the situation. 🏀Attribution bias leads to excuses not success.
What about others' self-serving bias? "If you would persuade, appeal to interest not to reason," said Ben Franklin.
Perverse associations. Avoid working under someone you don't admire.
"Objectivity maintenance." Darwin paid attention to DISCONFIRMING evidence. Checklist routines avoid errors.
"Non-egality often works better." Cites Wooden playing the top seven the most. Get more of the practice into those with the most ability.
Think like Professor Max Planck not the chauffeur. We need depth not just superficiality. There is Planck Knowledge and Chauffeur Knowledge. Don't be "all hat and no cattle." Try to get the responsibility into the Planck knowledge crowd.
Excellence will parallel interest. If you don't care, you won't excel. "Whenever we're behind, we work fourteen hours a day until we're caught up."
Epictetus - "every mischance in life is an opportunity to behave well...and learn something." 🏀 "Love our losses."
Epictetus wrote his epitaph, "Here lives Epictetus...a slave, maimed in body and the ultimate in poverty and favored of the gods." He was favored because he became wise.
Grandfather Munger recommended, "Be prepared by anticipating trouble." 🏀 We need a comeback game as well as offensive and defensive DELAY games.
"The highest form of civilization is a seamless web of deserved trust."
Lagniappe: Video Study
DHNo? Was the design a DHO into second screen? If so, the Nets blew it up, but Portland still executed.
Curl and Attack. Harris gets the pindown and reads an edge off the curl, attacking the basket.
PnR and Sink. Off the PnR the Nets get a corner 3 off the sink.
Lagniappe 2: Munger's 10 Rules
