Warren Buffett’s article at Fortune, but most importantly his, Bill & Melinda Gates’ challenge to billionaires to give away 50% of their wealth have people all over the world discussing philanthropy. We already liked his approach to giving – since he didn’t know how to do it, he trusted his buddy Bill Gates’s foundation with the money – but now it’s WOW all over again.
Gadgets that are increasingly online all the time help you multitask – but is that good? Scientists say a loud “no”, according to this New York Times article. There’s reason to be skeptical of either side of this debate, but it does recall one thing: One of Waren Buffett’s overlooked skills is that of saying no to things that would disrupt his schedule, or take time away from quiet reading and “just thinking”, as he says.
“Irony”: High-level corporate strategy consultants need to review their business models to survive. The Financial Times article may be just a sign of worldwide corporate spending cuts, so don’t read too much into it, but the fact remains that the downturn is driving consolidation in what is already a relatively concentrated market (useful chart in the story).
McKinsey Quarterly recently had a series on strategic decision making called “Seeing Through Biases in Strategic Decisions”, of which we highlight two articles and link to one by Harvard Business Review. Taken together, it’s great food for thought when you try to apply this line of thinking to investing and even marketing and advertising.
It seems obvious but Dan Pink makes it interesting in this 2009 TED talk: extrinsic incentives work great for certain situations but poorly for others of higher complexity. His other point, that there’s a “mismatch between what science knows and what business does”, is also important… but trying to bridge this gap can lead to information overload if managers try to cover all the “buzzwords” for fear of missing out on the latest (supposedly) performance-enhancing method.
A LEX column reminds us that Buffett runs Berkshire and for over 50 years has taken calculated risks better than most; he has avoided and profited from most crises including the last one; and he has written and talked extensively about excessive risk-taking, the dangers of leverage and spendthrift economic policies and etc.. And yet he has been soundly ignored by most investors, CEOs, regulators and policy makers.
Munger’s classic speech in 1995 at the Harvard Law School is the quintessential example of the multitude of his mental models. In it Mr. Munger describes 24 “standard causes for human misjudgement” in separate, but then reminds us that these can combine to create potentially multiplied consequences. Since it can happen for good or bad, we’re better off informed and much smarter for the effort.
This 2008 article discusses red flags for Board members trying to detect fraud. For us the article doesn’t give nearly enough emphasis to incentives, but to correct that we’re linking to our Q4 2008 report excerpts. It’s vital to remember that one shouldn’t rely on checklist approaches to CG, fraud, stock research and pretty much anything else involving “systems” that are far from simple.
In the first of a series of posts, this one highlights the classic article by Robert Cialdini: “The Science of Persuasion”. It’s basically a 6-page summary for his must-read book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”. We can’t stress enough how important the subject is – anyone interested in marketing, retail, personal relationships and, well, wants to reduce the risk of being tricked by a Madoff-like scheme should read this book.
A Harvard researcher says that Brazilian CG of about 100 years ago could teach the current-day US (and others) many lessons. What’s perhaps most interesting and thought-provoking: the provisions came from the companies themselves and surpassed – by far – the legal requirements at the time. We’re reminded of Saraiva, which instituted a tag-along provision long before the law demanded it.