Lately, I’ve been diving into the mind and life of Warren Buffett. Obviously, Buffett is a household name these days, well known as both a businessman and philanthropist. But when I started doing my own research, especially listening to the way other people talk about him, I started to develop a new understanding of his ethos and the clues for success that he leaves behind.
Consistency Is Essential as a Business Leader
Every day, Warren Buffett pretty much does the exact same thing. He gets up at the same time, he is always home for dinner, and he reads eight to nine hours every day.
He isn’t reading a bunch of different business or personal development books. He is reading pretty much the same thing every day – things like cash flow statements, market capitalization, financial news and pro formas. Overtime, with a clear focus, he started to recognize patterns in businesses, which allowed him to have an incredibly high success rate when investing in businesses.
So, to break this down a little further, what I take away from that story is that consistency is essential, and to keep it, you have to be willing to master the boredom of success. It’s not flashy. It’s not exciting. He’s learning, analyzing data, and repeating that day in and day out.
How to Determine Your Strength Zone as a Business Leader
But you can’t just pick something at random in your business and then do it consistently and expect success. How do you know what to pick? To answer that question, we’re going to draw on the same inspiration that Buffett does — Ted Williams.
If you’re not familiar, Ted Williams was an American professional baseball player who played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball career as a left fielder for the Boston Red Sox in the mid 20th century, and Buffett has a rare photo of him hanging right outside the door to his office. That location isn’t random – Buffett sees Ted Williams’s picture every morning right before he enters his office. Buffett says:
Ted Williams described in his book, The Science of Hitting, that the most important thing – for a hitter – is to wait for the right pitch, and that’s exactly the philosophy I have about investing – wait for the right pitch, and wait for the right deal. And it will come… It’s the key to investing.
Warren Buffett
If you are going to put your time and energy into developing a core competency, you want there to be a high probability that you know what the outcome is going to be. That takes practice, failing forward (yes, striking out), and learning when you are most likely to hit a home run or at least get on base through trial and error. Once you start to see the pattern of what you’re hitting and what you’re missing, then you start honing in on the hits. Why were they hits? What did you do? What were the other variables? What are the common factors between hits?
The Recipe for Success
So there are two core parts to the recipe for success that both Williams and Buffett followed: you have to learn what to swing at (i.e. develop a core competency area) and then you have to be consistent in that area.
For Buffett, not only is his routine consistent, but the actions in his business are as well – that’s how you create success and build upon it. We can figure out the exact actions that produce the greatest results, and those actions are what we need to do consistently.
Especially when you’re first starting to develop this core competency, don’t try to make your circle too wide. Hone in on where your greatest strengths are before you start to invest huge chunks of time. Then organize your schedule so that it supports working in your strength zone, whether that’s by blocking off time or delegating work or leveraging talent.
As VP of Business Development your strength zone may be creating new business relationships to cross-promote products and services. It might be brand strategy and developing your company’s story for a Director of Marketing. As CEO, it could be inspiring others to join your organization and leading them through change. Whatever it is for you and once you’ve identified it, it’s your job to figure out how you can keep building on that strength zone and then do all you can to keep developing that competency. The more proficient you become in it, the more you can predict when you’re going to hit and when you’re going to miss. It may be a long time, like in Buffett’s case, between swings. But if you stay consistent, you will start hitting home runs!
What is your strength zone? What do you do to strengthen your core area? Are there any pitches you’ve learned not to swing at? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below! And if you want more on this topic head on over to the podcast episode How Ted Williams Taught Warren Buffett to Succeed in Business.
