A Bill Gates Way
April 12, 2015 2 Comments
3 Things Gates Learnt From Buffett
October 18, 2014 Leave a comment
Few people in the US are more successful than Bill Gates. But that doesn’t mean the billionaire knows everything. There are still important business lessons to be learned by America’s richest man -and who better to learn them from than Gates’ friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett? Earlier this year Gates traveled to Omaha for Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting. He outlined the three most important lessons he learned from Buffett.
Look at the Big Picture
When Gates first met Buffett, his immediate instinct was to focus on the surface of his success: picking and investing in stocks. But Gates quickly learned that key to Buffett’s success runs much deeper -it’s about the big picture of a business. “He has a whole framework for business thinking that is very powerful,“ Gates writes.
Be Honest with Shareholders Read more of this post
Buffett’s Productivity Hacks
October 16, 2014 Leave a comment
One day Buffett went up to his pilot named Steve and jokingly said to him that “the fact that you’re still working for me tells me I’m not doing my job.You should be out going after more of your goals and dreams.”
To help him with that, Buffett asked Steve to list the 25 most important things he wanted to do in his life.Then Buffett asked Steve to review each goal and choose the five most crucial ones.After considering a moment, Steve drew circles around five fantastic goals, confirming with Buffett that yes, indeed, they were his highest priorities.
“And the rest?What about these other 20 things on your list that you didn’t circle?” Buffett asked. “What is your plan for completing those?” Steve knew just what to say.”Well, the top five are my primary focus but the other 20 come in at a close second,” the pilot said. “They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently.”
Buffett suddenly turned serious.”You’ve got it wrong, Steve,”he said.”Everything you didn’t circle just became your ‘avoid at all costs’ list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top five.” Read more of this post
Lessons From ‘Business Adventures’
August 17, 2014 Leave a comment
Bill Gates recently revealed that his favourite business book is Business Adventures, a 1969 collection of New Yorker articles by John Brooks that illustrate the formation of the modern American corporation. Here are some of its key lessons that are still applicable today:
Innovators need to keep innovating
Gates writes that one of the most instructive stories in the book is the article, “Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox.” After the Xerox 914 hit the mass market in 1960, “xeroxing” a document soon became office parlance. Five years later, Xerox brought in $500 million in revenue. Move a few years into the future, Xerox’s leadership became comfortable resting on its laurels. This attitude would eventually lead to huge losses in the late 1970s as competitors started releasing their own photocopiers. But because Xerox executives didn’t think these ideas fit their core business, they chose not to turn them into marketable products. Others stepped in and went to market with products based on the research that Xerox had done. Gates says, “I’m not alone in seeing this decision as a mistake on Xerox’s part.” Read more of this post
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