Work Smarts: What CEOs Say You Need to Know to Get Ahead by Betty Liu

Author:Betty Liu [Liu, Betty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-11-14T08:32:47+00:00

Th

e Th

ree Fs: Fear, Finances, and Flow

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ourselves if we don ’t move ahead. Good fear keeps us on the straight and narrow. Good fears are part of any successful comeback story, that after failure you dig inside yourself to come back better than you were before because of the fear that if you didn ’t, you wouldn ’t be able to live with yourself. Good fear, in general, is part of any success story.

Warren Buff ett, the third-richest man in the world, agrees to multi-billion dollar deals on a handshake. When I mentioned that to him and said that was pretty fearless, he laughed.

“I ’m not afraid of failure in fi nancial matters.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I just know that everything I do isn ’t going to work, but most of the things will and that ’s good enough. If I don ’t do anything, you know, my life would be pretty boring,” he said. “And most of the time I ’m going to be right but not all the time. So that means I ’m not paralyzed by the fact that I might do something wrong. Everybody does something wrong.”

“It sounds like you ’re more fearful of having an ordinary life,” I observe.

“You know that would have been terrible. If I kept selling shirts at Penney ’s, that would not have been a happy life.”

The good fear of having an ordinary life drove Buff ett to accomplish extraordinary things in the fi nancial world. He bought a small tex-tile company called Berkshire Hathaway in the 1960s and turned it into one of the biggest conglomerates in the world, with over 70 companies under his watch and over $75 billion under management. He manages more than the economy of Syria. Buff ett was also famous for his role in taking over the struggling Wall Street fi rm Salomon Brothers when it was swimming under a scandal brought upon by some rogue bond traders. At the time, Buff ett had to testify in front of Congress and uttered the famous line that is replayed at every one of his annual meetings:

“Lose money for the fi rm and I will be understanding, lose a shred of reputation for the fi rm and I will be ruthless.”

Talk about instilling fear.

“Salomon, in the end, really started with two people when you get right down to it,” Warren recalled. “The people that really caused the trouble were just a couple . . . it wasn ’t like you had 8,000 terrible people there.

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“My main job then was to resolve the fact that four very important authorities like the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney, the

[Federal] Reserve and the SEC, all wanted to see us go out of business, and so essentially I ’ve got to say, ‘Why take 8,000 people down because two people misbehaved?’ I would try to fi nd out all the problems that existed and come totally clean about everything that was wrong in the past.

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