Management
Don’t beat yourself up over wrong decisions; take responsibility for them: " Agonizing over errors is a mistake. But acknowledging and analyzing them can be useful, though that practice is rare in corporate boardrooms. ... When it comes to corporate blunders, CEOs invoke the concept of the Virgin Birth.” (2001)
Don’t have mandatory retirement ages: “At the Harvard Business School last year, a student asked me when I planned to retire and I replied, ‘About five to ten years after I die.’” (1992)
“Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut” because the answer will be what’s best for the man with the scissors. A CEO is no more likely to get an impartial opinion if he asks outside advisers whether to proceed with a deal, as “ friendly investment bankers will reassure him as to the soundness of his actions.” (1983)
Don’t dawdle: “When a problem exists, whether in personnel or in business operations, the time to act is now. … The time to have considered -- and improved -- the reliability of New Orleans’ levees was before Katrina.” (2006)
Don’t interfere with great managers: “At Berkshire, we do not tell .400 hitters how to swing.” (1994)
Don’t succumb to the attitudes that undermine businesses: “My successor will need one other particular strength: the ability to fight off the ABCs of business decay, which are arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency. When these corporate cancers metastasize, even the strongest of companies can falter.” (2015)
Don’t be greedy about compensation, if you’re my successor: “It’s important that neither ego nor avarice motivate him to reach for pay matching his most lavishly-compensated peers, even if his achievements far exceed theirs.” (2015)
“Don’t worry about my health,” because so much of the company’s success is tied to reinsurance lieutenant Ajit Jain. “Worry about his.” (2001)