To method-act the persona
and circumvent the ego

Dress – Although Buffett typically wears nice suits, they are often ill-fitting. Spend little time on your appearance and wear bland, non-noticeable clothing. Turn one side of a collar up or misbutton your shirt, so that your dress is just slightly off, to signify a nonchalance about the way you look.

Speech – Buffett often attributes attending a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking as one the best things he ever did. Find a copy of How to Win Friends & Influence People and follow its advice. Buffett uses folksy, simple tales to get his point across. For instance, he likes to tell a story about a genie who will grant a wish to procure any type of car in the world with the provision that the owner has to keep it for life. The owner would be compelled to take great care of the car. The moral of the story is to take care of your health and body.

Diet – Ironically, Buffett has a limited diet of mostly hamburgers, Coke, french fries, and steaks. He is famously an unadventurous eater and drinks mostly Cherry Coke. Limit your diet to a few American staples while you are Buffet, although for health reasons, we don’t recommend following his diet closely.

Determine your circle of competence to become an oracle – Buffett has spent much of his life studying and understanding business and investing, but he doesn’t presume to understand all businesses. He has developed competences in retail, such as clothing and furniture, and insurance. He avoids high tech because that industry falls outside his circle of competence. Your first step should be to determine your area of expertise. If your experience or knowledge is limited, define it narrowly. Make sure that this area is of value to you and your company. The point is to focus your attention on what you understand and learn more about it to become an expert.

Develop your circle of competence – Spend a half hour to hour every morning reading up on your circle of competence. Find experts in that area and arrange to learn from them. Buffett first learned about insurance by visiting Geico and dropping in unannounced on the CFO. Take this as an opportunity to meet new people both inside and outside your organization.

Write a narrative – Once you’ve developed your circle of competence, write a narrative about its history, how it works, and why it is important. Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder reports are famous for Buffett’s thoughts on business and investments because he uses them as an opportunity to teach. Find these on the web and use them as an example to write your own.

Develop your reputation – Use your circle of competence and narrative as the base for building your reputation. Stay away from decisions outside this circle and always be mindful of how your actions and words will affect your reputation. Buffett often advises his peers to act as though their conversations are being recorded.

Find ways to teach – Based on the activities alone, find opportunities to teach others about your circle of competence. The purpose of the teaching moments is to sincerely help your audience, not for self-aggrandizement. Seek to understand the causes and implications of some pressing work issues and schedule lunch-and-learns, presentations, or general meetings to impart your knowledge.

Build self-maintaining/generating systems and methods – Buffett uses the businesses in Berkshire Hathaway to fund each other and create more revenue. His success has been founded in using assets to create assets. He also likes businesses that can be run by a “ham sandwich,” meaning that they have a great business model and can almost run themselves. Work with your team to take stock of all your assets and brainstorm how they can be leveraged to create more assets. Some ideas to consider are setting up databases of reusable marketing content or a self-service website. For every asset you create, determine how it can reused to create more assets. Be very frugal about expenditures that can’t generate more assets.

Plan for unplanned events and risks – Acquaint yourself with the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb which discusses catastrophic risks. With your team, review all your projects and brainstorm all possible risks and conduct a scenario planning session. Also consider acts of God and other major events. Rate all your scenarios from likely to highly unlikely and develop plans to deal with all the scenarios, not just the likely ones. Make sure you have a plan B for when crises occur and expect them.

Use tit-for-tat for favors – Buffett is famously frugal, keeping a very small corporate staff and having a modest lifestyle. He also likes free stuff. Buffett uses the favor system among his friends to get many things for free. For instance, he manages the investments of Carol Loomis, and she writes his shareholder reports. Start doing favors for your colleagues so that you build a base of people who owe you. Call in favors when appropriate.

Delegate work – Buffett’s preferred management method is to choose the right person for the job, make his expectations clear, and then delegate, offering lavish praise along with high expectations along the way. He rarely gets involved in the management of his companies. Short-term mistakes and underperformance are ignored if they will change in the future. His expectations are high over the long-term. Review your own workload for tasks you can delegate with minimal oversight. Ensure that these include high-status items and that you assign them to the right people.