Warren Buffett's Remarkably Simple Mantra for Success

Warren Buffett is wealthy, to the tune of $72.2 billion. To put this in perspective, only 67 of the 200 wealthiest countries listed by the United Nations generate a GDP greater than the value of his holdings.

He is also by many accounts one of the hardest-working people in business. According to his biographer, his "vaguely autistic aura" provides him with a keen ability to see and analyze numbers. And when most of us might question the validity of an undervalued company, he sees it for what it really is -- an opportunity.

Buffett is also an incredibly humble, honest and pretty funny fellow.

In 2002, I had the opportunity to hear The Oracle of Omaha speak at Georgetown University. Our small group of aspiring business leaders sat patiently hoping to hear sage investment advice or catch a hint of an upcoming acquisition. The jovial Buffett, however, lamented about his surprisingly humble rise to wealth and provided us with a few simple rules to live by.

Buffett quipping that the only difference between us young business students and him was that while we probably arrived to the venue by foot or in crappy old cars (given the costly tuition at Georgetown), he came on his cushy private jet.

That is hardly a small difference, Mr. Buffett.

He was quick to point out that we had all in fact started off poor, scared and naked. He dismissed the attributes of luck, though he acknowledged the fact that he was fortunate to have been born to supporting parents with means, or as he called it, "winning the fallopian tube lottery."

His career success and wealth, however, was not achieved through chance circumstance. Hard work, conviction and an enormous helping of common sense is what he attributes to success.

But that was not the secret.

Instead, Buffett emphasized that the true secret to success was to live a righteous life, because dishonesty, cruelty and immorality follow you throughout your career, and it is far more difficult to shed than any failure we will ever have.

He suggested that by adopting one simple mantra, all other parts of your personal and professional lives would fall into place:

Never do anything in life if you would be ashamed of seeing it printed on the front page of your hometown newspaper for your family and friends to see.

It is that simple.

There was no top-secret formula for valuing businesses or stock tips. Just be good, do right and treat others fairly.

Of course, Buffett has acquired ownership in a few small newspapers over the past years, so perhaps his goal is to control the front page content of his hometown newspaper.

Alas, I am certain his investment reasoning is far more sophisticated than that.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243601

5 Common Mistakes You Make in a Conversation

Here's how to fix your bad speaking habits that can make or break your career success 

Do you show up to work every day, work to the best of your ability and always strive to be better? Great! But that might not be enough. Because your speaking habits can compromise your potential for career success, even if your performance is impeccable.

Let’s say you have an extremely impressive résumé and you’re interviewing at a new firm for a potential promotion. On paper you’re the ideal candidate and you’re objectively more skilled and more experienced than your competitors. But, during the interview, your conversation gives the interviewer a bad impression and he is forced to go with a more impressive candidate.

Whether you’re interviewing for a new job, trying to land a new client, motivating your employees or making a pitch to land funding for your business, how you speak and hold conversations can make or break you, regardless of how skilled or talented you are in other areas.

Eliminate these five speaking habits before they destroy you:

1. Using Filler Words

Filler words have become so common in our colloquial speech patterns that we scarcely notice we’re even saying them. We start our sentences with the word “so,” never consciously realizing it. We inject our sentences with the word “like,” never thinking about the literal ramifications of its use, and fill every pause with an “um” or an “uh” as an almost involuntary reflex. These filler words seem innocent enough, but if they take over the bulk of your speech, they become distracting and reflect poorly on you as the speaker.

Fortunately you can train yourself to avoid them by making yourself conscious of their use and correcting yourself every time one slips out until your natural speech pattern is free of them.

2. Using Repetitive Vocal Inflections

The inflections in our voice say just as much as the words that are shaped by them. Imagine the sentence “I didn’t steal that car” with an emphasis on each different word within the sentence. “I didn’t steal that car” means something very different than “I didn’t steal that car.”

Too often our inflection becomes repetitive, distorting the meaning and power of our sentences and leaving our listeners uninterested. For example, some people draw into a near-constant monotone, never inflecting any syllable more than any other. Others fall into uptalking, the extraordinarily bad habit of ending every sentence with an upward inflection, like a question.

Add variance and significance to your intonation and inflections.

3. Talking Too Fast

When you get excited, or when you’re nervous, it’s ridiculously easy to speak too quickly. You have a lot to say and you’re trying to get it all out, so the words naturally come to you in a constant stream. Some people subconsciously fear silence and use rapid speaking to cover up any brief pauses that may otherwise result.

It’s far better to speak slowly. You’ll have more time to think about your choice of words; you can use pauses to add impact to your sentences; and most importantly, you’ll come across as a much more confident, in-control person.

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll speak too slowly for your audience, so no matter how fast you think you’re talking, try talking just a little bit slower.

4. Neglecting Your Mannerisms

Everybody has small ticks and mannerisms that go unnoticed and remain insignificant in daily conversations, but these small mannerisms can add up to real annoyance in the context of a professional or public speaking event. For example, if you tend to gesticulate wildly in repetitive motions or if you unconsciously smack your lips at the end of each sentence, your listeners could view you as unpracticed, or worse—unprofessional.

Work with a friend or record yourself speaking to uncover some of the mannerisms you might be neglecting. Breaking these unconscious habits can and will be tough, but once they’re gone, they’ll stay gone.

5. Rambling

Rambling is an indication of nervousness, and it’s especially dangerous in a one-on-one context.

Generally, if you’ve prepared a speech, you won’t have to worry about rambling because you’ll have a specific, dedicated talk track. In a more improvised setting, which demands a back-and-forth between two parties, rambling is a much more dangerous threat. For example, in a job interview, if an interviewer asks a simple question expecting a simple answer and you respond with an extended monologue, your credibility could suffer some damage.

If you aren’t concise, your message will lose impact.

Don’t let any of these bad habits get the better of you. The best way to avoid them is through ongoing practice. So speak in front of a mirror or with a friend you trust, and actively work to suppress these all-too-common tendencies. In time you’ll be naturally free from any of them, and you won’t have to worry about your next conversation compromising your otherwise great chances at professional success.

http://www.success.com/article/5-common-mistakes-you-make-in-a-conversation

Here's The No. 1 Predictor Of Career Success, According To Network Science

            

It has been over three years since Steve Jobs died.

Since then, books have been written and movies have been made.

Each has celebrated his legacy and aimed to share the secrets he used to build the largest company in the world; things like attention to detail, attracting world-class talent and holding them to high standards.

We think we understand what caused his success.

We don't.

We dismiss usable principles of success by labeling them as personality quirks.

What's often missed is the paradoxical interplay of two of his seemingly opposite qualities; maniacal focus and insatiable curiosity. These weren't just two random strengths. They may have been his most important as they helped lead to everything else.

Jobs' curiosity fueled his passion and provided him with access to unique insights, skills, values, and world-class people who complemented his own skillset. Jobs' focus brought those to bear in the world of personal electronics.

I don't just say this as someone who has devoured practically every article, interview, and book featuring him.

I say this as someone who has interviewed many of the world's top network scientists on a quest to understand how networks create competitive advantage in business and careers.

The Simple Variable That Explains What Really Causes Career Success

In December of 2013, I interviewed one of the world's top network scientists, Ron Burt. During it, he shared a chart that completely flipped my understanding of success. Here is a simplified version:

The bottom line? According to multiple, peer-reviewed studies, simply being in an open network instead of a closed one is the best predictors of career success.

In the chart, the further to the right you go toward a closed network, the more you repeatedly hear the same ideas, which reaffirm what you already believe. The further left you go toward an open network, the more you're exposed to new ideas. People to the left are significantly more successful than those to the right.

In fact, the study shows that half of the predicted difference in career success (i.e., promotion, compensation, industry recognition) is due to this one variable. 

Do you ever have moments where you hear something so compelling that you need to know more, yet so crazy that you'd have to let go of some of your core beliefs in order to accept the idea?

This was one of those moments for me. Never in all of the books I had read on self-help, career success, business, or Steve Jobs had I come across this idea.

I wondered, "How is it possible that the structure of one's network could be such a powerful predictor for career success?"

How A Closed Network Impacts Your Career

To understand the power of open networks, it's important to understand their opposite.

Most people spend their careers in closed networks; networks of people who already know each other. People often stay in the same industry, the same religion, and the same political party. In a closed network, it's easier to get things done because you've built up trust, and you know all the shorthand terms and unspoken rules. It's comfortable because the group converges on the same ways of seeing the world that confirm your own.

To understand why people spend most of their time in closed networks, consider what happens when a group of random strangers is thrown together:

David Rock, the founder of the Neuroleadership Institute, the top organization helping leaders through neuroscience research, explains the process well:

We've evolved to put people in our ingroup and outgroup. We put most people in our outgroup and a few people in our ingroup. It determines whether we care about others. It determines whether we support or attack them. The process is a byproduct of our evolutionary history where we lived in small groups and strangers we didn't know well weren't to be trusted.

By understanding this process, we can begin to understand why the world is the way it is. We understand why Democrats and Republicans can't pass bills with obvious benefits to society. We understand why religions have gone to war over history. It helps us understand why we have bubbles, panics, and fads.

The Surprising Power And Pain Of Open Networks

People in open networks have unique challenges and opportunities. Because they're part of multiple groups, they have unique relationships, experiences, and knowledge that other people in their groups don't.

This is challenging in that it can lead to feeling like an outsider as a result of being misunderstood and under-appreciated because few people understand why you think the way you do. It is also challenging, because it requires assimilating different and conflicting perspectives into one worldview.

In one of my all-time favorite movies, "The Matrix," the main character, Neo, is exposed to a completely new world. Once he is, he can't go back. He's an outsider in the new group, and he's an outsider in his old life. He's had an experience that everyone he's ever met would never understand. This same phenomenon happens when we enter new worlds of people.

On the other hand, having an open network is a huge opportunity in a few ways:

• More accurate view of the world. It provides them with the ability to pull information from diverse clusters so errors cancel themselves out. Research by Philip Tetlock shows that people with open networks are better forecasters than people with closed networks.
• Ability to control the timing of information sharing. While they may not be the first to hear information, they can be the first to introduce information to another cluster. As a result, they can leverage the first move advantage.
• Ability to serve as a translator / connector between groups. They can create value by serving as an intermediary and connecting two people or organizations who can help each other who wouldn't normally run into each other.
• More breakthrough ideas. Brian Uzzi, professor of leadership and organizational change at the Kellogg School of Management, performed a landmark study where he delved into the tens of millions of academic studies throughout history. He compared their results by the number of citations (links from other research papers) they received and the other papers they referenced. A fascinating pattern emerged. The top performing studies had references that were 90% conventional and 10% atypical (i.e., pulling from other fields). This rule has held constant over time and across fields. People with open networks are more easily able to create atypical combinations.

The Revisionist Timeline Of Steve Jobs' Success

As a result of pursuing his curiosity in different fields throughout his life, Steve Jobs developed an extremely unique perspective, skillset, and network; one that no one else in the computer industry had. He turned these unique advantages into the largest company in the world by having a razor sharp focus. Within Apple, he cut out people, products, and systems that weren't world-class.

Curiosity-Based Experience		Application
Tinkering with machinery with his father		Understanding craftsmanship and attention to detail
Dropping out of college and sitting in on a calligraphy class		Appreciation of design (Macintosh's varied fonts)
Exploring India and Buddhism		Apple's simple aesthetic
Living on an Apple orchard		The inspiration for the Mac logo
Pursuing his hobby electronics in the Home Brew computer club		Creating the first Mac with Steve Wozniack
Starting NeXT during his wilderness years.		Using NeXT's operating system as a core in the new MAC operating system
Lifelong passion for music (particularly U2, Beatles, John Lennon)		Launch of iTunes

Many are quick to label parts of Steve Jobs' life as the "lost" or "wilderness" years. However, when we view his life in retrospect, we see that his diversions were critical to his success.

What is labeled as the magic of Steve Jobs or the quirks of his character become replicable principles we can all follow.

It is from this vantage point that we can begin to understand the following quote from a Steve Jobs interview for Wired in 1995:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.

It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences.

So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Throughout human history, all societies including our own have created myths that share one common element, the hero's journey.

Here's what the journey looks like according to Joseph Campbell, the originator of the term …

Things are going great. You feel normal and fit in. Then something happens and you change. You start to feel like an outsider in your own culture. You hide parts of yourself to fit in, but that doesn't help. You feel called to leave and fulfill part of yourself, but that has a lot of uncertainty. So, you hesitate at first.

Finally, you take the plunge. You go through difficult times as you're learning to navigate the new world. Finally, you overcome the challenges. Then, you go back to your old culture and have a huge impact because you share the unique insights you've learned.

The hero's journey myth is embedded in everything from our society's classic movies (i.e., "Star Wars") to the heroes we glorify (i.e., Steve Jobs) because it hits on core parts of the human experience.

The field of network science shows us two things. The hero's journey is the blueprint for creating career success. We can all be heroes. It just takes a little faith as you follow your heart and curiosity into unknown worlds.

As Steve Jobs said, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-predictor-of-career-success-2015-1?IR=T