“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”
Often we tend to focus too much on intelligence and too little on integrity.
“I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities.
Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.”
I think that the ones you really have to watch are the intelligent and industrious ones. They do not have time to stop wondering whether their goal is sensible or not, and being intelligent, they have means to push towards their goal much further that dumb and lazy will ever be able.
Since we have intelligent vs stupid, I assume industrious is given as the opposite of lazy. So industrious really means hard working.
And hard working can be dangerous. Very, very intelligent workaholics are responsible for some of the most expensive, least efficient work I've ever seen. No matter how hard and difficult, and too complicated things get, they just roll up their sleeves and go to work. And using their super intellect, they can manage it. But everyone else is hurt by that.
Maybe you thought industrious meant inventive, or creative. But if it means only hard working. Then intelligent and hard working is a dangerous combination. Often successful but at a huge cost. Smart and lazy is just as often successful, but without those huge costs.
When smart and lazy people get hard work, they think of ways to make it easier. That's where we get the old saying that civilization advances only thanks to lazy people. Hard working people just put up with however hard or inconvenient work is, lazy people get creative.
The earliest evidence located by QI appeared in January 1933 in a periodical called “Army, Navy & Air Force Gazette” based in Great Britain. A passage attributed to German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord described the placing of officers into four classes.
> Often we tend to focus too much on intelligence and
> too little on integrity.
Maybe because integrity is virtually impossible to objectively evaluate for a candidate who you've got limited time to assess (aside from some extreme examples perhaps).
I guess you could incorporate some sort of formal integrity test [1] into your hiring process but my impression is that those are costly and controversial. Do companies actually use them...?
I agree. Integrity is mostly subjective. It has two meanings:
1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
2. the state of being whole and undivided.
Some Christians would consider anti-homosexuality as a model for integrity, and how can you argue with that? They in fact are protecting integrity of the Bible. They are at least honest about it.
When something is said, it needs to be put in correct context. What Warren Buffet was talking about probably meant loyalty, honesty, and consistent work ethnics and attitude. It should be clearly stated in order to have an objective measurement.
Also, I find organizations putting Integrity as part of their motto distasteful. I don't know, maybe I just don't like any kind of mottos... These things are just generically "good." They don't mean shit when just posted on the wall. Might as well post something like "I'm good, trust me" or "don't be evil." I agree with Mitt Romney - corporations are people. He's right. Both are inherently hypocritical. Never trust what a person says, even yourself, do good and be good. Actions speak the loudest. Seriously, fuck those posters! I hate them so much.
> Also, I find organizations putting Integrity as part of their motto distasteful.
If you have to officially state that integrity is something you value, you've already lost.
That it was part of a scummy company's "values statement," after they "merged" with my great company -- selling the deal to shareholders on a CEO deal they broke after a year, and then breaking up the company and selling it all off to float their drowning businesses -- was PARTICULARLY galling.
Maybe because integrity is virtually impossible to objectively evaluate for a candidate who you've got limited time to assess
I would go even further and say that it's virtually impossible even over long periods. As a graduate from a military academy, the ostensible goal was graduating "Leaders of Character" with significant emphasis on "integrity" and "honor." I walked away feeling that the program did not perfect the evaluation.
At the end of the day it's usually a "gut feel" as much as I hate that, and the perceptiveness of the screener really is pivotal.
An integrity test works exactly once. The first time you do it, you can see the candidate for who he is. Pass, fail... you've measured it.
Then, other candidates learn of the integrity test. And they try to game it. They see you drop the wallet, they make a point of giving it back regardless of what their true impulse might be.
So I don't think you can effectively test for these things, unless you hire so rarely that word never really spreads.
Haha! Got a chuckle out of the Wikipedia link. Sounds like pseudo-science (obviously if he answers that his favorite color is red and not blue he's some sort of shifty klepto!).
Integrity also means different things to Warren Buffett than it does to other people. Ripping someone's face off in a business transaction is a desirable quality to Warren Buffett.
> Integrity also means different things to Warren Buffett than it does to other people. Ripping someone's face off in a business transaction is a desirable quality to Warren Buffett.
From the letter Gates was talking about (I've read about the 1st 1/3 of it over the last couple of days), integrity would be why Warren Buffett bought a major insurance company on a handshake and a one page document. No pre-audit. No financial review.
He trusted the guy.
In my opinion, that's the same definition of integrity everyone else uses.
I don't know which deal you are talking about but Buffett likes quick handshake deals because the longer he waits the more likely the seller will retain professional M&A advice and therefore raise the price (to something more fair for the seller).
One of Buffett's proudest achievements was paying pennies on the dollar for an immigrant's bootstrapped furniture business.
"Let’s look first at insurance, Berkshire’s core operation. That industry has been the engine that has
propelled our expansion since 1967, when we acquired National Indemnity and its sister company, National Fire &
Marine, for $8.6 million. Though that purchase had monumental consequences for Berkshire, its execution was
simplicity itself.
Jack Ringwalt, a friend of mine who was the controlling shareholder of the two companies, came to my
office saying he would like to sell. Fifteen minutes later, we had a deal. Neither of Jack’s companies had ever had an
audit by a public accounting firm, and I didn’t ask for one. My reasoning: (1) Jack was honest and (2) He was also a
bit quirky and likely to walk away if the deal became at all complicated.
On pages 128-129, we reproduce the 11⁄2-page purchase agreement we used to finalize the transaction.
That contract was homemade: Neither side used a lawyer. Per page, this has to be Berkshire’s best deal: National
Indemnity today has GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net worth of $111 billion, which exceeds that
of any other insurer in the world."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is specially prevalent on the financial industry. It seems it's specially easy to make a lot of money in the short term if you're exceptionally intelligent and don't have integrity in the way -- but then you better hit home run quickly, because this potential doesn't last long. That's a hallmark of Buffet's success: he's in it for the long run.
Sorry for the dumb question but I think I'm having a hard time parsing and understanding the quote.
> And if you don’t have the first (integrity), the other two (intelligence and energy) will kill you. If you hire somebody without integrity, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
I don't follow the logic there at all. I think I get the gist of what he is saying (without integrity, intelligence and energy don't matter) but I don't follow how he got to that conclusion. Can you explain it better?
If they don't have integrity, then intelligence + energy makes them "dangerous" to your company. Think Frank Underwood (House of Cards).. Smart and ambitious, but out to improve his own position, often at the expense of the nation (or company).
If you hire someone who doesn't have integrity, you want them to be dumb and lazy to limit the damage they can cause.
He's saying that if someone does not have integrity, it's better that's they're dumb and lazy so they accomplish less and cause less harm. The tacit assumption is that someone without integrity will make decisions and act on them in ways that hurt the company.
“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”
Often we tend to focus too much on intelligence and too little on integrity.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76790-somebody-once-said-tha...