If you want to be a high-mileage CEO like Warren Buffett, it pays to be humble.
That’s the advice from the Oracle of Omaha, in his final Thanksgiving letter to shareholders as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, released Monday.
Buffett detailed a range of thoughts on the virtues of stewardship, honesty, and what he described as “good intentions” gone awry in attempts to rein in CEO pay.
One broad takeaway was his call to continue learning and growing.
“Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better,” Buffett wrote.
Here are five other lessons Buffett shared:
Stay humble
The 95-year-old has famously run the conglomerate with an unfussy, meat-and-potatoes sensibility for more than five decades. Buffett wrote about the role luck played in his life and work, and how that experience continually honed his sense of humility.
“Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman,” Buffett said.
He also grounded some of his humble inclinations in the luck he had, being a man — compared with his sisters, whom he described as having “equal intelligence and better personalities,” though they faced a much different outlook.
“I was born in 1930 healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male and in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck,” he said.
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Learn from your errors
Buffett said that while he’s made many mistakes, he’s tried to use them as opportunities. “Learn at least a little from them and move on,” Buffett wrote.
One such misstep, he said, was not intervening more forcefully when he saw indications that a “wonderful and loyal CEO” of a parent or subsidiary company would “succumb to dementia, Alzheimer’s or another debilitating and long-term disease.”
“Charlie and I encountered this problem several times and failed to act. This failure can be a huge mistake,” Buffett wrote, referring to Charlie Munger, his longtime friend and colleague, who died in 2023.
Buffett said that while it’s often not easy, boards need to keep watch for signs of such conditions in chiefs, and that CEOs themselves need to do the same at the units they oversee.
“Directors should be alert and speak up is all that I can advise,” Buffett said in the letter, which ran about seven pages.
Choose the right leaders
Part of Buffett’s call for humility extends to how future Berkshire leaders should expect to conduct themselves — and what they should aspire to.
He said that the company should only require five or six CEOs over the next century.
Buffett wants Berkshire Hathaway, which was a textile producer when he began buying up its stock in the early 1960s, to avoid hiring a CEO who’s there for the wrong reasons: “It should particularly avoid those whose goal is to retire at 65, to become look-at-me rich or to initiate a dynasty,” Buffett said of Berkshire.
Think about your obit
One recurring theme in the letter centered on his assertion that it’s “never too late to improve.”
Another nugget of advice: Work backward from what you want your obituary to say and then “live the life to deserve it.”
The release of Buffett’s third annual Thanksgiving letter to Berkshire shareholders has become something of an event because of his status as one of the world’s most famous investors. He said he plans to continue to address shareholders in an annual letter, though not as CEO. “As the British would say, I’m ‘going quiet.’ Sort of.”
Don’t rule from the grave
Buffett applauded the abilities of his chosen successor, Greg Abel, who is some three decades younger and is due to take over as CEO at the end of the year.
“He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator,” Buffett said.
He wrote about his three children, whom he said possess the “maturity, brains, energy and instincts” to disburse the family’s large fortune. Over the summer, Buffett’s net worth stood close to $141 billion.
After he has died, Buffett wrote, his children will be free to adapt to changes in tax policy and other factors as needed to continue the family’s philanthropic work.
“Ruling from the grave does not have a great record, and I have never had an urge to do so,” he said.
In the letter’s penultimate paragraph, he wished readers a happy Thanksgiving. He then underscored his belief in the power of continual improvement by extending his well-wishes to “even the jerks,” adding, “it’s never too late to change.”
