The Great Leadership of Charlie Munger: Sharp. Right to the Point. And Right.

“I believe in the dis­ci­pline of mas­ter­ing the best that oth­er peo­ple have ever fig­ured out.

I don’t believe in just sit­ting down and try­ing to dream it all up yourself.

Nobody’s that smart…”

- Charles T. Munger

At the end of 2023, we lost amaz­ing busi­ness leader Charles T. Munger.

The qui­eter long-time part­ner, con­fi­dante and friend of War­ren Buf­fett, the two men built invest­ment pow­er­house Berk­shire Hath­away with com­mon sense, integri­ty and a savvy eye for invest­ing in under-val­ued companies.

Char­lie was wise, direct and very fun­ny, as I learned while attend­ing the Berk­shire Hath­away AGM some years ago. I had been look­ing for­ward to hear­ing War­ren Buf­fet but came a way inspired by Charlie.

“The best thing a human being can do is to help anoth­er human being know more.”

Dur­ing Q&A ses­sions, he would respond to ques­tions with one, well-craft­ed sen­tence, mak­ing a very strong point and the whole audi­ence laugh.

Dur­ing a ses­sion break, War­ren said that he had to apol­o­gize for his friend Char­lie — that he had prob­a­bly insult­ed half of the audi­ence but not to wor­ry, because the rest would get their turn after the break.

Inspir­ing authenticity

It was won­der­ful to see such suc­cess­ful busi­ness lead­ers who were tru­ly authen­tic. Peo­ple who were expe­ri­enced, con­fi­dent and relaxed enough in their knowl­edge and lead­er­ship to be them­selves — to be fun­ny in an envi­ron­ment where there’s often a for­mal­i­ty of lan­guage and posture.

That authen­tic­i­ty gave us all a sense of who they real­ly were as peo­ple, and I found that relata­bil­i­ty refresh­ing and inspir­ing. A tru­ly great exam­ple of leadership.

You can read more about Char­lie here in a recent Forbes arti­cle, which talks about the ​“mun­gerisms’ that had an impact on the author as well as the invest­ment com­mu­ni­ty at large: Remem­ber­ing Char­lie Munger: Five of His Most Impor­tant Pieces of Advice.

“Those who keep learn­ing, will keep ris­ing in life.”

There’s a lot to be learned from peo­ple who have accom­plished spec­tac­u­lar things in their lives. From Char­lie I took away with me his abil­i­ty to answer ques­tions very accu­rate­ly, suc­cinct­ly and with humour; and how he was a such spec­tac­u­lar part­ner for War­ren Buffet.

Remem­ber­ing him now makes me con­tem­plate how I could bet­ter lever­age bet­ter Charlie’s style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and be a bet­ter part­ner for our team and our clients.

The Chal­lenge

• How might you be a bet­ter part­ner for cus­tomers, your team and the peo­ple in your life?