Making the Least Amount of Mistakes

“The goal is not to be the smartest person in the room. It’s to make the fewest mistakes.”

– Chris Powers

We take in things as humans. The more complex it is to explain something or the more complex something is, we associate that with it must be like a smarter version of something or it’s better because it’s complex. Sometimes simple is the best.

A lot of times, especially when I was younger, it’s like you’re trying to prove something to somebody. The immediate thing is let me just try and prove how smart I am, or how right I am, or how good I am at this. You realize really quickly you’re really just trying to avoid making big costly mistakes. The goal is not to be the smartest person in the room, it’s to be the least stupid person in the room. People, you know, they work on things that are really complex because they associate that with being further advanced. When you listen to Charlie or Warren, Berkshire’s whole model is to try and make the least amount of mistakes possible, not to make the smartest decisions possible.

If you wanted to figure out how to build a great company, don’t go read the story of Amazon. Go read about the five stories of the companies that tried to be great and don’t exist. Find out why all that happened and know that side of the story, more than this is everything you do to win. Find out everything that could kill you first, and then once you know that, start crafting a strategy out of that.