I recently heard about Warren Buffet’s approach to scheduling meetings. I can’t confirm this is true (I’ve never met him), but I hear from a reputable source that he usually doesn’t set up meetings more than a day in advance.
If someone wants to see him, they are told to call and set up the meeting when they can see him tomorrow. So if you want to meet with him next Friday, you call on Thursday and say “Can I see Mr. Buffet tomorrow?”
I love the simplicity of the rule: I can see you today if you asked me yesterday, but I can’t fill up my schedule any further in advance. This way he can determine how he wants to spend his time within the context of the next 24 hours instead of booking things weeks or months in the future. Now his schedule is relevant instead of prescient.
Ben
on 21 Sep 09Honestly I doubt this is true. When you play at that level there are a lot of people you have to / want to meet, and they don’t play by those rules because they are busy people themselves (fellow fund managers, CEOs, VCs, high-ranking officials, etc). They need a schedule and so do you.
Besides, what a life it would be for your secretaries if they had to field 1000 calls daily from the SAME people until they finally can get in. It’s either yes or no, and if yes, it’s in 13 days at 2 PM. Not “call back every day until you get to come the next day”. That’s madness.
Bryan
on 21 Sep 09Great, for him.
I hate to say this, but he’s Warren Buffet. You make your schedule around him, period. There are very very few people in the world like him.
What works for him almost certainly does not work for everybody else.
Michael Troy
on 21 Sep 09Hold on. Let’s get some perspective here.
That’s all very well and good for Mr Buffet. How about for me? If I did this, clients would basically laugh in my face and I would miss out on some very important meetings and appointments. Meetings that help me put food on the table let alone build a portfolio.
Interesting but hardly relevant for but a handful of people.
Frankie J
on 21 Sep 09Jason,
Unlike Buffet, we all know you only take meetings in bathtubs with girls.
-Frankie
P.S. I want to be you when I grow up :)
Matthew
on 21 Sep 09ahahahahahahahahaha! ^^
Tom G
on 21 Sep 09I’m just about finished reading “Snowball”, a biography about Warren Buffet; this is a great book that I highly recommend.
He a strategic thinker who makes plans that take decades to unfold and harness a concept similar to the power of compound interest.
He has annual meetings with the people he puts in charge of his companies. He also has annual meetings with close friends, partners and investors also planned far in advance.
I’m sure many of his meetings are arranged on short notice, espescially to take advantage of unexpected opportunities, but he certainly arranges a lot in advance.
That said, I think its a good idea to reserve lots of time for unplanned activity. I personally never schedule meetings on a Friday; I like to reserve this as float time to take advantage of last minute time requirements. I try to keep Monday mornings and the first hour of my day unscheduled.
Juiced
on 21 Sep 09I wonder if his doctor allows him to call one day in advance and make a booking? Goes for dentists/car services/everything else.
Sometimes I wonder how practical these ideas you talk about actually are.
Eric H
on 21 Sep 09Easy to do if you: a) are on Warren Buffet’s level, or b) so wealthy you can afford to set such policies.
Walt
on 21 Sep 09Between the Mint post and this one, which I suspect was info based on some crazy PR story from somewhere you never verified, you guys are going down the can pretty fast.
Sad days. Maybe the new book will get you back on the front page of the Web 2.0 Digest.
Ack – I really said that? Sorry to say, yep.
Alex Leverington
on 21 Sep 09When you’re at that level you do whatever you want.
Folks who talk about annual meetings, consider this in the context of a 3rd party requesting a meeting with Warren. If you limit things to meetings of 5 or less which don’t require travel on his part, it’s really not a bad idea.
David Andersen
on 21 Sep 09Sometimes, in the zeal to change all the rules, one can just end up looking idiotic.
Tobin Harris
on 21 Sep 09This fits nicely with the concept of making decisions as late as possible (also a component of agile). Nice to see this applied to personal productivity.
I’d have difficultly getting away with it though :S
Krabe
on 21 Sep 09This information is useless to me. How the information about Buffet’s approach could be possibly applicable to any of us in any way?
Ben
on 21 Sep 09He still needs to meet with Bill Gates. With the CEO of GE. With the head of NASDAQ. Etc etc. These people aren’t calling him 40 times to see if he can meet them tomorrow.
Alfredo
on 21 Sep 09They (Bill Gates or the CEO’s) wont be calling but their secretaries will, when Bill wants a meeting, it will tell the secretary to schedule one, and the secretary will be phoning all days until Buffet can have the meeting.
When you are so on the TOP there are a lot of people under managing your work time to fit in your “i do what i want”-schedule. And if the secretary cant do this… she gets fired!
Mark
on 21 Sep 09I guess he probably has 2 rules for this:
1) If you’re on his short-list or are his peers, then you can book in at any time. 2) If you’re not on the list, get phoning until you are!
Interesting post – does get you thinking about how far in advance you can schedule something and it still be important though.
Peter Cooper
on 21 Sep 09This is how a lot of doctors work in the UK. Luckily I have a doctor where you can book up to a cpl weeks in advance but I’d say half the surgeries here have a “book in the morning” policy to see a doctor – so you have to call up at 8am to get an appointment for the same day. They won’t let you book any further in advance than that.
Recently there was a news story about a surgery that routinely has a line of 20 patients outside in the morning as they can’t get through on the phones reliably to make appointments. Good luck with that social medicine idea America ;-)
Martial
on 21 Sep 09A lot of work in Africa (and parts of Asia) is done this way, only a lot of it is even same day. It is rare to set up a meeting well in advance in, say, Nairobi. You just call and if they have a free hour they’ll say “come over now”.
I’m not talking about rural Africa. I’m talking about urban elites, highly trained professional people with busy lives. But they know if they want to see you and have no fear of saying “now”.
However, one thing that has happened to me more than onece is that the person I’m heading to meet gets a call from a government Ministry for a meeting…now. But, and here is the beauty of this approach, I can call someone else or even wander through the building until I find someone I want to talk to. “Sure, I have a free hour. Come over now.”
JF
on 21 Sep 09Folks who talk about annual meetings, consider this in the context of a 3rd party requesting a meeting with Warren. If you limit things to meetings of 5 or less which don’t require travel on his part, it’s really not a bad idea.
Right, that’s what I’m talking about. Yes, he has certain meetings scheduled far in advance (annual meetings, board meetings, staff meetings, etc). But if someone on the “outside” wants to see him, it’s a 24-hour notice sort of thing.
Again, this is just what I heard, I can’t confirm it, but it is interesting to hear that this is common place in parts of Africa and China.
Jay Owen
on 21 Sep 09I am an enemy of meetings as much as many who read this blog, BUT I am just not sure how this would work. Man invented the calendar system for a reason – to know when things are happening. I am not sure how Buffett would operate this way, much less the common business owner.
Steve
on 21 Sep 09Obviously Bill Gates doesn’t have to phone 40 days in a row to get a meeting with Warren Buffett.
Assuming this thing is true, then Buffett’s schedule for the day after tomorrow is empty (well, unless it’s Christmas – I assume some things are fixed). Think what that means. If Bill Gates wants a meeting, and Buffett wants that too, then it happens. Straight away, without having to cancel anything else.
I bet if you’re Warren Buffet, you need a lot of flexibility to deal with things as they arise. He can’t miss a deal with Goldman Sachs just because his whole week has been booked solid for months. So he’d have to cancel someone. I have a lot of respect for anybody with the honesty to say, “I won’t schedule a meeting that I can’t commit to, and I can’t commit to this”.
That said, if I was Warren Buffett giving someone tens of billions of dollars of my money to spend, and they needed me to commit to a meeting next week because they’re travelling and their schedule needs to be firm, I’d at least think about it. So maybe Bill Gates gets special treatment, who knows.
Lauren
on 21 Sep 09Since I am anti-matter to Warren Buffet’s matter, it is safe to say that nothing that applies to Warren Buffet’s scheduling policies applies to mine. So far the most effective way that I’ve discovered to cut down on meetings is to be unemployed.
However, if Warren Buffet wishes to confer with me tomorrow, I shall make myself available.
observer
on 21 Sep 09the stanford medical hospital follows the same appointment policy…
Ben
on 23 Sep 09“They (Bill Gates or the CEO ’s) wont be calling but their secretaries will, when Bill wants a meeting, it will tell the secretary to schedule one, and the secretary will be phoning all days until Buffet can have the meeting.”
Sure. Then the secretary tells Gates “hey I finally got him, cancel whatever you have tomorrow, I guess you had nothing important anyway, right?”.
People here are incredibly naive. Naive post, naive comments.
Mike
on 25 Sep 09Jason, I actually had the amazing opportunity to meet Warren Buffett in person when I was in college. He gave a talk to a bunch of college and b-school kids and while in the lunch line I approached him and asked him to comment on why and how he has been so extraordinarily successful in leading the kind of life he wants to live.
I phrased my question this way because I felt most people ask him about his career, not about less tangible things like the topic of this post.
Lo and behold, midway through a quick response, he takes his planner out and laughs, “You’ve got to see this, it drives Gates crazy.” He then casually flips through his calendar like you would if you were trying to find a specific month, and as he does this, I realized that there was only a handwritten entry on maybe one or two days a month.
So yeah, I think that he’s onto something and it would make sense that he makes meetings a day in advance and not much more, unless they are Really important.
To back this up, here is a video I took with my camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehj4qMrcpAc
Melvin Ram
on 26 Sep 09Great video Mike.
laurence
on 26 Sep 09Chip Castle
on 27 Sep 09I love this approach. Regardless of whether Buffet schedules his time like this, it’s a simple approach that focuses spending your time on things that are truly relevant. Your best post in weeks!
This discussion is closed.