
Warren Buffet on scheduling meetings - naish
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1928-warren-buffet-on-scheduling-meetings
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jhancock
This little tidbit about Buffet is hard to confirm, as Jason admits in his
post. However, I can confirm something like this is common behavior in China.

I first experienced it when going to China in 2000 to meet with banks. My job
was to convince them to let us modernize their software and provide Internet
banking. We would have a meeting setup and present to a room of top officials.
These meetings could never be confirmed until the day before. Keep in mind I
had to first fly from NY to Vancouver to Hong Kong to get to Beijing with no
schedule of meetings, just several that were in constant "maybe" status and no
clear dates.

A typical meeting (once I cleared the previous evening's dinner meeting, also
unscheduled, to be sniffed out) would be a vice-chairman, the head of IT, a
few others. Then we'd go to a big lunch. If they liked what they saw, word got
to the Chairman and he would join us at lunch, we'd get to know each other a
bit and then if that suited him, have a meeting with him after lunch. After
quite a bit of this, it became clear this was a pattern. In years to come, I
learned to accept that all meetings were in flux and decided the day or only
hours before. It turns out to be very effective for them in several ways. The
multilayered approach allows for quick vetting before access to the decision
maker. And the short scheduling approach allows them to constantly reshuffle
the deck.

But, of course, as with Buffet (if indeed its true), in China, this behavior
is exhibited most by those with the power to do so. The rest of society plans
several days or weeks in advance.

------
rg
Marc Andreesen has testified that he really does this: from
<http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html> (the link is to Marc's
old blog, which now appears to be inaccessible):

"Let's start with a bang: don't keep a schedule.

"He's crazy, you say!

"I'm totally serious. If you pull it off -- and in many structured jobs, you
simply can't -- this simple tip alone can make a huge difference in
productivity.

"By not keeping a schedule, I mean: refuse to commit to meetings,
appointments, or activities at any set time in any future day.

"As a result, you can always work on whatever is most important or most
interesting, at any time.

"Want to spend all day writing a research report? Do it!

"Want to spend all day coding? Do it!

"Want to spend all day at the cafe down the street reading a book on personal
productivity? Do it!

"When someone emails or calls to say, "Let's meet on Tuesday at 3", the
appropriate response is: "I'm not keeping a schedule for 2007, so I can't
commit to that, but give me a call on Tuesday at 2:45 and if I'm available,
I'll meet with you."

"Or, if it's important, say, "You know what, let's meet right now."

"Clearly this only works if you can get away with it. If you have a structured
job, a structured job environment, or you're a CEO, it will be hard to pull
off.

"But if you can do it, it's really liberating, and will lead to far higher
productivity than almost any other tactic you can try."

