Warren Buffett It has long been thought that clear writing and clear thinking go hand in hand, with the blank page often being the toughest test of an investor’s understanding.
In 1995, he appeared at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business and was taped for the PBS show “Warren Buffett Talks Business.” Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK) (NYSE: BRK) “Nothing forces you to think and clarify your thoughts like writing,” the president told students.
Warren Buffett: “Nothing forces you to think and clarify your thoughts like writing.”
“Every year, when I write my report, I get these [writing] piece. The blocking isn’t because I’m running out of words in my dictionary. Blocking because I haven’t figured it out yet… pic.twitter.com/3CzlTM5svY
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Buffett said the discipline of drafting Berkshire’s annual shareholder letter betrayed the ambiguity of his own thinking. “Every year, when I write my report, I get these [writing] piece. The blocking isn’t because I’m running out of words in my dictionary. What held me back was that I hadn’t figured it out myself yet,” he explained in comments later included in his book of lectures.
In an effort to keep his writing concise, Buffett clarified in a 2019 interview with CNBC that he believed he was writing directly to his sisters, Doris and Bertie, in order to use plain English rather than Wall Street jargon. He writes that his goal is to give them the information he would want if their roles were reversed, a mindset that helps make his letter widely read beyond investors.
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Buffett also directly links communication to economic value. “One simple way to make yourself worth 50 percent more than you are now is to hone your written and oral communication skills,” he told the students. Even strong analytical talents, he argued, can be wasted if people “can’t communicate it.”
Other U.S. business leaders echo the sentiment. amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) Founder Jeff Bezos It replaced most internal PowerPoint slides with dense six-page narrative memos, saying writing “enhances clarity and rigor of thinking” and that good documents are written and rewritten until logic holds true.
