Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

"Ted Williams, in his book The Science of Hitting, talked about how he carved up the strike zone into different zones and only swung at pitches that were in his sweet spot."

Concerning the "The Science of Hitting" by Ted Williams, I am very familiar with the book as I used to love to compete in and play baseball.

The point of all of this is you've got to know your strike zone. You've got to know what it is you're willing to swing at. If you know where the greatest possibilities are, then it becomes a vital, important part of our job to simply ignore everything else.

Like in baseball, if we swing at things that can only perform a low levels and offer a slim margin of success, why bother with them? The answer is that we shouldn't.

What is the job of a pitcher in baseball? To throw the ball in such a way that the batter thinks it's in his sweet spot, and at the last second it will move out of the zone the batter thought it would be in. It's when the pitcher makes a mistake that the ball is thrown in the spot that he's looking for. The result is the batter is successful.

We need to know what Buffett is terming his "sweet" spot in our businesses. We get pitches from advertisers and marketers all the time, and they can make it look like what they have is something we definitely need; just like a pitcher in baseball.
does.

Or we start to think outside of our core business and values, where we don't know if the offering is in a good zone to swing at or not. It's beyond our expertise.

As Buffett has said, we don't need to be right about a lot of things, we just need to be right about a few big things during our managing to be successful. It's the endless swinging at bad pitches that can bring a company or a manager down. We shouldn't move outside our core business, values or expertise. If we do, we're relying on the one pitching to us as being either honest or understanding our business.

We can't afford to believe either. There are many dishonest, as well as well-intentioned people that can destroy you or your business. We protect ourselves by knowing what zone we are willing to swing in and laying off of the rest.

Other Buffett Resources:

Wisdom of Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett, investor

Warren Buffett: The trouble with being a legend

Warren Buffett: 'I told you so'

Company growth

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