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

I don't worry about what I don't know — I worry about being sure about what I do know.

When Buffett always talks about what he does know, he mentions people will be drinking Coke in 20 years, using Gillette razor blades and eating candy. He said he can fairly accurately predict the amount of profit and growth they'll enjoy over that period of time too.

At the end of that he added another great insight that most of us need to take heed to. He said, "Somebody will make money on cocoa beans, but not me."

Many business leaders are far too concerned about things they don't know, rather than things they need to know.

We've heard the saying before that what you don't know could hurt you, but in business that's not completely true. In business it's what you don't know in your chosen field and expertise that can hurt you; nothing else.

Many people have tried to push Buffett to say that there are many other things he could get into that could make Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) money. He doesn't disagree, but he still won't invest in it.

If he doesn't have enough knowledge about a product that he could reasonably project out the growth and profits over a long period of time, he doesn't know enough about it to make an investment.

The thing that makes Buffett so great is that he maintains that discipline no matter what the condition of the market is.

He simply doesn't bother with what doesn't concern him. If it's not connected to his area of expertise, it has nothing to do with him. We need that same attitude. Why be concerned with irrelevant information? Why be worried over something we really don't know anything about? The answer is we shouldn't!

In the end, we need to be experts in our chosen field or fields of competition. That is where we need to concentrate our efforts on gaining every bit of information about our businesses and markets as we can. If we can maintain that discipline, we will be far ahead of most of our competitors who worry about things they really don't have enough information to worry about.

As Buffett says, "I worry about being sure about what I do know." That should be enough for the rest of us too.