"In evaluating people, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. If you don't have the first, the other two will kill you."
This is an amazing thought. Yet when you listen to many people talk today, they throw around the word "talent," as if that is an answer to a company's problems.
As Buffett says, "intelligence and energy" i.e. talent, will kill you without the integrity factor binding them. This is why you can have highly skilled, productive people destroy a company as much as anybody else. Who do you think are the ones that do so much harm and damage to the reputation of business and companies? It's not the dumb, lazy people. They wouldn't even have the ability or initiative.
Obviously we want people that have all three. But I'd take integrity and attitude any day of the week. People that have that will give you energy; the job skills can always be trained into someone of this stature.
We hear about integrity once someone comes into business leadership, but I think we need to look at it way before then in our hiring processes.
There should be nothing of higher importance throughout a company than the integrity of the people it hires. Almost anything can be overcome by someone that has it. Almost anything can be destroyed by those that don't. It starts at the top.
We need to value, embrace, cultivate, live and breathe integrity in our businesses.
Other Buffett Resources:
MSU students have special visit with billionaire Warren Buffett
Sticking to what you know Core businesses
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