WARREN BUFFETT: Almost every business has problems, and we’d just as soon the manager would tell us about them.
沃伦·巴菲特: 几乎每个企业都有问题,而我们希望经理能直接告诉我们这些问题。
We would like that in the businesses we run. In fact, one of the things, we give very little advice to our managers, but one thing we always do say is to tell us the bad news immediately. And I don’t see why that isn’t good advice for the manager of a public company.
我们希望在我们经营的企业中看到这种做法。事实上,我们很少给经理们建议,但我们总是告诉他们的一件事就是,立即告诉我们坏消息。我不明白为什么这对上市公司的经理来说不是一个好建议。
Over time, you know, I’m positive it’s the best policy. But a lot of companies, for example, have investor relations people, and they are dying just to pump out what they think is good news all the time.
随着时间的推移,我确信这是最好的政策。但很多公司都有投资者关系团队,他们热衷于不停地发布他们认为的好消息。
And they have this attitude that, you know, you’ve got a bunch of animals out there to be fed. And that they’re going to feed them what they want to eat all the time. And over time the animals learn.
他们的态度是,你知道,你有一群需要被喂养的动物。他们会一直喂给这些动物想要的东西。但随着时间的推移,这些动物也会学会辨别。
So we’ve tried to stay away from businesses like that.
因此,我们尽量避开这样的公司。
CHARLIE MUNGER: What you seldom see in an annual report is a sentence like this: “This is a very serious problem and we haven’t quite figured out yet how to handle it.” (Laughter)
查理·芒格: 你很少在年度报告中看到这样一句话:“这是一个非常严重的问题,我们还没有完全想出如何解决它。”(笑声)
But believe me, that is an accurate statement much of the time.
但相信我,这在很多时候是一个准确的描述。