Pleased But Not Satisfied

Sokol ran MidAmerican Energy and later NetJets under Berkshire and was widely assumed to be Buffett's successor, and then in 2011 he resigned over his personal purchases of Lubrizol stock before Berkshire acquired the company. I am putting that in the second sentence rather than leaving it out, because anybody who knows who he is knows it, and a book recommendation that steps around the obvious thing is worth less than one that does not.

The book itself is about operating. It is short, it is self-published, and it is almost entirely about standards: what you measure, how often, what you do when the number is bad, and how quickly.

The title is the whole argument. You can be pleased with a result and unsatisfied with it at the same time, and the day those two collapse into each other is the day the business stops improving.

I run our numbers that way now and it is the least popular thing I do internally.