Charlie Munger's Address: Deserved Trust

Charlie Munger delivered the 2007 Law School Commencement address at the University of Southern California on May 13th. Munger is a guru in the original sense of the Sanskrit word, a person who conveys wisdom. The transcript of the talk is worth reading very very slowly. The highlights of his speech were as follow (hope you will find it interesting):

He begins the talk with "Safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want. The highest form a civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust." Not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another. That's the way an operating room works at the Mayo Clinic.

Takeaways from his speech are worth discussing:

Firstly, you get most satisfied not when you get your dreams fulfilled but when you achieve a dream that you deserve. Secondly, when you are working in a team, it is the trust that you have in your team members that keeps you moving and attain success collectively. A car can't run with one tyre flat. All need to work together for the same ultimate aim. Nor can the car be driven if all the tyres are desynchronized. That's makes the Mayo Clinic example a notable example. Can an operation be successful when all the pertinent doctors start doing it their own way? I guess not otherwise that would turn scary to observe them having their own will.

The thing that makes the above example even more interesting is when you apply it to everyday life. When you are working on your academic assignments or client projects in a group, you always have a tendency to strive for limelight. Primarily because you are being judged on your contribution to the accomplishment. But what beats me is the fact that how can you segregate and rate the involvement of a single person in the team when it was a team's success.

Also thinking in ideal sense, I wonder how will be such a company to work with or think of, both in function and delivery of results, where people work with trust in colleagues, in company, in customers and in the work that they do. Wouldn't that turn into a real success story? (...some food for thought). Don't the values and charter of a company work towards that direction and serve the purpose? But how many of us have imbibed that into our minds when we started working in the organisation at whatever level and capacity; may that be your college, internship, job etc.? When was the last time you worked in a team and had full confidence in the other members in all ways, viz. intentions, capabilities etc.?


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with regards,

1ks81y.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10, 2007 at 3:50 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.