I love coming across Warren Buffett interviews that I’ve never seen and/or read before. Especially when they add a new wrinkle to our understanding of a man who’s spent the last few decades of his life under the microscope.
Today, let’s take a closer look at Buffett’s inner scorecard — which he discussed at length during an October 15, 2007, interview with Maclean’s.
“I’ve got an inner scorecard. My dad had one and he was a huge influence on me.”
Warren Buffett has long championed living by an inner scorecard rather than an outer one. Judge your actions according to your own values and ethics — not by the expectations of others or trophies bestowed by the outside world.
Like most advice about inner values, though, this can easily dissolve into fuzzy abstraction: Be authentic. Follow your heart. Blah, blah, blah.
But, as it turns out, Buffett’s inner scorecard is less a principle than a person.
“Basically,” he told Maclean’s, “[my inner scorecard] is being kept according to how I would feel about my dad scoring me … In the end, I want that scorecard to be one that my dad would find acceptable.”
