Speed Beats Overplanning

“He was a genius not of planning and design but of swift decisiveness driven by instinctively good common sense. Asked whether he ever had anything like a five-year plan for achieving certain goals, he replied, “I don’t have a one-day plan.””

“What worked for Tisch wasn’t having a plan but having a clear set of principles for determining when to buy an asset and when to sell, whether it was a business, a commodity, or a security. He looked for bargain-priced assets whose values were depressed only temporarily typically, because of mismanagement. His overriding requirement was that he would put no more into an investment than he could reason- ably expect to get out of it under a worst-case scenario. Once he owned an underperforming asset, he aggressively rooted out the cause of its stagnation and made the changes necessary to turn the tide, often by gaining ownership control and taking over management him- self. A key element was Tisch’s ability to quickly determine whether an investment met all his requirements and to act fast.”