Berkshire Beyond Buffett(94)
Given globalization, it will be inviting to enlarge Berkshire’s acquisition universe. The timing may be propitious, as the accumulation and flow of intergenerational family wealth that occurred in the United States during Berkshire’s early decades is recurring across Asia and Latin America. But when going global, the need for centralized internal control and conglomerate reporting will intensify.
A final managerial challenge is recognizing that, even if all of Berkshire’s traits are desirable, the values will inevitably conflict. Fechheimer once closed its Cincinnati plant—where it had operated for more than a century—and moved to lower-cost San Antonio and ultimately shuttered that facility. How should managers balance cost savings with community impacts? Should the decision be for managers at Berkshire or Fechheimer?
How should managers at Clayton Homes or MiTek evaluate an acquisition that will automatically result in plant closings or layoffs? Berkshire shuns hostile takeovers yet gives autonomy to its subsidiaries. So what should happen if a subsidiary proposes a hostile bid, as the Pritzkers occasionally did at the Marmon Group and David Sokol did several times when building MidAmerican Energy before Berkshire acquired it?
Or suppose a conflict arises between entrepreneurial expansion and a modest financial structure. For instance, what is the prudent level of debt to fund expansion of the core fleet at NetJets? What is the right number of flight simulators to build market share at FlightSafety? Or, for Shaw Industries, what’s more important, the value of autonomy in a decentralized organization or the cost savings that accrue through vertical integration and more centralized oversight?
Berkshire culture offers guidance on the trade-offs within its own value system. Managers have authority over all decisions except those affecting Berkshire’s reputation or capital allocation. Managers have free rein, but it is based on informed consent and earned trust; breaches warrant revocation, including replacing CEOs. Berkshire is ruthless on ethics.
Bottom line: all of the foregoing questions belong to the managers in the first instance subject to overruling by Berkshire at its prerogative. And this reveals the ultimate meaning of “owner orientation” at Berkshire. As Lubrizol chief executive James Hambrick explained in an interview for this book, neither he nor his colleagues have employment contracts; they all serve at the pleasure of Berkshire, and they are all answerable to it.39
Skeptics of the durability of Berkshire point to Teledyne, Inc., a conglomerate begun in 1960 by Dr. Henry E. Singleton.40 Singleton built Teledyne by acquiring scores of diverse companies, initially concentrated in the sciences but ultimately including consumer products, finance, and insurance.41 Singleton and his co-executives were hands-on managers, active in setting business strategy and deploying tactics for its subsidiaries. Their acumen proved valuable in producing impressive periodic results.
Ironically, they were so valuable that they became indispensable to the organization. In the years after Singleton’s 1989 retirement, the company was vastly reconfigured. It was first stripped down by spin-offs and divestments and the remainder merged into Allegheny Ludlum Corporation in 1996.42 Then in 1999, Allegheny Ludlum spun off two businesses, one in consumer products, the other primarily in electronics and aerospace. The latter, today’s Teledyne Technologies Inc., has grown through acquisitions under the leadership of Robert Mehrabian, former President of Carnegie Mellon University. It runs science and technology businesses not unlike those of the original Teledyne but is an entirely different company.43
Berkshire culture is so different from that of the old Teledyne that such a fate is unlikely. Berkshire is thoroughly decentralized, with managers commanding vast autonomy. All operating decisions—concerning employees, warehouses, manufacturing, sourcing, marketing, distribution, pricing, and so on—are made by the managers of the respective subsidiaries. There are no meetings at headquarters and no budgeting or planning exercises. There is no corporate bureaucracy.
Berkshire managers, entrepreneurial by nature, are empowered to tend and widen their corporate moat as they see fit. Berkshire’s decentralized culture and elongated time horizon are not the idiosyncrasies of its current chairman but features fused into its operations. With Singleton’s centralization at Teledyne, he was essential; with Berkshire’s decentralization, Buffett is not.
Another comparison can be made with General Electric Company, a great conglomerate on about the same scale as Berkshire. Thomas A. Edison co-founded General Electric in 1892 by merging his fourteen-year-old electric company with two others. The culture at today’s GE still owes much to Edison’s values and leadership, especially his spirit of invention. Today’s GE also reflects the stamp of John F. (“Jack”) Welch, GE’s celebrated chairman from 1981 to 2001, who announced that GE would stay in businesses only when they were first or second. He said all other businesses would be closed or sold. This imperative transmitted a survival-of-the-fittest objective, contributing to a highly competitive corporate culture. Dog ate dog, and the fittest survived. Those who did not measure up were driven into the dustbins of GE history.