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Orangutan Theory

Katharine Graham is a legend in the newspaper business, leading The Washington Post as it reported on The Watergate scandal back in the 1970s 📰

She was good friends with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and writes in her autobiography…

[Warren] later told me that he subscribed to Charlie Munger’s “orangutan theory”—which essentially contended that, “if a smart person goes into a room with an orangutan and explains whatever his or her idea is, the orangutan just sits there eating his banana, and at the end of the conversation, the person explaining comes out smarter.” 

Warren claimed to be my orangutan. And in a way he was. I heard myself talk when I was with him and I always got a better idea of what I was saying.

In other words: don’t keep your ideas to yourself.

Run them by other people. Those people don’t even need to respond. Just speaking your ideas aloud will help you evaluate them.

A variation on this is to explain your ideas in writing 📝

I regularly do this to work through challenges in my business. After a few minutes of writing about the problem and possible solutions, I always have a much better sense of what I should do.

Updated: November 6, 2023

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