This little tidbit about Buffet is hard to confirm, as Jason admits in his post. However, I can confirm something like this is common behavior in China. I fir

This little tidbit about Buffet is hard to confirm, as Jason admits in his post. However, I can confirm something like this is common behavior in China. I first experienced it when going to China in 2000 to meet with banks. My job was to convince them to let us modernize their software and provide Internet banking. We would have a meeting setup and present to a room of top officials. These meetings could never be confirmed until the day before. Keep in mind I had to first fly from NY to Vancouver to Hong Kong to get to Beijing with no schedule of meetings, just several that were in constant "maybe" status and no clear dates. A typical meeting (once I cleared the previous evening's dinner meeting, also unscheduled, to be sniffed out) would be a vice-chairman, the head of IT, a few others. Then we'd go to a big lunch. If they liked what they saw, word got to the Chairman and he would join us at lunch, we'd get to know each other a bit and then if that suited him, have a meeting with him after lunch. After quite a bit of this, it became clear this was a pattern. In years to come, I learned to accept that all meetings were in flux and decided the day or only hours before. It turns out to be very effective for them in several ways. The multilayered approach allows for quick vetting before access to the decision maker. And the short scheduling approach allows them to constantly reshuffle the deck. But, of course, as with Buffet (if indeed its true), in China, this behavior is exhibited most by those with the power to do so. The rest of society plans several days or weeks in advance.