---
title: The founder is still in the room
source: https://talkforimpact.com/writing/the-founder-is-still-in-the-room/index.md
lastmod: 2026-09-13
---

# The founder is still in the room

Honouring a predecessor is straightforward. Knowing which moments belong to you is the harder call.

{{< img src="img/writing/the-founder-is-still-in-the-room/01.jpg" alt="Warren Buffett and Greg Abel - canva.com" caption="Warren Buffett and Greg Abel - canva.com" >}}

For sixty years, the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha had one face at the microphone. On 2 May 2026, that changed.

Greg Abel opened the session as new CEO. He welcomed shareholders, introduced the board, made his first formal remarks as the person now running one of the largest companies in the world. Then, roughly ten minutes in, he handed the microphone to Buffett.

Buffett started with Apple. Ten years ago, he said, Berkshire had moved 10% of its assets under the management of a man most investors had barely heard of. That man turned $35 billion into $185 billion, and did it while stepping into one of the most impossible jobs in American business: following Steve Jobs. Buffett looked out at the arena. “How would you like to step into the shoes of Steve and come through with his record? It is one of the miracles of American business management.”

Tim Cook was in the arena. So was Abel.

## What the ceremony said

Abel had opened the session with the number 60 jersey, for Buffett’s 60 years as CEO, retired beside Charlie Munger’s number 45. His first act as the person now holding the title.

After Buffett returned the microphone, Abel came back with the anthem. He played the 1991 congressional testimony on the arena screens, Buffett’s appearance before a Senate subcommittee after the Salomon Brothers scandal, the speech where Buffett drew the line on reputation and invited the committee to ask him anything. “Berkshire’s anthem,” Abel called it. He noted, in passing, that he had reissued Buffett’s newspaper test to every operating CEO across the Berkshire subsidiaries, in the first quarter of the year. The newspaper test: before taking any action, would you be comfortable seeing it on the front page of tomorrow’s paper?

Jersey. Tribute. Anthem. Newspaper test.

Every symbol pointed backward. Every choice also said: the foundation holds, this institution will remain the institution you trusted.

Continuity was the right call for that gathering. A Berkshire AGM is not a blank canvas. Its shareholders have spent decades inside Buffett’s thinking, and a new CEO who spent his first session asserting his own register at the expense of that, would have badly misread the floor. Abel made the right call.

## What the substance said

When Abel moved to the business update, the register changed.

For the next hour he talked about things he owned completely: a technology transformation he had tracked from inside a Geico management meeting four years earlier, a framework his team had built around what he called narrow AI, an honest admission that BNSF railway was fifth out of six in its peer group, “a reality of where we are,” and the regulatory compact, the implicit agreement between a utility and the public it serves. A person speaking from the inside of the business, about what he had seen and what needed to change.

A clear split. The symbols were Buffett’s. The substance was Abel’s.

## What continuity can’t answer

You will step into sessions shaped by someone else.

A predecessor whose name still carries authority. A culture that formed around a different person’s instincts. Rituals the people in front of you trust because of who created them, not because of who is now performing them.

The instinct is to reach for what was already there, the predecessor’s language, the institution’s symbols, the things people know how to receive. This is not wrong. When authority has just transferred, introducing your own mythology is not a clever move.

The question worth sitting with is more specific: do you know where your voice begins? Not as a general principle, but in the specific moments when only your answer will do.

Abel seems to know where his is. The BNSF admission. The narrow AI framework. These were moments when the people in front of him got him, not the institution he inherited.

The harder question is not about the AGM. It is about the quarterly letter where the founder’s framing is still the baseline. The board session where his thinking is still quoted more than yours. The room where no one is watching how you handle the transition.

## What the first meeting left open

Abel’s definition of success, stated plainly: ensuring that Berkshire endures in its current form. When a shareholder asked about breaking up the company, he replied with two words: “Absolutely not.”

The thing about a session where the founder is still present is that you never quite own it. The rituals confirm who built it. The questions arrive shaped around his thinking. And even if you run the event, answer everything, and present the numbers, part of the gathering is still glancing toward him.

The only way through that, and it takes more nerve than any ceremony, is to find the moments that are specifically yours and speak plainly in them. Not to compete with what came before. Not to perform continuity so completely that you disappear inside it. But to let the people in front of you know who they are following now, not just that the institution is still intact.

Abel did that in moments during the AGM. And when Buffett described Tim Cook’s achievement to the arena, Abel thanked Cook, took the mic back, and moved on. He did not reach for the parallel between Cook and himself. That restraint was the right call. Buffett named the question in the arena. Abel’s answer, when it comes, will be written in what he builds, not what he preserves.

*The 2026 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting is available in full [on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGbVNMchrmQ). Warren Buffett’s Tim Cook tribute begins at [10:33](https://youtu.be/mGbVNMchrmQ?si=Tq9NBDQ94HJqscrU&t=633). Abel’s prepared remarks begin at [19:04](https://youtu.be/mGbVNMchrmQ?si=yWu__HrU8xDth5Zg&t=1144) and run to approximately 1:19:34. The Q&A session opens at 1:31:08.*