In the past week, two multinational conglomerates with very different business models have been faced with leadership questions.

Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, is one of the richest people in the world. His portfolio is probably watched, followed and thus influences millions around the globe, and I declare that this includes my wife.

Given this background and given the fact that modest Mr B is the wrong side of 80 years old, you would have expected him to slow down. But no. After a rumoured two months of haggling, the octogenarian has put together a successful US$23 billion bid to take over Heinz Food. Analysts say this is a vote of confidence in the company, which is expected to bring in more bucks for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

For all the large numbers, in the background there was another question. When will Buffet quit? In an interview he stated that for him age is not a factor. He still finds a way to get the most out of people and how to allocate capital. Fair enough. And he added: “If I die tonight, there will be a CEO waiting to replace me. The Board knows who it is.”

Sounds reassuring, as if there is a good contingency plan in place. However, you have to wonder. Why does nobody want to share that info with the rest of us? Why the secrecy?

Thousands of miles away from corporate America lies the heart of business that has been going for over 1,500 years; the Papacy. Pope Benedict XVI has declared that at the age of 85 he no longer has the strength to cope with the rigorous demands of the job. Clearly this is of major concern to the world’s billion strong Catholic community. However, the events in Rome have a far greater effect. After all, the announcement produced 1.5m tweets within 36 hours.

I wonder if popes are more concerned about the theological or financial state of their community. Sky TV has noted that the Vatican Bank has assets of over US$4 billion. I wonder what is the insurance bill for all the art contained in the Bishopric of Rome?

That said and I am not a Catholic, I give the man great credit for quitting at the top. The thrill of the challenge of the job would excite anybody with some breath in their body. As instability and surprise are an anathema to such an organisation, there must have been severe pressures to stay on.

And yet, the Pope was able to find a way to look at the wider community involved. He was not prepared to endanger what he had achieved. It is time to move over for a younger candidate. Assuming those were his motives, I find that commendable.

As for Buffet groupies, your cash is safe for now, but how long can you risk defying the inevitable?

I have often asked why CEOs or managers or biz leaders keep making the same mistake.

The question came up again this week, as I was reading about Pharoah chasing after the Children of Israel in the wilderness. He had just suffered for weeks with ten plagues. And even though he had relented briefly and let his slaves go, he now wanted them back with a vengeance. However, as the story is related in Chapters 14 and 15 of Exodus, he and his mighty army charged ahead only to be drowned in the Red Sea.

This story was part of the weekly reading for Jews. And the question was posed: What made this great king and leader believe that even when he had been defeated by plagues, suffering the death of his own son and the humiliation of his gods, he would finally defeat this enemy?

I noticed a very interesting answer tucked away in one of the commentaries. The man was so concerned for his own self interests that he could not see the larger picture. In other words, in a clearer moment, given all that had happened previously and if he had provided himself withadvisors who were not afraid to tell him the truth, then he would never have launched what proved to be his final hurrah.

Now let’s hook back to the business world. How often do we see people make decisions based on similar egocentric whims?  For example, I know of a case where extra stock was purchased because sales had risen a fraction. The assumption was that future sales would continue positively. Dangerous assumption, especially as the CEO had ignored the fact that he was still overstocked due to a weak market. Enter the world of cash flow crises. Big ouch!

Or how many organisations do I know, where the chiefs complain about low sales but refuse to invest in a marketing team; training, proper salaries, clear lines of responsibility, dedicated advertising, etc? And this ritual continues while very little changes on the revenue side. In this case things matters usually have a hope of changing when the execs want to award themselves a pay raise. However, this frequently produces cuts in his staff rather than a revised sales strategy.

In effect, these leaders are lying to themselves. They are covering up the truth to meet their own needs. As Dan Ariely noted in his recent book “the honest truth about dishonesty”, we somehow contrive to blind ourselves and think we can get away with it – yes, just about all of us.

If there was one person who bucked this ‘rule of life’, it was my father, Joshua. I suppose that it is not without some mystical force that I was able to string these comments together in the week that he passed away at the age of 89. My sister and I have been greeted by a tidal wave of kind comments about him from people we know and do not know. And if I had to sum up these recollections?

It is not that he was famous or successful or brilliant at sport. What people really appreciated was my father’s ability to put aside the nonsense around many a subject in order to help others. He was deeply dedicated to making society a better place for all, especially children. As far as my dad was concerned, in order to do that you needed to play things straight, ignoring what your ego told you to do.

In effect my father would approach ever issue with a similar methodology. That means time and again he would carefully map the subject, conduct frank discussions with all those involved, not be afraid to explain to those who opposed, and then act and also take responsibility for his actions. Needless to say, he was highly successful on many charity committees.

It is maybe 5,000 years since Pharoah’s arrogance plunged his country towards military and financial disaster. Despite that distance of time and the magnitude of the disaster, people continue to make mistakes in business and in life for the same base reasons.

Somehow, my father found a way to teach us otherwise. He has left us a series of lessons that we will all benefit to learn from.

Joshua Stanley Horesh (1923- 2013). Missed desperately by his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his brother, his sister and a whole host of good people he met along the way.