Principles: Life and Work
a. One of the most important decisions you can make is who you ask questions of.
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
6.6 Recognize that if the people who have the power don’t want to operate by principles, the principled way of operating will fail.
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
Never seize on the first available option, no matter how good it seems, before you’ve asked questions and explored.
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
At Bridgewater, we call this “paying more attention to the swing than the shot.”
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
So remember one of the first principles of management: You need to look at the feedback you’re getting on your machine and either fix your problems or escalate them, if need be, over and over again. There is no easier alternative than bringing problems to the surface and putting them in the hands of good problem solvers.
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
Why doesn’t thoughtful disagreement like this typically occur? Because most people are instinctively reluctant to disagree. For example, if two people go to a restaurant and one says he likes the food, the other is more likely to say “I like it too” or not say anything at all, even if that’s not true. The reluctance to disagree is the “lower-level... See more
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
Aristotle defined tragedy as a terrible outcome arising from a person’s fatal flaw—a flaw that, had it been fixed, instead would have led to a wonderful outcome. In my opinion, these two barriers—ego and blind spots—are the fatal flaws that keep intelligent, hardworking people from living up to their potential.
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
Knowing and acting on the truth is what we call the “big deal” at Bridgewater.
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
My rule was simple: If something went badly, you had to put it in the log, characterize its severity, and make clear who was responsible for it. If a mistake happened and you logged it, you were okay. If you didn’t log it, you would be in deep trouble. This way managers had problems brought to them, which was worlds better than having to seek them
... See moreRay Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
I started this issue log today. It will be real fun come peer review time!