Page 108 - Ray Dalio - Principles

My examination of shapers and my reflections on my own
qualities made clear to me that nobody sees the full range of
what they need to see in order to be exceptionally successful,

though some see a wider range than others. Those that do best
both see a wide range themselves while triangulating well with
other brilliant people who see things in different,
complementary ways.

This realization has been important in making my transition
out of management go well. While in the past I would
encounter problems, figure out their causes, and design my

own ways to get around them, others who think differently
than I do will make different diagnoses and designs. My job as
mentor was to help them be successful at that.

This exercise reminded me that there are far fewer types of
people in the world than there are people and far fewer
different types of situations than there are situations, so
matching the right types of people to the right types of

situations is key.

Because Gates and Jobs had recently left Microsoft and
Apple, I watched their former organizations closely to help me
better understand how I could help prepare Bridgewater to
thrive without me. Certainly the most notable difference
between them and Bridgewater was in our cultures—how we

use the idea meritocracy of radical truth and radical
transparency to bring problems and weaknesses to the surface
to prompt forthright dealing with them.

SYSTEMIZING OUR IDEA

MERITOCRACY

The more I did the research on people, the clearer it became
that there are different types of people and that, by and large,
the same types of people in the same types of circumstances
are going to produce the same types of results. Said differently,
by knowing what someone is like we can have a pretty good

idea of what we can expect from them. So I was more
motivated than ever to continue gathering lots of data on what