Page 128 - Ray Dalio - Principles

While that wasn’t the outcome any of us had hoped for
when I first stepped out as CEO and passed it on to others, it
wasn’t entirely unexpected. Our struggles had been apparent

for some time, and we’d tried different iterations. We knew
that leadership transitions are never easy, and our modus
operandi has always been to try, fail, diagnose, redesign, and
try again. That’s what we were doing. Now was the time for a
leadership change.

Still, this particular failure was painful, especially for Greg
and me. I realized that I had handed Greg too heavy a load in

expecting him to carry out both the co-CEO and co-CIO roles.
I regret that mistake more than any other I made in running
Bridgewater because it hurt both of us and the company. I had
not only mentored Greg, but he had been like a son to me for
nearly twenty years. He and I both wanted and expected him
to run the company. The pain of this failure was made worse,
especially for Greg, by the sensational and inaccurate accounts

that appeared in the media. Story after story portrayed it as a
bitter death-match between two titans rather than what it really
was, which was people who loved Bridgewater working
through their disagreements in an idea-meritocratic way. This
was Greg’s going-into-the-abyss experience on his own hero’s
journey—and it was also that for me, and for a number of

other leaders of the company—and not just because it was so
painful, but because it led us to a metamorphosis that
improved us a lot.

Greg is twenty-five years younger than me. I often think
about where I was at his age, and how much I’ve learned in
the years since. I know Greg will go on to succeed remarkably

in his own way. I was pleased that we both came through this
stronger, and especially pleased that our systems for
identifying and resolving problems had worked as well as they
had. While we all had different perspectives, this case
reaffirmed our belief that our collective idea-meritocratic
decision-making process would produce better results than any
one of us could have done alone. It was having such a process,
along with our deep relationships, that kept us together.

I realized again that what I didn’t know was much greater
than what I did, in this case not knowing how to transition out