Page 75 - Ray Dalio - Principles

This looked to me like another one of those fork-in-the-
road cases in which I had to choose between one of two
seemingly essential but mutually exclusive options: 1) being

radically truthful with each other including probing to bring
our problems and weaknesses to the surface so we could deal
with them forthrightly and 2) having happy and satisfied
employees. And it reminded me that when faced with the
choice between two things you need that are seemingly at
odds, go slowly to figure out how you can have as much of
both as possible. There is almost always a good path that you

just haven’t figured out yet, so look for it until you find it
rather than settle for the choice that is then apparent to you.

My first step was to make sure I knew exactly what the
problems were and how to handle them. So I asked Bob,
Giselle, and Dan what they thought was going on. I learned
that they personally, and many others who knew me well,
weren’t as demoralized by me as some others because they

understood my heart was in a good place. If they hadn’t
known that they would have quit, because, as they put it, “I
wasn’t paying them enough money to put up with my crap.”

They knew that I wanted the best for them and Bridgewater,
and to get that I needed to be radically truthful with them and I
needed them to be radically truthful with me. This wasn’t only
because it produced better results, but also because being

truthful with each other was fundamental to how I believed we
should be with each other. We agreed that being this way was
essential, but since it was making some people feel bad,
something had to change.

While those people I had contact with understood me, liked
me, and in some cases even loved me, those who had less
contact with me were offended by my directness. It was clear

that I needed to be better understood and to understand others
better. I realized then how essential it is that people in
relationships must be crystal clear about their principles for
dealing with each other.

That began our decades-long process of putting our
principles into writing, which evolved into the Work

Principles. Those principles were both agreements for how we