Page 98 - Ray Dalio - Principles

their own languages at their own expense. I’ve received a large
number of thank-you notes from people who said that reading
Principles had changed their lives.

PREPARING BRIDGEWATER TO

SUCCEED WITHOUT ME

Since I was a kid, I’ve learned by doing. I’d just dive in after
things I wanted and try to survive long enough to learn from
my mistakes and improve. If I changed fast enough to become
sustainable at whatever I was doing, then I would build on that
to flourish. I’ve always had great faith in my ability to figure
things out, and over time my need to figure things out made
me better at doing so. As a result, I tended to hire people who

were the same way—who would dive right into challenges,
figure out what to do about them, and then do it. I figured that
if they had great character, common sense, and creativity, and
were driven to achieve our shared mission, they would
discover what it took to be successful if I gave them the
freedom to figure out how to make the right decisions. I knew

that micromanaging and handcuffing them wouldn’t work
because neither of us would like it. If I was the one telling
them what to do, I wouldn’t be getting any leverage from
them. Besides, I didn’t want to work with people who needed
that.

But starting in the 1990s, I began to recognize the
emotional barriers most people had to looking at their

problems and weaknesses forthrightly. Rather than embracing
ambiguous situations and difficult challenges, they tended to
get uncomfortable when facing them. It is the rare bird who
has the right mix of common sense, creativity, and character to
shape change. Almost everyone needs help before they can get
there. So I wrote down my principles and the logic behind
them and shared them, hoping they could be used by those

who thought they were good and debated openly by those who
didn’t. I figured that over time we would all get in sync about
how particular situations should be handled.