Page 291 - Ray Dalio - Principles

Many people who run other organizations have adopted some
of these principles, modified others, and rejected many.
Whatever you want to do with them is fine with me. These

principles provide a framework you can modify to suit your
needs. Maybe you will pursue the same goal and maybe you
won’t; chances are that, in either case, you will collect some
valuable stuff. If you share my goal of having your
organization be a real idea meritocracy, I believe this book will
be invaluable for you because I’m told that no organization has
thought through or pushed the concepts of how to make a real

idea meritocracy as far as Bridgewater. If doing that is
important to you and you pursue it with unwavering
determination you will encounter your own barriers, you will
find your own ways around them, and you will get there, even
if imperfectly.

While these principles are good general rules, it’s important
to remember that every rule has exceptions and that no set of

rules can ever substitute for common sense. Think of these
principles as being like a GPS. A GPS helps you get where
you’re going, but if you follow it blindly off a bridge—well,
that would be your fault, not the GPS’s. And just as a GPS that
gives bad directions can be fixed by updating its software, it’s
important to raise and discuss exceptions to the principles as

they occur so they can evolve and improve over time.

No matter what path you choose to follow, your
organization is a machine made up of culture and people that
will interact to produce outcomes, and those outcomes will
provide feedback about how well your organization is
working. Learning from this feedback should lead you to

modify the culture and the people so your organizational
machine improves.

This dynamic is so important that I’ve organized Work
Principles around it in three sections: To Get the Culture
Right, To Get the People Right, and To Build and Evolve Your
Machine. Each chapter within these sections begins with a
higher-level principle. Reading these will give you a good

sense of the main concepts in each chapter.