Page 295 - Ray Dalio - Principles

You have to work in a culture that suits you. That’s
fundamental to your happiness and your effectiveness. You
also must work in a culture that is effective in producing great
outcomes, because if you don’t, you won’t get the psychic and

material rewards that keep you motivated. In this section on
culture I will share my thoughts on how to match your culture
to your needs, and I will explain the type of culture that I
wanted and that has worked so well for me: an idea
meritocracy.

In Chapter One, I explain what an idea meritocracy looks
like, and explore why radical truth and radical transparency

are essential for it to work well. Being radically truthful and
radically transparent are probably the most difficult principles
to internalize, because they are so different from what most
people are used to. Because this way of being is frequently
misunderstood, I tried especially hard to be crystal clear in
conveying why we operate this way and how it works in
practice.

In Chapter Two, we will turn our attention to why and how
to build a culture that fosters meaningful relationships. Besides
being rewarding themselves, meaningful relationships enable
the radical truth and transparency that allow us to hold each
other accountable for producing excellence.

I believe that great cultures, like great people, recognize

that making mistakes is part of the process of learning, and
that continuous learning is what allows an organization to
evolve successfully over time. In Chapter Three, we will
explore the principles for doing that well.

Of course, an idea meritocracy is based on the belief that
pulling people’s thinking together and stress-testing it
produces better outcomes than when people keep their

disparate thoughts in their own heads. Chapter Four contains
principles for “getting in sync” well. Knowing how to have
thoughtful disagreements is key.

Idea meritocracies carefully weigh the merits of its
members’ opinions. Since many opinions are bad and virtually
everyone is confident that theirs are good, the process of being