Page 299 - Ray Dalio - Principles

decision-making rules. And seeing firsthand what’s happening
and why builds trust and allows people to make the
independent assessments of the evidence that a functioning

idea meritocracy requires.

ADAPTING TO RADICAL TRUTH

AND RADICAL TRANSPARENCY

It takes getting used to. Virtually everyone who joins
Bridgewater believes intellectually that radical truth and
radical transparency are what they want, because, after careful
thought, that’s what they signed up for. Yet most find it
difficult to adjust to it because they struggle with the “two
yous” as explained in Understand That People Are Wired Very

Differently. While their “upper-level yous” understand the
benefits of it, their “lower-level yous” tend to react with a
flight-or-fight response. Adapting typically takes about
eighteen months, though it varies from individual to
individual, and there are those who never successfully adapt to
it.

Some people tell me it’s inconsistent with human nature to

operate this way—that people need to be protected from harsh
truths and that such a system could never work in practice.
Our experience—and our success—have proven that wrong.
While it’s true that our way of being is not what most people
are used to, that doesn’t make it unnatural, any more than the
hard physical exercise athletes and soldiers do is unnatural. It

is a fundamental law of nature that you get stronger only by
doing difficult things. While our idea meritocracy is not for
everyone, for those who do adapt to it—which is about two-
thirds of those who try it—it is so liberating and effective that
it’s hard for them to imagine any other way to be. What most
people like best is knowing there is no spin.

RADICAL TRUTH AND

TRANSPARENCY IN PRACTICE