Page 335 - Ray Dalio - Principles

as saying that he or she has overlooked it (“watch out for the
ice” vs. “you’re being careless and not looking out for the
ice”). Yet I often see people react to constructive questions as if
they were accusations. That is a mistake.

4.4 If it is your meeting to run, manage

the conversation.

There are many reasons why meetings go poorly, but frequently
it is because of a lack of clarity about the topic or the level at
which things are being discussed (e.g., the principle/machine
level, the case-at-hand level, or the specific-fact level).

a. Make it clear who is directing the meeting and whom it is meant to serve.
Every meeting should be aimed at achieving someone’s goals;
that person is the one responsible for the meeting and decides
what they want to get out of it and how they will do so.

Meetings without someone clearly responsible run a high risk
of being directionless and unproductive.

b. Be precise in what you’re talking about to avoid confusion. It is often best
to repeat a specific question to be sure both questioner and
responder are crystal clear on what is being asked and
answered. In an email, this is often as simple as cutting and
pasting the questions into the body of the text.

c. Make clear what type of communication you are going to have in light of the
objectives and priorities. If your goal is to have people with
different opinions work through their differences to try to get

closer to what is true and what to do about it (open-minded
debate), you will run your meeting differently than if its goal is
to educate. Debating takes time, and that time increases
exponentially depending on the number of people participating
in the discussion, so you have to carefully choose the right
people in the right numbers to suit the decision that needs to be

made. In any discussion try to limit the participation to those
whom you value most in light of your objectives. The worst
way to pick people is based on whether their conclusions align
with yours. Group-think (people not asserting independent