Page 343 - Ray Dalio - Principles

each of us looked at the situation from every angle. After a lot
of discussion we remained split: About half of us thought the
ECB would print more money to buy the bonds and about half

thought they wouldn’t, because breaking with the Germans
would threaten the Eurozone even more. While such
thoughtful and open exchanges are essential, it’s also critical
to have mutually agreed-upon ways of resolving them to arrive
at the best decision. So we used our believability-weighting
system to break the stalemate.

We did that using our Dot Collector tool, which helps us

surface the sources of our disagreements in people’s different
thinking characteristics and work our way through them based
on their believabilities. People have different believability
weightings for different qualities, like expertise in a particular
subject, creativity, ability to synthesize, etc. These dots are
determined by a mixture of ratings, both from peers and tests
of different sorts. By looking at these attributes, and also

understanding which thinking qualities are most essential to
the situation at hand, we can make the best decisions.

In this case, we took a believability-weighted vote, with the
qualities chosen being both subject-matter expertise and ability
to synthesize. Using the Dot Collector, it became clear that
those with greater believability believed Draghi would defy
Germany and print money, so that is what we went with. A

few days later, European policymakers announced a sweeping
plan to buy unlimited quantities of government bonds, so we
got it right. While the believability-weighted answer isn’t
always the best answer, we have found that it is more likely to
be right than either the boss’s answer or an equal-weighted

referendum.
Regardless of whether or not you use this kind of

technology and structured process for believability weighting,
the most important thing is that you get the concept. Simply
look down on yourself and your team when a decision needs to
be made and consider who is most likely to be right. I assure
you that, if you do, you will make better decisions than if you

don’t.