Page 367 - Ray Dalio - Principles

7 Remember That the

WHO Is More

Important than the

WHAT

People often make the mistake of focusing on what should be
done while neglecting the more important question of who
should be given the responsibility for determining what should

be done. That’s backward. When you know what you need in a
person to do the job well and you know what the person
you’re putting into it is like, you can pretty well visualize how
things will go.

I remember one case where one of our most talented rising
executives was putting together a transition plan so that he
could move on to another role. He arrived at a meeting with

the Management Committee with binders full of process flows
and responsibility maps, detailing every aspect of the area he’d
been responsible for, and explained how he’d automated and
systemized as much of it as possible to make it foolproof. It
was an impressive presentation, but it quickly became clear
that he didn’t have an answer for who was going to take his

place and what would happen if they saw things differently
and put together a different plan. Who would oversee the
machine he’d built, probe it for problems, and constantly
improve it or decide to get rid of it? What qualities would such
a person need to produce the same excellent results that he had
—i.e., what were the important job specifications we should
match the person against? Where would we go to recruit such

a person?