Page 438 - Ray Dalio - Principles

motivations and should be used and harmonized in a way
consistent with the culture.

The way one brings people together to do this is key. This
is what most people call “leadership.” What are the most

important things that a leader needs to do in order to get their
organizations to push through to results? Most importantly,
they must recruit individuals who are willing to do the work
that success requires. While there might be more glamour in
coming up with the brilliant new ideas, most of success comes
from doing the mundane and often distasteful stuff, like

identifying and dealing with problems and pushing hard over a
long time. This was certainly the case with the Client Service
Department. Through a lot of relentless hard work in the years
since the original problem turned up, the department has
become an example to other teams at Bridgewater—and our
client satisfaction levels remain consistently high. The great
irony of all this is that none of our clients ever even noticed

the problems we saw with the memos. Sending out work not
up to our standards was bad—and I’m glad it was corrected.
But it could’ve been much worse, tarnishing our reputation for
delivering pervasive excellence. Once that happens, it
becomes much harder to restore trust.

14.1 Work for goals that you and your

organization are excited

about . . .

. . . and think about how your tasks connect to those goals.

If you’re focused on the goal, excited about achieving it, and
recognize that doing some undesirable tasks to achieve the
goal is required, you will have the right perspective and will
be appropriately motivated. If you’re not excited about the
goal that you’re working for, stop working for it. Personally, I

like visualizing exciting new and beautiful things that I want
to make into realities. The excitement of visualizing these
ideas and my desire to build them out is what pulls me through
the thorny realities of life to make my dreams happen.