Page 439 - Ray Dalio - Principles

a. Be coordinated and consistent in motivating others. Managing groups
to push through to results can be done emotionally or
intellectually, and by carrots or by sticks. While we each have

our own reasons for working, there are unique challenges and
advantages to motivating a community. The main challenge is
the need to coordinate, i.e., to get in sync on the reasons for
pursuing a goal and the best way to do it. For example, you
wouldn’t want one group to be motivated and compensated so
differently from another (one gets big bonuses for example,
and another doesn’t under the same set of circumstances) that

the differences cause problems. The main advantage of
working in groups is that it’s easier to design a group to
include all the qualities needed to be successful than to find all
those qualities in one person. As with the steps in the 5-Step
Process, some people are great at one step and some are
terrible at that step. But it doesn’t matter which is the case

when everyone is clear on each other’s strengths and
weaknesses and the group is designed to deal with those
realities.

b. Don’t act before thinking. Take the time to come up with a game plan. The
time you spend on thinking through your plan will be virtually
nothing in relation to the amount of time that will be spent
doing, and it will make the doing radically more effective.

c. Look for creative, cut-through solutions. When people are facing

thorny problems or have too much to do, they often think that
they need to work harder. But if something seems hard, time-
consuming, and frustrating, take some time to step back and
triangulate with others on whether there might be a better way
to handle it. Of course, many things that need getting done are

just a slog, but it’s often the case that there are better solutions
out there that you’re not seeing.

14.2 Recognize that everyone has too

much to do.

How to do more than we think we can is a puzzle we all
struggle with. Other than working harder for longer hours,