Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, cites principles as his key to success.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Over forty years later, Bridgewater has grown into the largest hedge fund in the world and the fifth most important private company in the United States (according to Fortune magazine), and Dalio himself has been named to TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way Dalio discovered unique principles that have led to his and Bridgewater’s unique success. It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio, that he believes are the reason behind whatever success he has had. He is now at a stage in his life that he wants to pass these principles along to others for them to judge for themselves and to do whatever they want with them.
Work Principle
Create guardrails when needed—and remember it's better not to guardrail at all.
Even when you find people who are great clicks for your design, there will be times when you'll want to build guardrails around them. No one is perfect, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and as hard as you look, you won't always be able to find everything you want in one person. So look down on your machine and the people you choose for your roles, and think about where you might need to supplement your design by adding people or processes to ensure that each job is done excellently.
Remember, guardrailing is meant to help people who can by and large do their jobs well--it's intended to help good people perform better, not to help failing people reach the bar. If you're trying to guardrail someone who is missing the core abilities required for their job, you should probably just fire them and look for someone else who will be a better click.
A good guardrail typically takes the form of a team member whose strengths compensate for the weaknesses of the team member who needs to be guardrailed. A good guardrailing relationship should be firm without being overly rigid. Ideally, it should work like two people dancing--they're literally pushing against each other, but with a lot of mutual give-and-take. Of course, having someone in a job who needs to be guardrailed is not as good as having someone in a job who will naturally do the right things. Strive for that.
Work Principle
- Design Improvements to Your Machine to Get Around Your Problems
Create guardrails when needed—and remember it's better not to guardrail at all.
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
