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
Hold yourself and your people accountable and appreciate them for holding you accountable.
Holding people accountable means understanding them and their circumstances well enough to assess whether they can and should do some things differently, getting in sync with them about that, and, if they can't adequately do what is required, removing them from their jobs. It is not micromanaging them, nor is it expecting them to be perfect (holding particularly overloaded people accountable for doing everything excellently is often impractical, not to mention unfair).
But people can resent being held accountable, and you don't want to have to tell them what to do all the time. Reason with them so that they understand the value of what you're doing, but never let them off the hook.
Work Principle
- Manage as Someone Operating a Machine to Achieve a Goal
Hold yourself and your people accountable and appreciate them for holding you accountable.
- If you've agreed with someone that something is supposed to go a certain way, make sure it goes that way—unless you get in sync about doing it differently.
- Distinguish between a failure in which someone broke their "contract" and a failure in which there was no contract to begin with.
- Avoid getting sucked down.
- Watch out for people who confuse goals and tasks, because if they can't make that distinction, you can't trust them with responsibilities.
- Watch out for the unfocused and unproductive "theoretical should."
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
