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
Know how to get in sync and disagree well.
It is harder to run an idea meritocracy in which disagreements are encouraged than a top-down autocracy in which they are suppressed. But when believable parties to disagreements are willing to learn from each other, their evolution is faster and their decision making is far better.
The key is in knowing how to move from disagreement to decision making. It is important that the paths for doing this are clear so that who is responsible for doing what is known. (This is the reason I created a tool called the Dispute Resolver, which lays out the paths and makes clear to everyone if they are holding on to a different point of view rather than moving it along to resolution. You can read about it in the tools appendix.)
It is essential to know where the ultimate decision-making authority lies--i.e., how far the power of the argument will carry relative to the power of the assigned authority. While arguing and especially after a decision is rendered, everyone in the idea meritocracy must remain calm and respectful of the process. It is never acceptable to get upset if the idea meritocracy doesn't produce the decision that you personally wanted.
Work Principle
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
