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
Your policies should be natural extensions of your principles.
Principles are hierarchical--some are overarching and some are less important--but they all should inform the policies that guide your individual decisions. It pays to think those policies through to ensure that they are consistent with each other and the principles they are derived from.
When faced with a case that doesn't have a clear policy to follow (for example, what to do about an employee whose job is to travel but who faces potential health risks because of his travel), one can't just snatch an answer out of the blue without regard for higher-level principles. Policymakers must make policy in the same way that the judicial system creates case law--iteratively and incrementally, by dealing with specific cases and interpreting the law as it applies to them.
That is how I have tried to operate. When a case arises, I lay out the principles behind how I am handling it and get in sync with others to see if we agree on those principles or must modify them to make them better. By and large, that's how all Bridgewater's principles and policies were developed.
Work Principle
- Manage as Someone Operating a Machine to Achieve a Goal
- Remember that for every case you deal with, your approach should have two purposes . . .
- Your policies should be natural extensions of your principles.
- Remember that for every case you deal with, your approach should have two purposes . . .
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
