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
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.
Work Principle
- Do What You Set Out to Do
- Work for goals that you and your organization are excited about . . .
- Be coordinated and consistent in motivating others.
- Work for goals that you and your organization are excited about . . .
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
