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
Consider succession and training in your design.
This is a subject I wish I had thought about much earlier in my career. To ensure that your organization continues to deliver results, you need to build a perpetual motion machine that can work well without you. This involves more than the mechanics of your own "stepping out," but the selection and training and governance of the new leaders who "step up," and most importantly, the preservation of the culture and its values.
The best approach I've seen for doing this is what companies and organizations like GE, 3G, and the Chinese Politburo do, which is to build a pyramid-like "succession pipeline" in which the next generation of leaders is exposed to the thinking and decision making of the current leaders so they can both learn and be tested.
Work Principle
- Design Improvements to Your Machine to Get Around Your Problems
- Build the organization around goals rather than tasks.
- Consider succession and training in your design.
- Build the organization around goals rather than tasks.
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
