CHAPTER 5

FLESHINGOUT PRINCIPLES

Ever since Bob,Giselle, and Dan had presented me with the “Ray Feedback Memo” in the 1990s, Ihad been much more explicit in writing down and sharing my work principles inthe same way I had written down my investment principles. At first, this tookthe form of shared philosophy statements and emails to the entire company.Then, whenever something new came along that required me to make a decision, Iwould reflect on my criteria for making that decision and write it down as aprinciple so people could make the connections between the situation, myprinciple for handling these situations, and my actions. More and more, we saweverything as “another one of those”—another of a certain type of situationlike hiring, firing, determining compensation, dealing with dishonesty—that hadprinciples for handling them. By having them explicitly written out, I couldfoster the idea meritocracy by having us together reflect on and refine thoseprinciples—and then adhere to them.

The number ofprinciples started small and grew over time. By the mid-2000s, Bridgewater wasbeginning to grow rapidly, and we had a number of new managers trying to learnand adapt to our unique culture—and who were increasingly asking me for advice.I was also beginning to have people from outside Bridgewater ask me how theycould create idea meritocracies of their own. So in 2006, I prepared a roughlist of about sixty Work Principles and distributed them to Bridgewater’smanagers so they could begin to evaluate them, debate them, and make sense ofthem for themselves. “It’s a rough draft,” I wrote in the covering memo, “butit is being put out now for comments.”

This began an ongoingevolutionary process of encountering many situations, forming principles about howto deal with them, and getting in sync with other Bridgewater leaders andmanagers about them. Over time, I encountered most everything there is toencounter in running a company, so I had a few hundred principles that coveredmost everything. That collection of principles, like our collection ofinvestment principles, became a kind of decision-making library. Thoseprinciples are the basis of what you’ll find inWork

Principles.

But it wasn’t enoughto codify and teach our philosophy; we had to live it. As the company grewbigger, how that happened evolved. In Bridgewater’s early days, everyone kneweach other, so being radically transparent was easy—people could attend themeetings they wanted to and communicate with each other informally. But as we grew,that became logistically impossible, which was a real problem. How could peopleengage productively with the idea meritocracy if they didn’t know everythingthat was going on? Without transparency, people would spin whatever happened tosuit their own interests, sometimes behind closed doors. Problems would behidden instead of brought to the surface where they could be resolved. To havea real idea meritocracy, there must be transparency so that people can seethings for themselves.

To make sure this happened,I required that virtually all our meetings be recorded and made available toeveryone, with extremely rare exceptions such as when we were discussing veryprivate matters like personal health or proprietary information about a tradeor decision rule. At first I sent these tapes of management meetings uneditedto the entire company, but that was a huge burden on people’s time. So I builta small team to edit the tapes, focusing on the most important moments, andover time we added questions to create “virtual reality” case studies thatcould be used for training.6Over time, these tapes became part of a “boot camp” for new employees as wellas a window into an ongoing stream of situations connected to the principlesfor handling them.

All this openness ledto some veryfrankdiscussions about who did what and why, and as a result we were able to deepenour understanding of our different ways of thinking. This was enlightening toall of us in showing how differently people’s brains worked. If nothing else, Icould better appreciate people I’d once wanted to strangle! Moreover, Irecognized that managers who do not understand people’s different thinkingstyles cannot understand how the people working for them will handle differentsituations, which is like a foreman not understanding how his equipment willbehave. That insight led us to explore psychometric testing as a way oflearning how people think differently.

譯文：自從鮑勃，吉賽爾，和丹1990年代給我設(shè)立的“雷回饋日記”，我就開始更加空開的寫下并分享我的工作原則和我的投資原則一樣，起先，這些都是以分享哲學(xué)名言的形式并電郵給整個公司。然后，不論何時新發(fā)生的事情需要我做決策，我就會反饋到我的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)并當(dāng)做一個原則記錄下來，這樣人們就可以根據(jù)那些情況之間的聯(lián)系和我的原則是怎么處理這些情況的，以及我的行為。越來越多的，我們開始把所有事都看做“那些中的一個”-另一個標(biāo)準(zhǔn)版情況比如雇傭，解雇，決定補(bǔ)償，處理不忠-那些都有對應(yīng)的原則。通過將這些公開寫出來，我能學(xué)術(shù)性的培育這些想法，通過結(jié)婚我們大家的反饋優(yōu)化那些原則，然后遵循這些原則。

開始的時候原則的數(shù)量很少，隨著時間增長。2000年中期的時候，橋水基金開始快速增長，我們已經(jīng)有了一定數(shù)量的新經(jīng)理人嘗試學(xué)習(xí)和采納公司獨(dú)特的文化-持續(xù)增長的咨詢我的建議。而外部的人們也開始咨詢我他們怎樣能創(chuàng)建自己的精英智庫。所以2006年，我準(zhǔn)備了一個粗略的60條工作原則列表，并發(fā)送給橋水的經(jīng)理人以便于他們能開始評估這些原則，討論他們，對這些原則產(chǎn)生自己的想法。“粗略的選拔”我在總結(jié)日記上寫下了，“但他是展開評論的初始存在”

就這樣開始了一場進(jìn)行中的革命性的遭遇諸多不同狀況的過程，形成關(guān)于如何處理這些原則的原則，以及和其他橋水的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人和經(jīng)理人達(dá)成一致的原則。過了一段時間，我遇到最多的問題是如何運(yùn)作一家公司？就這樣我有了幾百個原則幾乎涵蓋所有的事情。那個原則的集合，和我們的投資原則集合一樣，成為一種決策制定博物館。那些原則是你在工作原則中能發(fā)現(xiàn)的基礎(chǔ)原則。

但是還不足以編制和教會我們哲學(xué)；我們不得不和他一起成長。隨著公司進(jìn)一步壯大，發(fā)生的原因開始參與進(jìn)來。在橋水基金的早期，彼此都認(rèn)識，所以保持極端透明是容易的-人們可以任意參加他們感興趣的會議，非正式的彼此交流。但是當(dāng)公司發(fā)展，那些都在邏輯上不可能了，成為一個現(xiàn)實(shí)的問題。人們在不了解事情發(fā)展?fàn)顩r的情況下如何做到高效的交換想法那？沒有透明交流，人們可能會編造發(fā)生的事情去適應(yīng)他們自己的興趣點(diǎn)，有時則躲在門后，不交流。問題就會隱藏起來而不是擺到桌面上來本可以解決的。想要得到真實(shí)的準(zhǔn)確的想法，必須透明公正這樣人們才能站在大家的角度看待事物。

為確保這些發(fā)生，我要求實(shí)質(zhì)上所有會議必須記錄，并發(fā)送給每個人，極少數(shù)情況例外比如我們討論非常隱私的事情像個人健康或者某個交易或決策規(guī)則的專有信息。一開始我把這類管理會議的原始記錄文件發(fā)給全公司，但那會成為每個人的負(fù)擔(dān)。所以我建立了一個小組編輯這些文件，專注于最重要的時刻，并隨著時間增加問題形成“真實(shí)場景”案例便于以后用于訓(xùn)練。隨后，這些案例成了新員工“新兵訓(xùn)練營”的一部分，就像一部鏈接處理問題的原則的進(jìn)行中的趨勢的窗口。

所有這些開放的政策導(dǎo)致一些非常直接的討論—誰做了什么和為什么，結(jié)果我們也能更深入的我們對于不同思考方式的理解。這也能啟發(fā)我們所有人—顯示為什么不同的人的大腦的工作方式。毫無例外的 我能更好的感謝那些我曾經(jīng)非常憎恨的人！甚至，我認(rèn)識到如果經(jīng)理人不能理解人們不同的思考方式就不能理解為什么那些為他工作的人會處理不同的情況，-就像一個監(jiān)工不嫩理解他的設(shè)施的行為。那種洞察力帶領(lǐng)我們探測心理測量測試—一種為什么人們思考方式不同的方法。

讀后感：生活原則是工作原則的基礎(chǔ)，在這之上，才是工作中的原則，千萬注意順序。

試著理解對方，站在對方的立場上考慮，換位思考，也許就能理解對方的思維方式和結(jié)果，不管是不是做投資和管理，我們普通人同樣適用這樣的規(guī)則。