MAKING BRIDGEWATER ROCK-SOLID AND CUTTING-EDGE

讓橋水快速轉(zhuǎn)動(dòng)和高端

Atour annual town hall meeting in June 2008, I said that seen through my eyesBridgewater was then, and always had been, “both terrible and terrific at thesame time.” After about five years of rapid growth toward building Bridgewateras an institution, we had encountered our newest set of problems.

This was nothing new.Since I started Bridgewater we always had some problems because we were alwaysdoing bold new things, making mistakes, and evolving quickly. For example,technology had changed so quickly during the years we’d built the company thatwe had literally switched from using slide rules to spreadsheet software toadvanced artificial intelligence. With so much changing so fast, it had seemedpointless to focus on getting everything “just right” when something newer andbetter was sure to come along. So we built our technology in a light andflexible way, which made sense at the time but also created a number ofhairballs that badly needed untangling. That same approach of moving quicklyand flexibly had been true throughout the company, so several departments hadbecome overstretched as we grew. It had always been fun being cutting-edge, butwe were having a hard time becoming rock-solid, especially in the noninvestmentside of the business. The organization needed to be renovated in severalways—but it wasn’t going to be easy.

In 2008 I was workingabout eighty hours a week doing my two full-time jobs (overseeing ourinvestments and overseeing the company), and in my opinion not doing wellenough at either. I felt that I, and the company more broadly, were slippingfrom being pervasively excellent. From the get-go I had toggled acceptablybetween investment management and business management. But now that we were abigger company, the business management side was demanding much more time thanI had to give it. I conducted a time-and-motion study of all of my investmentand management responsibilities; it showed it would take me about 165 hours a weekto achieve the level of excellence that I would be satisfied with in overseeingboth our investments and management. That was obviously impossible. Since Iwanted to delegate as much as possible, I asked whether the things I was doingcould be done excellently by others, and if so, who those others were. Everyoneagreed that most of those areas couldn’t adequately be delegated. I clearlyhadn’t done a good enough job of finding and training others to whom I coulddelegate my responsibilities.

To me, the greatestsuccess you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to dothings well without you. A step below that is doing things well yourself, andworst of all is doing things poorly yourself. As I reflected on my position, Icould see that despite all of my and Bridgewater’s amazing achievements, I hadnot achieved this highest level of success. In fact, I was still struggling toachieve the second-highest level (doing things well myself), even thoughBridgewater was extremely successful.

At the time, therewere 738 people working at Bridgewater, with fourteen department heads. Ioversaw the department heads, along with a Management Committee I’d createdbecause I knew I couldn’t trust myself to know what was best without othersprobing me. I had structured the reporting lines so that I both reported to theManagement Committee and held its members accountable for their oversight ofthe company. I wanted them to also own the responsibility of producingpervasiveexcellence andI wanted to be at their service in helping them achieve it.

In May 2008, I wrotean email to the five members of the Management Committee, copying the company,telling them that “I am escalating to let you know that I have reached mylimits and that the quality of my work, and my work-life balance, are bothsuffering unacceptably.”

譯文：

2008年6月我們的年度小鎮(zhèn)大廳會(huì)議，我說從我的眼睛來看橋水是，并一直是“一路伴隨的麻煩和糟糕事件不斷” 大約經(jīng)過5年高速增長(zhǎng)，橋水正向一家綜合機(jī)構(gòu)發(fā)展，就在這時(shí)我們遇到了新的問題。

沒什么新鮮的，自從我創(chuàng)辦橋水開始，我們總是遇到問題因?yàn)槲覀兛偸窃谧龃竽懙男率挛?，犯錯(cuò)，然后快速解決。舉例，技術(shù)已經(jīng)變化的太快了，就在橋水的過程中，我們從使用規(guī)則到分發(fā)列表軟件再到現(xiàn)在先進(jìn)的ai。一切都變化的太快了，似乎沒有什么真正的焦點(diǎn)聚集在任何正確的事情上，尤其當(dāng)新河更好的事物必將到來。所以我們建立的自己的技術(shù)，以輕量和靈活的方式，在提供感覺的同時(shí)也制造了大量的麻煩并很難處理。同樣的應(yīng)用可以允許很快并靈活運(yùn)用于整個(gè)公司，所以有幾個(gè)部門隨著公司的增長(zhǎng)變得過度擴(kuò)張了，成為頂尖總是非常有趣，但是我們度過了一段非常困難的時(shí)期，業(yè)績(jī)開始下滑，尤其在非投資領(lǐng)域的業(yè)務(wù)。組織需要重新建構(gòu)，但這一切并不簡(jiǎn)單。

2008年我每周工作80小時(shí)兩份全職工作（監(jiān)督投資和監(jiān)督公司），以我的觀點(diǎn)兩份工作都沒做的足夠好。我感覺我和公司更概括的說，因太多優(yōu)秀而變得松弛。我在投資管理和業(yè)務(wù)管理之間被恰好的困住了，但現(xiàn)在我們是一家更大的公司了，商業(yè)管理方面要求我要投入更多的時(shí)間。我制定了一項(xiàng)時(shí)間-運(yùn)動(dòng)研究基于我所有的投資和管理責(zé)任；研究顯示如果要達(dá)到優(yōu)秀的程度我每周要花費(fèi)165小時(shí)才能達(dá)到我能滿足的程度。有人問我是否有其他辦法也能做到優(yōu)秀，如果有，那些人在哪里。每個(gè)人都同意絕大多數(shù)地方都不能恰達(dá)的被代表。我很清楚自己在發(fā)現(xiàn)和訓(xùn)練其他人以便于來代替我的責(zé)任方面做得還不夠好。

對(duì)我來說，你取得最大的成功就在于你把其他人恰當(dāng)?shù)哪蠛掀饋聿⒁黄鹆己玫墓ぷ?，而自己并沒有參與。差一點(diǎn)就是首先要做好自己，而最糟糕的是你沒做好事情。就像我在自己的位置上反映的，我能看到對(duì)于我和橋水取得那些令人震驚的成就的厭惡，我還沒取得最高等的成功。實(shí)際上，我還在為取得第二高等級(jí)而努力（做好自己），盡管橋水已經(jīng)非常成功了。

那時(shí)候，大約有738人為橋水工作，有14個(gè)部門頭腦。我只能監(jiān)督部門頭腦了，還有一個(gè)管理委員會(huì)因?yàn)槲抑涝跊]有別人監(jiān)督的情況下我不能完全信任自己總能做出最好的決策。我重新構(gòu)建了匯報(bào)路線這樣我既要向管理委員會(huì)匯報(bào)，還要求委員會(huì)其他成員對(duì)于公司的監(jiān)督有責(zé)任。我要求他們對(duì)于制造廣泛的優(yōu)秀負(fù)責(zé)，我想達(dá)成他們的服務(wù)并幫助他們實(shí)現(xiàn)它。

2008年5月我給管理委員會(huì)的5位成員發(fā)了郵件并抄送給全公司，告訴他們“我迫切的想讓你們明白我已經(jīng)到了自己的極限，在我現(xiàn)有工作質(zhì)量下，工作和生活平衡以及兩者帶來的不能承受的痛苦”。

讀后感：

2008年作者快60歲了，從20不到開始工作，并在不久之后創(chuàng)辦橋水基金，開始編寫原則和指導(dǎo)意見，已經(jīng)堅(jiān)持40年了，而作者的工作強(qiáng)度非常高，還在不斷嘗試達(dá)到更高的管理水平，而橋水已經(jīng)非常大了，作者也只能直接管理中層領(lǐng)導(dǎo)了，他到了自己的極限。

盡管采用了很多辦法，杜絕自我獨(dú)斷，但很顯然很多人還是不能替代作者，可能是習(xí)慣性依賴吧。沒辦法，一個(gè)偉大公司的創(chuàng)始人都會(huì)面臨這楊的情況，不如學(xué)學(xué)蓋茨，早點(diǎn)交班，讓年輕人上臺(tái)，自己退休就好。