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.
译文：自从鲍勃，吉赛尔，和丹1990年代给我设立的“雷回馈日记”，我就开始更加空开的写下并分享我的工作原则和我的投资原则一样，起先，这些都是以分享哲学名言的形式并电邮给整个公司。然后，不论何时新发生的事情需要我做决策，我就会反馈到我的标准并当做一个原则记录下来，这样人们就可以根据那些情况之间的联系和我的原则是怎么处理这些情况的，以及我的行为。越来越多的，我们开始把所有事都看做“那些中的一个”-另一个标准版情况比如雇佣，解雇，决定补偿，处理不忠-那些都有对应的原则。通过将这些公开写出来，我能学术性的培育这些想法，通过结婚我们大家的反馈优化那些原则，然后遵循这些原则。
开始的时候原则的数量很少，随着时间增长。2000年中期的时候，桥水基金开始快速增长，我们已经有了一定数量的新经理人尝试学习和采纳公司独特的文化-持续增长的咨询我的建议。而外部的人们也开始咨询我他们怎样能创建自己的精英智库。所以2006年，我准备了一个粗略的60条工作原则列表，并发送给桥水的经理人以便于他们能开始评估这些原则，讨论他们，对这些原则产生自己的想法。“粗略的选拔”我在总结日记上写下了，“但他是展开评论的初始存在”
就这样开始了一场进行中的革命性的遭遇诸多不同状况的过程，形成关于如何处理这些原则的原则，以及和其他桥水的领导人和经理人达成一致的原则。过了一段时间，我遇到最多的问题是如何运作一家公司？就这样我有了几百个原则几乎涵盖所有的事情。那个原则的集合，和我们的投资原则集合一样，成为一种决策制定博物馆。那些原则是你在工作原则中能发现的基础原则。
但是还不足以编制和教会我们哲学；我们不得不和他一起成长。随着公司进一步壮大，发生的原因开始参与进来。在桥水基金的早期，彼此都认识，所以保持极端透明是容易的-人们可以任意参加他们感兴趣的会议，非正式的彼此交流。但是当公司发展，那些都在逻辑上不可能了，成为一个现实的问题。人们在不了解事情发展状况的情况下如何做到高效的交换想法那？没有透明交流，人们可能会编造发生的事情去适应他们自己的兴趣点，有时则躲在门后，不交流。问题就会隐藏起来而不是摆到桌面上来本可以解决的。想要得到真实的准确的想法，必须透明公正这样人们才能站在大家的角度看待事物。
为确保这些发生，我要求实质上所有会议必须记录，并发送给每个人，极少数情况例外比如我们讨论非常隐私的事情像个人健康或者某个交易或决策规则的专有信息。一开始我把这类管理会议的原始记录文件发给全公司，但那会成为每个人的负担。所以我建立了一个小组编辑这些文件，专注于最重要的时刻，并随着时间增加问题形成“真实场景”案例便于以后用于训练。随后，这些案例成了新员工“新兵训练营”的一部分，就像一部链接处理问题的原则的进行中的趋势的窗口。
所有这些开放的政策导致一些非常直接的讨论—谁做了什么和为什么，结果我们也能更深入的我们对于不同思考方式的理解。这也能启发我们所有人—显示为什么不同的人的大脑的工作方式。毫无例外的 我能更好的感谢那些我曾经非常憎恨的人！甚至，我认识到如果经理人不能理解人们不同的思考方式就不能理解为什么那些为他工作的人会处理不同的情况，-就像一个监工不嫩理解他的设施的行为。那种洞察力带领我们探测心理测量测试—一种为什么人们思考方式不同的方法。
读后感：生活原则是工作原则的基础，在这之上，才是工作中的原则，千万注意顺序。
试着理解对方，站在对方的立场上考虑，换位思考，也许就能理解对方的思维方式和结果，不管是不是做投资和管理，我们普通人同样适用这样的规则。
