MAKING BRIDGEWATER ROCK-SOLID AND CUTTING-EDGE

让桥水快速转动和高端

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.”

译文：

2008年6月我们的年度小镇大厅会议，我说从我的眼睛来看桥水是，并一直是“一路伴随的麻烦和糟糕事件不断” 大约经过5年高速增长，桥水正向一家综合机构发展，就在这时我们遇到了新的问题。

没什么新鲜的，自从我创办桥水开始，我们总是遇到问题因为我们总是在做大胆的新事物，犯错，然后快速解决。举例，技术已经变化的太快了，就在桥水的过程中，我们从使用规则到分发列表软件再到现在先进的ai。一切都变化的太快了，似乎没有什么真正的焦点聚集在任何正确的事情上，尤其当新河更好的事物必将到来。所以我们建立的自己的技术，以轻量和灵活的方式，在提供感觉的同时也制造了大量的麻烦并很难处理。同样的应用可以允许很快并灵活运用于整个公司，所以有几个部门随着公司的增长变得过度扩张了，成为顶尖总是非常有趣，但是我们度过了一段非常困难的时期，业绩开始下滑，尤其在非投资领域的业务。组织需要重新建构，但这一切并不简单。

2008年我每周工作80小时两份全职工作（监督投资和监督公司），以我的观点两份工作都没做的足够好。我感觉我和公司更概括的说，因太多优秀而变得松弛。我在投资管理和业务管理之间被恰好的困住了，但现在我们是一家更大的公司了，商业管理方面要求我要投入更多的时间。我制定了一项时间-运动研究基于我所有的投资和管理责任；研究显示如果要达到优秀的程度我每周要花费165小时才能达到我能满足的程度。有人问我是否有其他办法也能做到优秀，如果有，那些人在哪里。每个人都同意绝大多数地方都不能恰达的被代表。我很清楚自己在发现和训练其他人以便于来代替我的责任方面做得还不够好。

对我来说，你取得最大的成功就在于你把其他人恰当的捏合起来并一起良好的工作，而自己并没有参与。差一点就是首先要做好自己，而最糟糕的是你没做好事情。就像我在自己的位置上反映的，我能看到对于我和桥水取得那些令人震惊的成就的厌恶，我还没取得最高等的成功。实际上，我还在为取得第二高等级而努力（做好自己），尽管桥水已经非常成功了。

那时候，大约有738人为桥水工作，有14个部门头脑。我只能监督部门头脑了，还有一个管理委员会因为我知道在没有别人监督的情况下我不能完全信任自己总能做出最好的决策。我重新构建了汇报路线这样我既要向管理委员会汇报，还要求委员会其他成员对于公司的监督有责任。我要求他们对于制造广泛的优秀负责，我想达成他们的服务并帮助他们实现它。

2008年5月我给管理委员会的5位成员发了邮件并抄送给全公司，告诉他们“我迫切的想让你们明白我已经到了自己的极限，在我现有工作质量下，工作和生活平衡以及两者带来的不能承受的痛苦”。

读后感：

2008年作者快60岁了，从20不到开始工作，并在不久之后创办桥水基金，开始编写原则和指导意见，已经坚持40年了，而作者的工作强度非常高，还在不断尝试达到更高的管理水平，而桥水已经非常大了，作者也只能直接管理中层领导了，他到了自己的极限。

尽管采用了很多办法，杜绝自我独断，但很显然很多人还是不能替代作者，可能是习惯性依赖吧。没办法，一个伟大公司的创始人都会面临这杨的情况，不如学学盖茨，早点交班，让年轻人上台，自己退休就好。