Post by aarvoll (INTJ) on Sept 12, 2018 21:18:54 GMT
Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, now the world’s largest Hedge Fund, in 1975. I’ve just finished Ray Dalio’s book, “Life and Work Principles”, and you can view an outline summary of the latter sections of the book (the first part is autobiographical) here.
This entry will examine Dalio’s organizational principles (Pt III: Work Principles in the outline), with an eye to those principles which might have application to our efforts. I’ll be moving back and forth between description of Dalio’s philosophy and my own commentary. I’ll quote the outline directly and provide section numbers for those who decide to delve deeper into Principles.
Dalio characterizes the structure of Bridgewater as “a believability-weighted idea meritocracy”. This is similar to the structure that we have adopted. By encouraging frank feedback from all levels and by providing as much information to all responsible parties as is possible this model of organization places an emphasis on dispassionate evaluation of ideas on their own merits. When rational discourse is not capable of generating consensus (putting people “in sync” as Dalio would phrase it), a comprehensive system of weighted votes, taking into account meticulously compiled data of prior performance (a metric of “believability”), provides decidability. This is what is meant by “a believability-weighted idea meritocracy”. For the record I was not aware of Dalio’s application of vote weighting before I suggested this model in an academic context, which was back in 2012 for those who might have followed my channel back then, though, to be honest, he has thought through this kind of structure far more than I have. It’s important to note that while Bridgewater’s structure of discourse does facilitate ideas being considered on their own merits, its organizational structure is all about formalized roles and providing accountability for responsible parties. Even if a believability weighted vote sets a work team on a particular track particular individuals are still held responsible for the success or failure of implementation.
“1 Trust in Radical Truth and Radical Transparency
1.1 Realize that you have nothing to fear from knowing the truth.
1.2 Have integrity and demand it from others.
a. Never say anything about someone that you wouldn’t say to them directly and don’t try people without accusing them to their faces.
b. Don’t let loyalty to people stand in the way of truth and the well-being of the organization.”
The above articulates some components of “Radical Truth”. The primary application of this principle is to the manner of feedback. 1.1 reflects a maxim that I have tried to live by, which is “It is good to be wrong”. The natural psychological reaction to criticism is to argue against it in order to ameliorate it or to reject it outright; this is amplified by the fact that we tend to remember experiences that paint us in a positive light and forget experiences that demonstrate our limitations. Evolutionary justifications for this behavior are obvious, if we believe that we are on the whole better than we are then we feel all the more justified in signaling high social status and pursuing reproduction. If this was a PUA forum then we would have to affirm our evolutionary instincts here, but since we are seeking an efficient social model for collective ascertainment of truth we have to recognize that “it is good to be wrong”. If the epistemological principles are agreed on beforehand and your view is set up against a view that demonstrates greater epistemic weight, the best behavior to guide us toward the truth is the immediate detachment from prior prejudice and adoption of the view that has stronger grounding. Until we have universally agreed upon epistemological principles however we must rely on the pragmatic notion of “believability weighting”. We need to collect quantified metrics that provide an indication of success or failure in a given role or of a given idea and rigorously apply these metrics to determine how the scales of believability swing on a given issue. We currently employ a primitive version of this in our determination of executive functions (Organizational and Academic Directors), but the approach could be extended to assess performance within these roles and within research. This entails developing at least partially quantified rubrics for judging performance. For the Organizational Director this would include statistics on net gain or loss of membership under a given Director, percentage of on time posts, percentage of feedback achieved, etc. A member wide evaluation of the Director’s performance at the end of the round could also be easily implemented. Above average performance in these metrics would contribute believability points to the Director to facilitate their repeated selection, below average performance would do the opposite.
“1.3 Create an environment in which everyone has the right to understand what makes sense and no one has the right to hold a critical opinion without speaking up.
a. Speak up, own it, or get out.
b. Be extremely open.
c. Don’t be naive about dishonesty.
1.4 Be radically transparent.
a. Use transparency to help enforce justice.
b. Share the things that are hardest to share.
c. Keep exceptions to radical transparency very rare.
d. Make sure those who are given radical transparency
recognize their responsibilities to handle it well and to
weigh things intelligently.
e. Provide transparency to people who handle it well and
either deny it to people who don’t handle it well or remove
those people from the organization.
f. Don’t share sensitive information with the organization’s
enemies.”
These points relate to “Radical Transparency”. Bridgewater gives more information about high level decision making to more of its employees than most companies. It also schedules meetings that explicitly ask for feedback up and down the hierarchy. We currently have total transparency regarding our final products (our posts, and the frameworks for rounds developed by Directors), but very little built in transparency regarding the individual decision making which goes into these products. To increase this transparency we could add a checkpoint (just one to start to simplify things), between assignment of responsibilities (posts and schematics) and the due dates of these responsibilities. A checkpoint would involve a rough draft presentation of the work being done (I tried to implement this with a group chat over the weekend while I worked out the schematic for this round), with the responsible party making explicit the principles of decision making (epistemological and ethical principles) that went into producing the rough draft. Discussion should be had on these underlying principles ideally until consensus on the aptness of the principles, with or without modification derived from feedback, is arrived at. Agreement on the underlying principles is more important than agreement on the content of the post itself. The rough draft presentation should occur through a real time conversation, but given the limitations of our schedule participation in these meetings would have to be optional (except for the presenter). The concrete additional responsibility for each member would be posting when this presentation and feedback session will occur. Incentives might be added for members who participate in live feedback sessions.
The last points above regard operations security, and this is a much harder task for us given our anonymity. This consideration of opsec should be a long term goal. A vetting process should probably not be a requirement for initial membership, but perhaps it should be applied to all prospective candidates moving into Organization in the future. Viewing Organization posts, except for final schematic products, might be restricted in the future to only vetted members. If we find that members are working with outside groups to undermine our goals we’ll need to institute a judicial process of review and committees will have to be established to evaluate the evidence and decide on methods for excommunication, so to speak.
“3 Create a Culture in Which It Is Okay to Make Mistakes and Unacceptable Not to Learn from Them
3.1 Recognize that mistakes are a natural part of the evolutionary process.
Fail well
Don’t feel bad about your mistakes or those of others. Love them!”
Bridgewater utilizes an “Issue Log” that records mistakes, who made them, why they were made and how severe they were. As long as mistakes are added to the Issue Log employees have a sort of immunity, but if employees try to hide their mistakes they are punished severely. This might be added as a section to provide some forgiveness for late or absent posts depending on the personal context that led to them. This would allow us insight into common circumstances that lead to underperformance and we can then build strategies into the schedule to compensate for them.
“4 Get and Stay in Sync
4.1 Recognize that conflicts are essential for great relationships because they are how people determine whether their principles are aligned and resolve their differences.
a. Spend lavishly on the time and energy you devote to getting
in sync, because it’s the best investment you can make.
4.2 Know how to get in sync and disagree well.
a. Surface areas of possible out-of-syncness.
b. Distinguish between idle complaints and complaints meant
to lead to improvement.
c. Remember that every story has another side.”
Interpersonal conflicts will arise and we need to provide incentives to encourage people to bring these conflicts to mediating third parties. Extra points can be given to parties who are chosen to mediate and to parties that resolve conflicts. If people are found to abuse the system and feign conflicts severe point deductions will have to be applied.
“4.4 If it is your meeting to run, manage the conversation.
a. Make it clear who is directing the meeting and whom it is
meant to serve.
b. Be precise in what you’re talking about to avoid confusion.
c. Make clear what type of communication you are going to
have in light of the objectives and priorities.”
This has to do with Dalio’s implementation of Responsible Parties, he ensures that every meeting is organized by someone and meetings that go off track will affect the believability weighting of that person. For us this means that posters will be responsible for moderating the comments on their posts to ensure that conversation doesn’t meander. If a commenter claims that the poster is abusing this role oversight will have to be assigned to evaluate the claim. The same applies to the rough draft feedback sessions mentioned above.
Aside: There are many principles to consider here and it is not feasible for a single director to provide the infrastructure to accommodate them all in a single round, but hopefully many can be considered as long term structural goals.
“d. Lead the discussion by being assertive and open-minded.
e. Navigate between the different levels of the conversation.
f. Watch out for “topic slip.”
g. Enforce the logic of conversations.”
The combination of open-mindedness and assertiveness is critical to the culture at Bridgewater. Dalio uses extensive personality testing and simply doesn’t hire people who aren’t open-minded. We don’t want to exclude people from participation in entry level roles, but we might consider finding ways of evaluating demonstrated open-mindedness and rewarding this behavior with extra points. The same applies to assertiveness, if someone pushes a disagreement instead of letting it be this needs to be seen as positive. People need to be able to recognize when they’re wrong and not continue to assert when their logic has been undermined, but failing to assert a view in the first place is just as dangerous. Carrots and sticks can be employed to incentivize assertiveness, if a person demonstrates a view that contradicts the view of a post that they were obliged to provide feedback on but that person did not pursue that contradiction in the feedback then they ought not to gain points for their feedback. A carrot would be to identify exemplary instances of drawn out logical debate and to reward both parties with points if they reach resolution.
“4.7 If you find you can’t reconcile major differences—especially
in values—consider whether the relationship is worth preserving.”
Over time we might want to establish a list of values that we all affirm, and eventually start limiting membership to people who demonstrate those values. Challenging the values at the philosophical level should be encouraged and if their criticism wins at a logical level then the values should adapt to become more truthful, but if someone fails to argue them logically and simply undermines them by constant repetition of sentimental aversion, e.g. through loading and framing, then they need to be seen as incompatible with our ultimate aims and prohibited from creating discord through excommunication.
“5.3 Think about whether you are playing the role of a teacher, a student, or a peer and whether you should be teaching, asking questions, or debating.
a. It’s more important that the student understand the teacher than that the teacher understand the student, though both are important.
b. Recognize that while everyone has the right and responsibility to try to make sense of important things, they must do so with humility and radical open-mindedness.”
If someone, let’s say Jim, has significantly higher believability on a given issue than someone else, call him Gerald, Gerald will be expected to seek and then demonstrate comprehension of Jim’s point of view on that issue before expecting Jim to comprehend his (Gerald’s) point of view. This can seem unfair, but if you fail to establish these norms much time can be wasted satisfying the fractious instincts of less knowledgeable people.
“5.6 Recognize that everyone has the right and responsibility to try to make sense of important things.
a. Communications aimed at getting the best answer should
involve the most relevant people.
b. Communication aimed at educating or boosting cohesion
should involve a broader set of people than would be needed
if the aim were just getting the best answer.
c. Recognize that you don’t need to make judgments about
everything.”
This has to do with the limitations of Radical Transparency, and in our context this would mean not necessarily letting lower level members criticized the decision making process of Organization, Colloquium and Academic Directors, but encouraging them to criticize final products. So they don’t provide feedback on Organization posts but do provide feedback on the schematic for the round and the management of the round produced by the Organizational director.
“5.7 Pay more attention to whether the decision-making system is fair than whether you get your way.”
This speaks for itself, but it should be listed here anyway.
“6.2 Make sure people don’t confuse the right to complain, give
advice, and openly debate with the right to make decisions.
a. When challenging a decision and/or a decision maker, consider the broader context.”
It should be normatively established that feedback is a distinct process from the executive function employed by Directors.
“6.4 Once a decision is made, everyone should get behind it even though individuals may still disagree.
a. See things from the higher level.
b. Never allow the idea meritocracy to slip into anarchy.
c. Don’t allow lynch mobs or mob rule.”
If government officials don’t respect the powers enumerated by the Constitution republicanism degrades into mob rule and power politics. If we don’t agree on principles of decidability and accept decisions that are made even when we disagree then our organization will degrade into just another feels based social board and we won’t accomplish anything. The Constitution is open to revision, but there is a specific process for amending the Constitution. We should learn from that example. It’s a fine line between actively encouraging feedback and criticism within a formal scheme for distributing the executive function, and allowing discourse to be derailed by willful disagreements.
“6.6 Recognize that if the people who have the power don’t want to operate by principles, the principled way of operating
will fail.”
Most of us have recognized from the beginning that one Organizational Director with bad intentions will be able to disrupt the whole forum. We need to develop some kind of check on this power to ensure that a process of discovering fair principles of consensus building and decidability continues even with a less than principled Director. It is too soon to speculate on this check because we haven’t yet grown a normative framework with wide support. The goal of safeguarding our processes and principles is obviously subsidiary to the process of discovery of these. How do we know when we’ve grown something that we should safeguard? This is an open question, but my suggestion would be that perhaps organizational components that continue being reiterated over 6 or more rounds should be sorted into some kind of constitution for our group.
“8.2 Remember that people are built very differently and that different ways of seeing and thinking make people suitable for different jobs.
a. Understand how to use and interpret personality assessments.
b. Remember that people tend to pick people like themselves,
so choose interviewers who can identify what you are looking
for.
c. Look for people who are willing to look at themselves
objectively.
d. Remember that people typically don’t change all that much.”
Bridgewater’s structure is build around these kind of personality measures, and they use “Baseball Cards” with a persons profile and summary performance record to help co-workers to understand what they can expect from each other. I think we should use the Baseball Card system, but I’m not sure that our current forum allows a profile section where this can be easily displayed. We may have to start a new section on the main page with member bios and profiles, points should be awarded to people who post their relevant information there.
I don’t want to risk overloading information with this one post, Principles is 544 pages and there is more to explore here. My next post in this section may or may not return to finish this case study, but I would like to return to it at some point depending on the feedback I get on this. Thanks for reading this post, and I do encourage people to read the book since it comes from a very believable source and makes logical sense.
This entry will examine Dalio’s organizational principles (Pt III: Work Principles in the outline), with an eye to those principles which might have application to our efforts. I’ll be moving back and forth between description of Dalio’s philosophy and my own commentary. I’ll quote the outline directly and provide section numbers for those who decide to delve deeper into Principles.
Dalio characterizes the structure of Bridgewater as “a believability-weighted idea meritocracy”. This is similar to the structure that we have adopted. By encouraging frank feedback from all levels and by providing as much information to all responsible parties as is possible this model of organization places an emphasis on dispassionate evaluation of ideas on their own merits. When rational discourse is not capable of generating consensus (putting people “in sync” as Dalio would phrase it), a comprehensive system of weighted votes, taking into account meticulously compiled data of prior performance (a metric of “believability”), provides decidability. This is what is meant by “a believability-weighted idea meritocracy”. For the record I was not aware of Dalio’s application of vote weighting before I suggested this model in an academic context, which was back in 2012 for those who might have followed my channel back then, though, to be honest, he has thought through this kind of structure far more than I have. It’s important to note that while Bridgewater’s structure of discourse does facilitate ideas being considered on their own merits, its organizational structure is all about formalized roles and providing accountability for responsible parties. Even if a believability weighted vote sets a work team on a particular track particular individuals are still held responsible for the success or failure of implementation.
“1 Trust in Radical Truth and Radical Transparency
1.1 Realize that you have nothing to fear from knowing the truth.
1.2 Have integrity and demand it from others.
a. Never say anything about someone that you wouldn’t say to them directly and don’t try people without accusing them to their faces.
b. Don’t let loyalty to people stand in the way of truth and the well-being of the organization.”
The above articulates some components of “Radical Truth”. The primary application of this principle is to the manner of feedback. 1.1 reflects a maxim that I have tried to live by, which is “It is good to be wrong”. The natural psychological reaction to criticism is to argue against it in order to ameliorate it or to reject it outright; this is amplified by the fact that we tend to remember experiences that paint us in a positive light and forget experiences that demonstrate our limitations. Evolutionary justifications for this behavior are obvious, if we believe that we are on the whole better than we are then we feel all the more justified in signaling high social status and pursuing reproduction. If this was a PUA forum then we would have to affirm our evolutionary instincts here, but since we are seeking an efficient social model for collective ascertainment of truth we have to recognize that “it is good to be wrong”. If the epistemological principles are agreed on beforehand and your view is set up against a view that demonstrates greater epistemic weight, the best behavior to guide us toward the truth is the immediate detachment from prior prejudice and adoption of the view that has stronger grounding. Until we have universally agreed upon epistemological principles however we must rely on the pragmatic notion of “believability weighting”. We need to collect quantified metrics that provide an indication of success or failure in a given role or of a given idea and rigorously apply these metrics to determine how the scales of believability swing on a given issue. We currently employ a primitive version of this in our determination of executive functions (Organizational and Academic Directors), but the approach could be extended to assess performance within these roles and within research. This entails developing at least partially quantified rubrics for judging performance. For the Organizational Director this would include statistics on net gain or loss of membership under a given Director, percentage of on time posts, percentage of feedback achieved, etc. A member wide evaluation of the Director’s performance at the end of the round could also be easily implemented. Above average performance in these metrics would contribute believability points to the Director to facilitate their repeated selection, below average performance would do the opposite.
“1.3 Create an environment in which everyone has the right to understand what makes sense and no one has the right to hold a critical opinion without speaking up.
a. Speak up, own it, or get out.
b. Be extremely open.
c. Don’t be naive about dishonesty.
1.4 Be radically transparent.
a. Use transparency to help enforce justice.
b. Share the things that are hardest to share.
c. Keep exceptions to radical transparency very rare.
d. Make sure those who are given radical transparency
recognize their responsibilities to handle it well and to
weigh things intelligently.
e. Provide transparency to people who handle it well and
either deny it to people who don’t handle it well or remove
those people from the organization.
f. Don’t share sensitive information with the organization’s
enemies.”
These points relate to “Radical Transparency”. Bridgewater gives more information about high level decision making to more of its employees than most companies. It also schedules meetings that explicitly ask for feedback up and down the hierarchy. We currently have total transparency regarding our final products (our posts, and the frameworks for rounds developed by Directors), but very little built in transparency regarding the individual decision making which goes into these products. To increase this transparency we could add a checkpoint (just one to start to simplify things), between assignment of responsibilities (posts and schematics) and the due dates of these responsibilities. A checkpoint would involve a rough draft presentation of the work being done (I tried to implement this with a group chat over the weekend while I worked out the schematic for this round), with the responsible party making explicit the principles of decision making (epistemological and ethical principles) that went into producing the rough draft. Discussion should be had on these underlying principles ideally until consensus on the aptness of the principles, with or without modification derived from feedback, is arrived at. Agreement on the underlying principles is more important than agreement on the content of the post itself. The rough draft presentation should occur through a real time conversation, but given the limitations of our schedule participation in these meetings would have to be optional (except for the presenter). The concrete additional responsibility for each member would be posting when this presentation and feedback session will occur. Incentives might be added for members who participate in live feedback sessions.
The last points above regard operations security, and this is a much harder task for us given our anonymity. This consideration of opsec should be a long term goal. A vetting process should probably not be a requirement for initial membership, but perhaps it should be applied to all prospective candidates moving into Organization in the future. Viewing Organization posts, except for final schematic products, might be restricted in the future to only vetted members. If we find that members are working with outside groups to undermine our goals we’ll need to institute a judicial process of review and committees will have to be established to evaluate the evidence and decide on methods for excommunication, so to speak.
“3 Create a Culture in Which It Is Okay to Make Mistakes and Unacceptable Not to Learn from Them
3.1 Recognize that mistakes are a natural part of the evolutionary process.
Fail well
Don’t feel bad about your mistakes or those of others. Love them!”
Bridgewater utilizes an “Issue Log” that records mistakes, who made them, why they were made and how severe they were. As long as mistakes are added to the Issue Log employees have a sort of immunity, but if employees try to hide their mistakes they are punished severely. This might be added as a section to provide some forgiveness for late or absent posts depending on the personal context that led to them. This would allow us insight into common circumstances that lead to underperformance and we can then build strategies into the schedule to compensate for them.
“4 Get and Stay in Sync
4.1 Recognize that conflicts are essential for great relationships because they are how people determine whether their principles are aligned and resolve their differences.
a. Spend lavishly on the time and energy you devote to getting
in sync, because it’s the best investment you can make.
4.2 Know how to get in sync and disagree well.
a. Surface areas of possible out-of-syncness.
b. Distinguish between idle complaints and complaints meant
to lead to improvement.
c. Remember that every story has another side.”
Interpersonal conflicts will arise and we need to provide incentives to encourage people to bring these conflicts to mediating third parties. Extra points can be given to parties who are chosen to mediate and to parties that resolve conflicts. If people are found to abuse the system and feign conflicts severe point deductions will have to be applied.
“4.4 If it is your meeting to run, manage the conversation.
a. Make it clear who is directing the meeting and whom it is
meant to serve.
b. Be precise in what you’re talking about to avoid confusion.
c. Make clear what type of communication you are going to
have in light of the objectives and priorities.”
This has to do with Dalio’s implementation of Responsible Parties, he ensures that every meeting is organized by someone and meetings that go off track will affect the believability weighting of that person. For us this means that posters will be responsible for moderating the comments on their posts to ensure that conversation doesn’t meander. If a commenter claims that the poster is abusing this role oversight will have to be assigned to evaluate the claim. The same applies to the rough draft feedback sessions mentioned above.
Aside: There are many principles to consider here and it is not feasible for a single director to provide the infrastructure to accommodate them all in a single round, but hopefully many can be considered as long term structural goals.
“d. Lead the discussion by being assertive and open-minded.
e. Navigate between the different levels of the conversation.
f. Watch out for “topic slip.”
g. Enforce the logic of conversations.”
The combination of open-mindedness and assertiveness is critical to the culture at Bridgewater. Dalio uses extensive personality testing and simply doesn’t hire people who aren’t open-minded. We don’t want to exclude people from participation in entry level roles, but we might consider finding ways of evaluating demonstrated open-mindedness and rewarding this behavior with extra points. The same applies to assertiveness, if someone pushes a disagreement instead of letting it be this needs to be seen as positive. People need to be able to recognize when they’re wrong and not continue to assert when their logic has been undermined, but failing to assert a view in the first place is just as dangerous. Carrots and sticks can be employed to incentivize assertiveness, if a person demonstrates a view that contradicts the view of a post that they were obliged to provide feedback on but that person did not pursue that contradiction in the feedback then they ought not to gain points for their feedback. A carrot would be to identify exemplary instances of drawn out logical debate and to reward both parties with points if they reach resolution.
“4.7 If you find you can’t reconcile major differences—especially
in values—consider whether the relationship is worth preserving.”
Over time we might want to establish a list of values that we all affirm, and eventually start limiting membership to people who demonstrate those values. Challenging the values at the philosophical level should be encouraged and if their criticism wins at a logical level then the values should adapt to become more truthful, but if someone fails to argue them logically and simply undermines them by constant repetition of sentimental aversion, e.g. through loading and framing, then they need to be seen as incompatible with our ultimate aims and prohibited from creating discord through excommunication.
“5.3 Think about whether you are playing the role of a teacher, a student, or a peer and whether you should be teaching, asking questions, or debating.
a. It’s more important that the student understand the teacher than that the teacher understand the student, though both are important.
b. Recognize that while everyone has the right and responsibility to try to make sense of important things, they must do so with humility and radical open-mindedness.”
If someone, let’s say Jim, has significantly higher believability on a given issue than someone else, call him Gerald, Gerald will be expected to seek and then demonstrate comprehension of Jim’s point of view on that issue before expecting Jim to comprehend his (Gerald’s) point of view. This can seem unfair, but if you fail to establish these norms much time can be wasted satisfying the fractious instincts of less knowledgeable people.
“5.6 Recognize that everyone has the right and responsibility to try to make sense of important things.
a. Communications aimed at getting the best answer should
involve the most relevant people.
b. Communication aimed at educating or boosting cohesion
should involve a broader set of people than would be needed
if the aim were just getting the best answer.
c. Recognize that you don’t need to make judgments about
everything.”
This has to do with the limitations of Radical Transparency, and in our context this would mean not necessarily letting lower level members criticized the decision making process of Organization, Colloquium and Academic Directors, but encouraging them to criticize final products. So they don’t provide feedback on Organization posts but do provide feedback on the schematic for the round and the management of the round produced by the Organizational director.
“5.7 Pay more attention to whether the decision-making system is fair than whether you get your way.”
This speaks for itself, but it should be listed here anyway.
“6.2 Make sure people don’t confuse the right to complain, give
advice, and openly debate with the right to make decisions.
a. When challenging a decision and/or a decision maker, consider the broader context.”
It should be normatively established that feedback is a distinct process from the executive function employed by Directors.
“6.4 Once a decision is made, everyone should get behind it even though individuals may still disagree.
a. See things from the higher level.
b. Never allow the idea meritocracy to slip into anarchy.
c. Don’t allow lynch mobs or mob rule.”
If government officials don’t respect the powers enumerated by the Constitution republicanism degrades into mob rule and power politics. If we don’t agree on principles of decidability and accept decisions that are made even when we disagree then our organization will degrade into just another feels based social board and we won’t accomplish anything. The Constitution is open to revision, but there is a specific process for amending the Constitution. We should learn from that example. It’s a fine line between actively encouraging feedback and criticism within a formal scheme for distributing the executive function, and allowing discourse to be derailed by willful disagreements.
“6.6 Recognize that if the people who have the power don’t want to operate by principles, the principled way of operating
will fail.”
Most of us have recognized from the beginning that one Organizational Director with bad intentions will be able to disrupt the whole forum. We need to develop some kind of check on this power to ensure that a process of discovering fair principles of consensus building and decidability continues even with a less than principled Director. It is too soon to speculate on this check because we haven’t yet grown a normative framework with wide support. The goal of safeguarding our processes and principles is obviously subsidiary to the process of discovery of these. How do we know when we’ve grown something that we should safeguard? This is an open question, but my suggestion would be that perhaps organizational components that continue being reiterated over 6 or more rounds should be sorted into some kind of constitution for our group.
“8.2 Remember that people are built very differently and that different ways of seeing and thinking make people suitable for different jobs.
a. Understand how to use and interpret personality assessments.
b. Remember that people tend to pick people like themselves,
so choose interviewers who can identify what you are looking
for.
c. Look for people who are willing to look at themselves
objectively.
d. Remember that people typically don’t change all that much.”
Bridgewater’s structure is build around these kind of personality measures, and they use “Baseball Cards” with a persons profile and summary performance record to help co-workers to understand what they can expect from each other. I think we should use the Baseball Card system, but I’m not sure that our current forum allows a profile section where this can be easily displayed. We may have to start a new section on the main page with member bios and profiles, points should be awarded to people who post their relevant information there.
I don’t want to risk overloading information with this one post, Principles is 544 pages and there is more to explore here. My next post in this section may or may not return to finish this case study, but I would like to return to it at some point depending on the feedback I get on this. Thanks for reading this post, and I do encourage people to read the book since it comes from a very believable source and makes logical sense.