I don’t know much about Ray Dalio besides his success as a businessman. I picked up Principles — Ray Dalio after seeing it on a Bill Gates book list. If I could sum it up real simply, it is Ray’s perspective on how to approach your personal and professional goals, based on his experience running and growing his hedge fund. At one point, he was part of the top 100 richest people in the world. His narrative is humble and empathetic (not everyone is like him). There are a lot of concepts throughout this book, not many of them groundbreaking, that are refreshers from leading people and building culture.
All organizations are boiled down to People and Culture.
Create an amazing culture
- Radical Transparency, Allow Mistakes, Thoughtful Disagreements
Get the People Right
- Feedback is critical (but let them fail so they learn), hire right (don’t design jobs to fit people), train and develop (understand weaknesses/strengths)
The philosophical takeaway I had from this book was the idea that we look at our organizations as a machine, a machine that we need to look at objectively and design it in a way to meet our goals. This requires understanding the metrics and continuous evaluation of where you are along that goal.
