19.《原则》Principles

The book we are talking about today is The Principles. This book is the work of Rae Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Funds in the United States. Not only is Dalio a successful entrepreneur, he is also a "King of Golden Quotes", and his work is full of golden quotes, one of which can be used to end a PowerPoint presentation. Today we will start with one of Dalio's golden quotes.
"The deepest delusions people suffer from often come from their own prejudices."
"The twin barriers of ego and blind spots are the fatal flaws that prevent those who are intelligent and hardworking from realising their potential in life."
"Understanding reality, accepting it and dealing with it is both pragmatic and wonderful. Becoming a super realistic person has taught me to appreciate the beauty of all realities, including the harsh ones, and to come to despise unrealistic idealism."
Did you notice that all these quotes from Dalio actually express the same thing, which is to overcome subjective prejudices and recognise reality?
And how do you do this? Dalio has established a very unique culture for Bridgewater, called "extreme truth-seeking" and "extreme transparency". This means that we say what we want to say, we say what we want to say, and we don't allow private discussions or backbiting. So how can this be done? Well, there is an app that Bridgewater uses internally, called dot collector, which you can think of as Bridgewater's version of 'public review'.
Whenever there is a meeting at Bridgewater, everyone has an iPad and opens it to comment on each other's ideas in real time, scoring them on dozens of dimensions, giving them a positive or negative rating, and adding a short text comment. All scores and reviews are displayed in real time.
And it's not just in meetings - anyone within Bridgewater can rate and comment on any colleague's opinion or performance at any time. So every Bridgewater employee is a "walking restaurant", full of reviews, and Bridgewater's CIO is said to have received as many as 11,000 reviews, which would have broken anyone's nerves.
What's more, the point collector is not only an information-gathering tool, it is also an artificial intelligence program. It analyses the data in real time, looking at what people are thinking, how they are making judgements and giving advice to each person. In other words, while you are 'critiquing' others, the AI is also 'critiquing' you.
In short, at Bridgewater, everyone is being "critiqued" at all times, and must be critiqued by the AI at all times.
Imagine what it would be like to work at a company like this. It is said that 1 in 4 newcomers leave because they are unable to adapt to the odd corporate culture. You see, to understand the values of a company, it is important to look not at why the employees of this company joined, but why they left.
And here's another little story. What happens when Bridgewater has an employee who makes an operational error that results in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars? Rae Dalio's first reaction was not to overreact to the incident, why? Because overreacting would only cause those around him to try to cover up the mistake.
How did Rae Dalio handle it? He made a management tool at Bridgewater - a 'mistake diary' - where if you make a mistake, you write it down in the mistake diary and you're fine; if you try to cover it up and pretend it didn't happen, then you're bound to be fine. So Bridgewater's principle for dealing with mistakes is in three steps: step one, all mistakes must be recorded; step two, everyone works together to analyse the root cause of the failure; step three, solve it patiently.
My feeling is that it is clear from both Dalio's golden words and Bridgewater's culture that Dalio is a master of insight into human nature. And management, in the end, is about managing human nature.
译文：
 今天要聊的这本书是《原则》。这本书是美国桥水基金公司的创始人瑞·达利欧的作品。达利欧不但是个成功的企业家，也是一个“金句王”，他的作品中金句频出，随便摘一句就可以用来做PPT结尾。今天我们就从达利欧的金句聊起。
“人们所受的最深的蒙蔽，往往来自自己的偏见。”
“自我和盲点这两个障碍，是阻碍那些聪明而又勤奋的人实现人生潜能的致命缺陷。”
“理解现实，接受现实，应对现实，既是务实的，也是美妙的。成为一个超级现实的人让我学会了欣赏所有现实的美好，包括残酷的现实，并开始鄙视不现实的理想主义。”
你发现没有，达利欧的这几句话，其实都是表达同一个意思，就是要克服主观偏见，认清现实。
那怎么做到这一点呢？达利欧为桥水公司确立了一种非常独特的公司文化，叫做“极度求真”和“极度透明”。意思是，有话当面说，有想法当面提，不允许私下议论、背后嚼舌根。那么，如何才能做到这一点呢？这就要说到桥水公司内部使用的一款APP，叫做集点器（dot collector），你可以把它看做桥水版的“大众点评”。
每当桥水公司内部开会，参会人员就人人端个iPad，打开这个点评神器，对相互之间的观点进行实时点评，从几十个维度进行打分，给出好评或者差评，还可以附加一句简短的文字点评。所有的打分和点评都是实名显示的。
而且，不仅仅是在会议上，桥水内部任何人在任何时候，都可以对任何同事的观点或者表现进行打分和点评。所以每个桥水员工就是一个“行走的餐厅”，身上挂满了各种点评，据说桥水的CIO就获得了多达11000个点评，神经敏感的人估计早崩溃了。
更夸张的是，集点器不仅是一个信息收集工具，它本身也是一个人工智能程序。它在这个过程中实时分析数据，观察所有人在想什么，他们是如何做出判断的，并对每个人给出建议。也就是说，你在“点评”别人的同时，人工智能也在“点评”你。
总之，在桥水公司，每个人都在随时接受“大众点评”，同时还必须随时接受人工智能对自己的品头论足。
你想想看，如果你在这样一家公司工作，会是什么感受？据说，有1/4的新人因为无法适应这样的奇葩企业文化而选择离开。你看，要了解一个公司的价值观，不要看这个公司的员工为什么入职，而要看这个公司的员工为什么离职。
还有一个小故事。桥水有一个员工，操作失误导致损失了几十万美金，这时怎么办？瑞·达利欧的第一反应是不能对这件事过度反应，为什么？因为过度反应只会让周围的人试图掩盖错误。
瑞·达利欧是怎么处理的呢？他在桥水基金做了一个管理工具——“错误日记”，出错了，写在错误日记里，你就没事；如果你试图掩盖，假装没发生，那就你一定会有事。所以，桥水公司处理错误的原则分三步：第一步，所有的错误一定要被记录；第二步，大家一起分析失败的根本原因；第三步，耐心解决它。
我的感受是，无论从达利欧的金句，还是从桥水公司的文化，都可以看出，达利欧是个洞察人性的大师。而管理，说到底，就是管理人性。