Ray Dalio is the founder and co-chairman of Bridgewater Associates, which, over the last forty years, has become the largest and best performing hedge fund in the world. Dalio has appeared on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world as well as the Bloomberg Markets list of the 50 most influential people. His new book is Principles: Life and Work.From the transcript of Dalio's interview with Fareed Zakaria:
ZAKARIA: You have this fascinating new book out. I don't want to let you go without asking you about one thing that everybody wonders about because you talk about it in the book and you are famous for it, which is that, at your firm there is this idea of radical transparency, which means people have to disagree clearly, publicly with others.--Marshal Zeringue
And people always wonder, do you take it to the point where people in your firm, actually, routinely look you in the eye and tell you, Ray Dalio, you're the boss, but you're completely 100 percent wrong?
DALIO: I need that. Yes. And I need that. I do it because I need it. I set up a company. If I don't have that engagement, besides my not hearing things that I need to have, can you imagine what it's like for you to be in the company, being in a position where you have to hold that inside of yourself? And then, you're walking around, thinking I did something stupid around in a company and you can't speak up?
You can't build a culture that way. In order to have independent thinkers around to get at the best ideas and have great collective decision-making, you have to be able to have thoughtful disagreement to rise above it.
I think that there's a challenge a lot of people have emotionally to being able to have disagreements. Shouldn't disagreement be a source of curiosity?
And also, if people are disagreeing, then somebody must be...[read on]