I’m currently reading “Principles” by Ray Dalio. Well, I am not so interested in the hedge fund world or how big shot Ray Dalio is but this book was highly praised by so many people around me.

When I wrote this reflection, I was halfway into the book.

In the first section (Life Principles), in order to be successful, Ray encouraged people to (1) be open-minded and (2) learn from other “believable” people. I think I read enough self-help books to know these 2 concepts, but Ray brought it up to the next level called “radical transparency”. And he showed us how he applies this in his company:

• Everyone in BridgeWater would expose their specialties, strengths and weaknesses (when it comes to work). This would let people know how believable you are in certain aspects. This is not self-reflection, but scientifically assessed by frameworks like Myer-Briggs Type Indicator, Team Dimension Test.
• Open-minded people are obsessed of finding the truth. That’s why you should doubt yourself when it come to non-believable area and seek other people’s thoughts. At the same, you should be open minded to receive feedback from other people. In a TED talk, * Ray shared an example that an employee wrote him an email complaining “Ray deserved a D- performance in the recent meeting as he didn’t prepare”.
• In case you hear conflicting ideas from different believable people and you want to find out the truth, you would want to connect them to talk to each other so that they would reason their opinions out.
• Being open-minded from Ray’s standpoint is not the normal 360 review you fill in once every quarter in your company. He has a tool called “Dot Collector” that allows his employees to assess each other (including him) in a more frequent basis. These dots over time would show how a person changes (or doesn’t change) and how believable they are over time. That makes other people know how to work with you much better.