Put things in perspective by going back before going forward.
If you just keep doing, you will burn out and grind to a halt.
The best way to make great decisions is to know how to triangulate with other, more knowledgeable people.
Remember that people who see things and think one way often have difficulty communicating with and relating to people who see things and think another way.
Don’t put the expedient ahead of the strategic.
Closed-minded people don’t want their ideas challenged.
Bob Kegan called Bridgewater “a form of proof that the quest for business excellence and the search for personal realization need not be mutually exclusive – and can, in fact, be essential to each other.
Once we get the things we are striving for, we rarely remain satisfied with them. The things are just the bait. Chasing after them forces us to evolve, and it is the evolution and not the rewards themselves that matters to us and to those around us. This means that for most people success is struggling and evolving as effectively as possible.
Logic, reason, and common sense are your best tools for synthesizing reality and understanding what to do about it.
To me, the greatest success you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to do things well without you. A step below that is doing things well yourself, and worst of all is doing things poorly yourself.
I read Charles Duhigg’s best-selling book The Power of Habit, which really opened my eyes.
In my opinion, most organizations overvalue the abilities piece and undervalue the character piece because of a shortsighted focus on getting the job done. In doing so, they lose the power of the great relationships that will take them through both good and bad times.
Closed-minded people are more likely to make statements than ask questions.
Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. The key to success is understanding one’s weaknesses and successfully compensating for them. People who lack that ability fail chronically.
Build your organization from the top down. An organization is the opposite of a building: Its foundation is at the top, so make sure you hire managers before you hire their reports. Managers can help design the machine and choose the people who complement it.
I saw pain as nature’s reminder that there is something important for me to learn.
Investors think independently, anticipate things that haven’t happened yet, and put real money at stake with their bets. Policymakers come from environments that nurture consensus, not dissent, that train them to react to things that have already occurred, and that prepare them for negotiations, not placing bets. Because they don’t benefit from the constant feedback about the quality of their decisions that investors get, it’s not clear who the good and bad decision makers among them are.
Typically, by doing what comes naturally to us, we fail to account for our weaknesses, which leads us to crash. What happens after we crash is most important. Successful people change in ways that allow them to continue to take advantage of their strengths while compensating for their weaknesses and unsuccessful people don’t.
Making a handful of good uncorrelated bets that are balanced and leveraged well is the surest way of having a lot of upside without being exposed to unacceptable downside.
My point is simply this: Whatever circumstances life brings you, you will be more likely to succeed and find happiness if you take responsibility for making your decisions well instead of complaining about things being beyond your control.