Driving Success Through People and Culture
It’s one of the most persistent problems in business: What are the best ways of identifying and developing the practices that produce high-performing teams? I’ve grappled with this problem for most of my professional life. Those of you who know me well will understand why this question has transfixed me for so long, but for those who don’t: I joined Bridgewater Associates right out of college, landing on founder Ray Dalio’s team at a time when he was intensely focused on transitioning to others the management of the company that he had built from his two-bedroom apartment into the largest hedge fund in the world. For more than a decade, I worked closely with Ray on projects aimed at understanding what drove the success of the company up until that point, and how to sustain that success into the future. At a higher level, the transition question we were working on is obviously a larger question about what drives long term success of any organization, and specifically a question about culture. People—even senior ones—come and go from companies all the time. It is the culture that endures and sets the blueprint for long term success. If you’ve worked with Ray
