每日原则：持续培训、测试、评估和调配员工

你的员工和设计都必须要进步来使你的机器更完善。当你把个人发展做好，回报就会非常显著。随着员工表现越来越好，他们就越能独立思考、深入提问，帮你改进机器。他们进步得越快，你的成果提高也就越快。

你在员工个人进步中发挥的作用始于对其优缺点的真实评估，随后是制定计划来通过培训或换岗让他们扬长避短。在桥水，新员工常常被这类对话的坦率和直接吓着，但它既非个人攻击，也非基于等级，没人能躲过这种批评。总体而言，对管理层及其部下而言，这一过程很艰难，但长期来看，它使人们更愉快，使桥水更成功。要记住，令多数人最开心的是，他们能够不断完善，发挥专长，并不断提升自我。所以认识到你员工的短处，与认识到他们的长处（对他们和对你）一样有价值。

即使你在推动别人发展，你也要不断评估他们是否出色地履行了他们的职责。这并不容易做到客观，因为你通常与下属的关系很好，可能不愿意在他们表现不达标时准确地评价他们。同样地，你可能会给在某个方面触怒你的员工，他/她本不该得的差评。创意择优需要客观，我们开发的很多管理工具就是出于这个目的，给我们提供不带偏见的员工情况和业绩表现，独立于任何管理者的偏见。当管理者和下属对一项评估意见不一致，需要其他人介入解决分歧时，这方面的数据就很关键。

几年前，我们有一位员工想担任某部门的负责人。那个部门的前任负责人已离职，时任CEO格雷格需要评估这位此前担任部门副手的员工是否具备添补这个空缺的能力。那位员工认为他行，格雷格和其他人认为他不行。但是这个决定并不像CEO“说了算”那么简单，我们想有依据地做出决定。借助了我们能持续收集反馈信息的集点器系统，针对那项工作的素质要求，我们有数百个数据点，包括综合推理、了解他所未知的、在合适的层面开展管理。于是，我们把所有数据打到屏幕上，共同认真审视。然后我们问那位员工，看着这些证据，如果让他决定是否应聘用自己出任那个职位，他会怎么做。他退后一步，接受了客观的证据，同意调到桥水更适合他能力的其他岗位上。

帮人获得技能很容易，通常只要给他们提供适当的培训就行，要想提升能力却很难，但这对长此以往有能力承担更大责任来说至关重要。而你绝对不能依靠的是改变一个人的价值观。在每种关系里，总会有某个时刻你必须决定双方是否适合彼此，这在私人生活里和秉持高标准的机构里都很普遍。在桥水，我们清楚我们的文化根基不可妥协，所以如果一个人不能在一段时期内适应，那就必须走人。

每个领导者都要在如下两种情况中选一：（1）辞掉能力不足但倍受喜爱的人，从而获得成功；（2）留下能力不足的好人，等待失败。不管怎样，能否做出这些艰难的抉择会对你的成败有决定意义。在桥水这样的文化里，你没有选择。即便当时可能很难，但你必须选择卓越，因为这对所有人都是最好的。

Both your people and your design must evolve for your machine to improve. When you get personal evolution right, the returns are exponential. As people get better and better, they are more able to think independently, probe, and help you refine your machine. The faster they evolve, the faster your outcomes will improve.

Your part in an employee’s personal evolution begins with a frank assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, followed by a plan for how their weaknesses can be mitigated either through training or by switching to a different job that taps into their strengths and preferences. At Bridgewater, new employees are often taken aback by how frank and direct such conversations can be, but it’s not personal or hierarchical—no one is exempt from this kind of criticism. While this process is generally difficult for both managers and their subordinates, in the long run it has made people happier and Bridgewater more successful. Remember that most people are happiest when they are improving and doing the things that suit them naturally and help them advance. So learning about your people’s weaknesses is just as valuable (for them and for you) as is learning their strengths.

Even as you help people develop, you must constantly assess whether they are able to fulfill their responsibilities excellently. This is not easy to do objectively since you will often have meaningful relationships with your reports and may be reluctant to evaluate them accurately if their performance isn’t at the bar. By the same token, you may be tempted to give an employee who rubs you the wrong way a worse evaluation than he or she deserves. An idea meritocracy requires objectivity. Many of the management tools we have developed were built to do just that, providing us with an unbiased picture of people and their performance independent of the biases of any one manager. This data is essential in cases where a manager and a report are out of sync on an assessment and others are called in to resolve the dispute.

A few years ago, one of our employees was serving in a trial role as a department head. The prior department head had left the firm, and Greg, who was then CEO, was assessing whether this employee, who had previously been a deputy, had the right abilities to step into the role. The employee thought he did; Greg and others thought he did not. But this decision was not as simple as the CEO “making the call.” We want decisions to be more evidence-based. As a result of our Dot Collector system of constant feedback, we had literally hundreds of data points on the specific attributes required for the job, including synthesis, knowing what he didn’t know, and managing at the right level. So we put all this data onto the screen and stared hard at it together. We then asked the employee to look at that body of evidence and reflect on what he would do if he were in the position of deciding whether he’d hire himself for the job. Once he was able to step back and look at the objective evidence, he agreed to move on and try another role at Bridgewater more suited to his strengths.

Helping people acquire skills is easy—it’s typically a matter of providing them with appropriate training. Improvements in abilities are more difficult but essential to expanding what a person can be responsible for over time. And changing someone’s values is some- thing you should never count on. In every relationship, there comes a point when you must decide whether you are meant for each other— that’s common in private life and at any organization that holds high standards. At Bridgewater, we know that we cannot compromise on the fundamentals of our culture, so if a person can’t get to the bar in an acceptable time frame, he or she must leave.

Every leader must decide between 1) getting rid of liked but incapable people to achieve their goals and 2) keeping the nice but incapable people and not achieving their goals. Whether or not you can make these hard decisions is the strongest determinant of your own success or failure. In a culture like Bridgewater’s, you have no choice. You must choose excellence, even though it might be difficult at the moment, because it’s best for everyone.