Values & Principles

I love Ray Dalio’s book Principles. Besides his interesting life story, he notes how most of us never really get intentional and clear on what it is our values and principles are. Because we inherit an amalgamation of them from our parents, siblings, teachers, friends, schools, religious beliefs, institutions, and various cultures we’re exposed to.

As a result, many of us are unconsciously a walking contradiction of beliefs that we picked up along the way. In addition to writing down his own values and principles, Ray longs for a world in which everyone does this explicit process, so that we could evaluate each other’s values and principles and choose and evolve the ones we like best intentionally as well.

First, some terminology.

Values are literally what you value, appreciate, want more of. Money, time, art, love, beauty, connection, conservation, etc.

Principles are the ways in which you connect your behaviors and actions in the world to creating more of what it is that you value.

Here’s an example: At GETCO, we valued “Epistemological Truth” (the idea that the ultimate truth of what most wants to happen in the world, evolve, create, manifest for the benefit of companies, people, societies, etc. is ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered, and actually *can* be discovered by human minds). It’s defined well here as ’the beginning of infinite knowledge.’ There are no limits to what we can create. In my experience, great product leaders are constantly seeking to become a vessel that can usher in the highest idea of their product and service that would most serve the world.

Ok great, so what are the best principles for achieving Truth with a capital T? At GETCO, we used 4 key principles to guide us there:

* Open and honest communication: the idea that if the best ideas are percolating and simmering in pieces across multiple minds like the map to finding Luke Skywalker on a remote island split across many droids, the only way to combine them to get the ultimate map is to have a culture where people trust that they can speak openly and honestly, without falsifying, obscuring, or minimizing their personal truths.

* Vigorous debate: once the ideas are freely out there in the ether, we need an open marketplace where ideas are debated, challenged, refined, and forged into even better ideas through healthy respectful debate.

* Low ego: if we are attached to our own ideas, we will struggle to be open and honest about them (fear of them being bad/wrong, disapproved of by the group), and we will debate them in a way that is more attached to being right about our own ideas than getting curious about why those ideas might be wrong, improved by others’ ideas, or replaced by better ideas. In other words, we let our attachment to our personal truths get in the way of the pursuit of Truth.

* Idea meritocracy: finally, once ideas are freely and openly shared and debated in healthy, respectful ways, without attachment to being right about any one person’s ideas, we need a shared framework for evaluating “how do we decide which idea is ‘best’?” Who votes, who ultimately decides, and how? Meritocracy implies that ‘the best idea wins, regardless of title or tenure or any protected or non protected class or identity title’ - but we still need a definition of what ‘best’ is when it comes to ‘the best idea wins.’ In trading, it was easier, “makes money makes sense” as we said. Getting the objective function right for personal and professional success is critical to make sure your’e optimizing for the right things.

So there you have it. Open and honest communication + vigorous debate + low ego + idea meritocracy = Truth.