The Relationships between These Steps
Designs and tasks have no purpose other than to achieve your goals. Said differently, goals are the sole purpose of designs and tasks. So you mustn’t forget how they’re related. Frequently I see people feel great about doing their tasks while forgetting the goals they were designed to achieve, resulting in the failure to achieve their goals. This doesn’t make any sense, because the only purpose of tasks is to achieve goals. In order to be successful, your goals must be riveted in your mind: they are the things you MUST do. To remember the connections between the tasks and the goals that they are meant to achieve, you just have to ask, “Why?” It is good to connect tasks to goals this way (with the “Why?”), because losing sight of the connections will prevent you from succeeding.
Again, this 5-Step Process is iterative. This means that after completing one of the steps you will probably have acquired relevant information that leads you to modify the other steps.
If this process is working, goals will change much more slowly than designs, which will change more slowly than tasks. Designs and tasks can be modified or changed often (because you might want to reassess how to achieve the goal), but changing goals frequently is usually a problem because achieving them requires a consistent effort. I often find that people who have problems reaching their goals handle these steps backwards; that is, they stick too rigidly to specified tasks and are not committed enough to achieving their goals (often because they lose sight of them).
Weaknesses Don’t Matter if You Find Solutions
To repeat, the best advice I can give you is to ask yourself what you want, then ask ‘what is true,’ and then ask yourself ‘what should be done about it.’ If you honestly ask and answer these questions you will move much faster toward what you want to get out of life than if you don’t!
Most importantly, ask yourself what is your biggest weakness that stands in the way of what you want.
As I mentioned before, everyone has weaknesses. The main difference between unsuccessful and successful people is that unsuccessful people don’t find and address them, and successful people do.
It is difficult to see one’s own blind spots for two reasons:
Most people don’t go looking for their weaknesses because of “ego barriers”—they find having weaknesses painful because society has taught them that having weaknesses is bad. As I said early on, I believe that we would have a radically more effective and much happier society if we taught the truth, which is that everyone has weaknesses, and knowing about them and how to deal with them is how people learn and succeed.
Having a weakness is like missing a sense—if you can’t visualize what it is, it’s hard to perceive not having it.
For these two reasons, having people show you what you are missing can be painful, though it's essential for your progress. When you encounter that pain, try to remember that you can get what you want out of life if you can open-mindedly reflect, with the help of others, on what is standing in your way and then deal with it.
- What do you think is the biggest weakness you have that stands in the way of what you want–the one that you repeatedly run into?
People who don’t get what they want out of life fail at one or more of the five steps. But being weak at any one of these steps is not a problem if you understand what you are weak at and successfully compensate for that weakness by seeking help . For example, a good goal-setter who is bad at doing tasks might work well with a bad goal-setter who is great at doing tasks—i.e., they will be much more successful working together. It is easy to find out what weaknesses are standing in your way by 1) looking at where you are failing and 2) getting the feedback of people who are successful at doing what you are having problems with.
Because I believe that you will achieve your goals if you do these five steps well, it follows that if you are not achieving your goals you can use the 5-Step Process as a diagnostic tool. You would do this by 1) identifying the step(s) that you are failing at, 2) noting the qualities required to succeed at that step, and 3) identifying which of these qualities you are missing.
To repeat, the five steps and the qualities that I believe are required to be good at them are as follows.
At which step do you have the most problems?
Which qualities needed do you wish you had more of?
In a nutshell, my 5-Step process for achieving what you want is:
Values→ 1) Goals → 2) Problems → 3) Diagnoses → 4) Designs → 5) Tasks
Your values determine what you want, i.e., your goals. In trying to achieve your goals, you will encounter problems that have to be diagnosed. Only after determining the real root causes of these problems can you design a plan to get around them. Once you have a good plan, you have to muster the self-discipline to do what is required to make the plan succeed. Note that this process starts with your values, but it requires that you succeed at all five steps. While these steps require different abilities, you don’t have to be good at all of them. If you aren’t good at all of them (which is true for almost everyone), you need to know what you are bad at and how to compensate for your weaknesses. This requires you to put your ego aside, objectively reflect on your strengths and weaknesses, and seek the help from others.
As you design and implement your plan to achieve your goals, you may find it helpful to consider that:
Life is like a game where you seek to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goals.
You get better at this game through practice.
The game consists of a series of choices that have consequences.
You can’t stop the problems and choices from coming at you, so it’s better to learn how to deal with them.
You have the freedom to make whatever choices you want, though it’s best to be mindful of their consequences.
The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it’s silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it’s understandable).
We all evolve at different paces, and it’s up to you to decide the pace at which you want to evolve.
The process goes better if you are as accurate as possible in all respects, including assessing your strengths and weaknesses and adapting to them.
While all this may sound very theoretical, it is integral to how we operate every day. For example, my management principles, which are explained in the next section, are based on the principles that I described in this section. So, Bridgewater is based on the core belief that everyone here is evolving together. How well and how quickly we do that will have a huge effect on our well-being and the well-being of all the people we have contact with (e.g., our clients, our families, etc.). These two things are inextricably linked. Bridgewater is also based on the belief that to be successful and happy, not only do we have to be excellent, we have to continue to improve at a surprisingly fast rate. Bridgewater operates consistently with the belief that to be excellent and improve at a fast rate, we must be hyper-realistic and hyper-truthful. We therefore need to overcome any impediments to being realistic and truthful, and the biggest impediment is people’s reluctance to face their own mistakes and weaknesses and those of others. Bridgewater is based on the belief that both meaningful work and meaningful relationships are required to be happy and successful. So, our relationships, like our work, must be excellent; as a result, we expect people to be extremely considerate and caring with each other. This does not mean being soft on each other, especially if that means avoiding harsh realities to avoid causing discomfort. It means true caring, which requires recognizing and successfully dealing with our realities, whatever they are.
The management principles that follow reflect these core values and the specific ways that they are lived out at Bridgewater.