MAKING BRIDGEWATER ROCK-SOLID AND CUTTING-EDGE
讓橋水快速轉動和高端
Atour annual town hall meeting in June 2008, I said that seen through my eyesBridgewater was then, and always had been, “both terrible and terrific at thesame time.” After about five years of rapid growth toward building Bridgewateras an institution, we had encountered our newest set of problems.
This was nothing new.Since I started Bridgewater we always had some problems because we were alwaysdoing bold new things, making mistakes, and evolving quickly. For example,technology had changed so quickly during the years we’d built the company thatwe had literally switched from using slide rules to spreadsheet software toadvanced artificial intelligence. With so much changing so fast, it had seemedpointless to focus on getting everything “just right” when something newer andbetter was sure to come along. So we built our technology in a light andflexible way, which made sense at the time but also created a number ofhairballs that badly needed untangling. That same approach of moving quicklyand flexibly had been true throughout the company, so several departments hadbecome overstretched as we grew. It had always been fun being cutting-edge, butwe were having a hard time becoming rock-solid, especially in the noninvestmentside of the business. The organization needed to be renovated in severalways—but it wasn’t going to be easy.
In 2008 I was workingabout eighty hours a week doing my two full-time jobs (overseeing ourinvestments and overseeing the company), and in my opinion not doing wellenough at either. I felt that I, and the company more broadly, were slippingfrom being pervasively excellent. From the get-go I had toggled acceptablybetween investment management and business management. But now that we were abigger company, the business management side was demanding much more time thanI had to give it. I conducted a time-and-motion study of all of my investmentand management responsibilities; it showed it would take me about 165 hours a weekto achieve the level of excellence that I would be satisfied with in overseeingboth our investments and management. That was obviously impossible. Since Iwanted to delegate as much as possible, I asked whether the things I was doingcould be done excellently by others, and if so, who those others were. Everyoneagreed that most of those areas couldn’t adequately be delegated. I clearlyhadn’t done a good enough job of finding and training others to whom I coulddelegate my responsibilities.
To me, the greatestsuccess you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to dothings well without you. A step below that is doing things well yourself, andworst of all is doing things poorly yourself. As I reflected on my position, Icould see that despite all of my and Bridgewater’s amazing achievements, I hadnot achieved this highest level of success. In fact, I was still struggling toachieve the second-highest level (doing things well myself), even thoughBridgewater was extremely successful.
At the time, therewere 738 people working at Bridgewater, with fourteen department heads. Ioversaw the department heads, along with a Management Committee I’d createdbecause I knew I couldn’t trust myself to know what was best without othersprobing me. I had structured the reporting lines so that I both reported to theManagement Committee and held its members accountable for their oversight ofthe company. I wanted them to also own the responsibility of producingpervasiveexcellence andI wanted to be at their service in helping them achieve it.
In May 2008, I wrotean email to the five members of the Management Committee, copying the company,telling them that “I am escalating to let you know that I have reached mylimits and that the quality of my work, and my work-life balance, are bothsuffering unacceptably.”
譯文：
2008年6月我們的年度小鎮大廳會議，我說從我的眼睛來看橋水是，并一直是“一路伴隨的麻煩和糟糕事件不斷” 大約經過5年高速增長，橋水正向一家綜合機構發展，就在這時我們遇到了新的問題。
沒什么新鮮的，自從我創辦橋水開始，我們總是遇到問題因為我們總是在做大膽的新事物，犯錯，然后快速解決。舉例，技術已經變化的太快了，就在橋水的過程中，我們從使用規則到分發列表軟件再到現在先進的ai。一切都變化的太快了，似乎沒有什么真正的焦點聚集在任何正確的事情上，尤其當新河更好的事物必將到來。所以我們建立的自己的技術，以輕量和靈活的方式，在提供感覺的同時也制造了大量的麻煩并很難處理。同樣的應用可以允許很快并靈活運用于整個公司，所以有幾個部門隨著公司的增長變得過度擴張了，成為頂尖總是非常有趣，但是我們度過了一段非常困難的時期，業績開始下滑，尤其在非投資領域的業務。組織需要重新建構，但這一切并不簡單。
2008年我每周工作80小時兩份全職工作（監督投資和監督公司），以我的觀點兩份工作都沒做的足夠好。我感覺我和公司更概括的說，因太多優秀而變得松弛。我在投資管理和業務管理之間被恰好的困住了，但現在我們是一家更大的公司了，商業管理方面要求我要投入更多的時間。我制定了一項時間-運動研究基于我所有的投資和管理責任；研究顯示如果要達到優秀的程度我每周要花費165小時才能達到我能滿足的程度。有人問我是否有其他辦法也能做到優秀，如果有，那些人在哪里。每個人都同意絕大多數地方都不能恰達的被代表。我很清楚自己在發現和訓練其他人以便于來代替我的責任方面做得還不夠好。
對我來說，你取得最大的成功就在于你把其他人恰當的捏合起來并一起良好的工作，而自己并沒有參與。差一點就是首先要做好自己，而最糟糕的是你沒做好事情。就像我在自己的位置上反映的，我能看到對于我和橋水取得那些令人震驚的成就的厭惡，我還沒取得最高等的成功。實際上，我還在為取得第二高等級而努力（做好自己），盡管橋水已經非常成功了。
那時候，大約有738人為橋水工作，有14個部門頭腦。我只能監督部門頭腦了，還有一個管理委員會因為我知道在沒有別人監督的情況下我不能完全信任自己總能做出最好的決策。我重新構建了匯報路線這樣我既要向管理委員會匯報，還要求委員會其他成員對于公司的監督有責任。我要求他們對于制造廣泛的優秀負責，我想達成他們的服務并幫助他們實現它。
2008年5月我給管理委員會的5位成員發了郵件并抄送給全公司，告訴他們“我迫切的想讓你們明白我已經到了自己的極限，在我現有工作質量下，工作和生活平衡以及兩者帶來的不能承受的痛苦”。
讀后感：
2008年作者快60歲了，從20不到開始工作，并在不久之后創辦橋水基金，開始編寫原則和指導意見，已經堅持40年了，而作者的工作強度非常高，還在不斷嘗試達到更高的管理水平，而橋水已經非常大了，作者也只能直接管理中層領導了，他到了自己的極限。
盡管采用了很多辦法，杜絕自我獨斷，但很顯然很多人還是不能替代作者，可能是習慣性依賴吧。沒辦法，一個偉大公司的創始人都會面臨這楊的情況，不如學學蓋茨，早點交班，讓年輕人上臺，自己退休就好。
