
What we learnt from implementing Ray Dalio's error log process at our startup - tmatthewj
https://medium.com/@tmatthewj/error-logs-as-a-startup-culture-experiment-16d5559ff0d6
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tmatthewj
It was towards the end of 2017 that I got my hands on Principles a book
written by Ray Dalio, CEO of the biggest Hedge Fund firm in the World —
Bridgewater Associates. I had already read the summary version of Principles
by then and was a big admirer of his efforts to build a team based on
meritocracy. But one of the best parts of the book that I could relate with
was the section under “Work Principles” where he explains how he tried to
build a culture in which it is okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not to
learn from them.

He goes onto elaborate how his company ended up losing to the tune of hundreds
of thousand of dollars because of a careless mistake by one of his employees.
He understood that letting the person go would build a culture that’s averse
to failures and came up with a public log where everyone should list down the
mistakes they commit, explain how it impacted the customers / company in
detail and with reflection on how it could be avoided in the future. Everyone
is expected to read the error logs and this has helped them avoid recurring
mistakes or failures while also building a culture that encourages the team to
move fast and break things. More about our adaptation of error logs in the
blog post.

