Tried reading it. His life storey reads like an entrepreneur who started by trying to fit in (held several corporate jobs), failed (fired for insubordination) then started his own company.
The rest reads like a self-help book written by an amateur. Some gushing about physics and natural history (which a HBS graduate probably finds unfathomable and mysterious). Then some deep discussion of his own inner psyche; why do successful people assume its their own uniquness that made them succeed and not, for instance, market conditions or good advice?
Then I gave up. Is very wordy, very very wordy, and not many of the words worth slogging through. At least the part I saw.
Some gushing about physics and natural history (which a HBS graduate probably finds unfathomable and mysterious).
Yeah, cause all those HBS grads are just idiots, right? They could never fathom something as complex as physics or natural history. That's probably just black magic to them, even though a big chunk of them got their undergrad degrees in science or engineering.
Sorry; painted all business school grads from my experiences. You have some good examples there; I've never met those guys.
I'll repaint it: this guy (who wrote the book) was a high-school failure and not in your list. Just read his stuff if you can, to see his level of physics understanding.
A high school failure? It looks like he got a BA and then went to the best management school in the world and then became a billionaire. I'd like to be that kind of failure.
Maybe his understanding of physics is wrong. But maybe your understanding of the importance of that is wrong?
So, you judge a book about management principles by the CEO of a company not by how well he articulates those management principles or how true you think they are but by his level of physics and biological understanding.
You might want to skip the biographical part, if you don't find it relevant, and then come back and re-read it. Dalio's book describes the right attitude for handling criticism and describes a business environment built around questioning ideas.
None of that "trust your gut" and "we're a team, let's behave as a team" that many other business books preach - in Dalio's line of work mistakes are costly, and if he ran his company in the same manner some other companies are run (CEO provides the vision, everybody else just executes on it), he'd be out of business.
There are some good bits. If you're a good problem solver you'll get what he's trying to say:
"Have clear goals.
Identify and don’t tolerate the problems that stand in the way of achieving your goals. Accurately diagnose these problems.
Accurately diagnose these problems.
Design plans that explicitly lay out tasks that will get you around your problems and on to your goals.
Implement these plans—i.e., do these tasks."
You probably want to read the book if you want to manage people in a company like his; He later gives lots of tips on how to do it; The tips make a lot more sense if you understand his "principles", because its how they are derived.
I agree it was wordy, but it was only an hour or so read to read part 1 & 2 and beginning of 3, which he said was what you want to read if you didn't want to read all of it.
There was also some stuff about when to hire and fire people, and how to cultivate the people in your organisation.
Agree! Just read up to page 38 and realized there wasn't a single insightful thing he'd said. It seems to be all about him and yes, it is very, very, very wordy and poorly formatted!
His use of "I" seemed to me he was trying hard not to declare some principle as unilaterally true but to say it is what he found to be true, in his experience.
"it is very, very, very wordy and poorly formatted!"
Tried reading it. His life storey reads like an entrepreneur who started by trying to fit in (held several corporate jobs), failed (fired for insubordination) then started his own company.
The rest reads like a self-help book written by an amateur. Some gushing about physics and natural history (which a HBS graduate probably finds unfathomable and mysterious). Then some deep discussion of his own inner psyche; why do successful people assume its their own uniquness that made them succeed and not, for instance, market conditions or good advice?
Then I gave up. Is very wordy, very very wordy, and not many of the words worth slogging through. At least the part I saw.