Don’t depersonalize mistakes**. Identifying who made mistakes is essential to learning. It is also a test of whether a person will put improvement ahead of ego and whether he will fit into the Bridgewater culture. A common error is to say, “We didn’t handle this well” rather than “Harry didn’t handle this well.” This occurs when people are uncomfortable connecting specific mistakes to specific people because of ego sensitivities. This creates dysfunctional and dishonest organizations. Since individuals are the most important building blocks of any organization and since individuals are responsible for the ways things are done, the diagnosis must connect the mistake to the specific individual by name. Someone created the procedure that went wrong, or decided we should act according to that procedure, and ignoring that fact will slow our progress toward successfully dealing with the problem.
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