Since people generally change slowly at best you

reflects what they’re like. Since people generally change slowly (at best), you should expect slow
improvement (at best), so instead of hoping for improvement, you need to sort the people or
change the design to supplement them. Since changing the design to accommodate people’s
weaknesses is generally a bad idea, it is generally better to sort the people.
Sometimes good people “lose their boxes” because they can’t evolve into responsible parties
soon enough. Either there is a problem with their qualities or it will take too long to train them
well. Some of these people might be good at another position within Bridgewater. Remember
that identifying failure and learning from it are part of the evolutionary process. Make sure you
record the reasons on the relevant “baseball card” and think about what a good next step would
be for that individual.
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Know that it is much worse to keep someone in a job
who is not suited for it than it is to fire someone.
Don’t collect people. Firing people is not a big deal—certainly nowhere near as big a deal as
keeping badly performing people, because keeping a person in a job they are not suited for is
terrible both for the person (because it prevents personal evolution) and our community (because
we all bear the consequences and it erodes meritocracy). Consider the enormous costs of not
firing someone unsuited for a job: the costs of bad performance over a long time; the negative
effect on the environment; the time and effort wasted trying to train the person; and the greater
pain of separation involved with someone who’s been here awhile (say, five years or more)
compared with someone let go after just a year.
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When people are “without a box,” consider whether
there is an open box at Bridgewater that would be a
better fit. If not, fire them.

Remember that we hire people not to fill their first job at Bridgewater nor primarily for their
skills. We are trying to select people with whom we’d like to share our lives. We expect everyone
to evolve here. Because managers have a better idea of people’s strengths and weaknesses and
their fit within our culture than what emerges from the interview process, you have invaluable
information for assessing them for another role at Bridgewater.
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Do not lower the bar.
If a person can’t operate consistently with our requirements of excellence and radical truth and
can’t get to the bar in an acceptable time frame, they have to leave. We want to neither lower the
bar nor enter into a long-term rehabilitation program.
TO PERCEIVE, DIAGNOSE, AND SOLVE
PROBLEMS…
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KNOW HOW TO PERCEIVE PROBLEMS EFFECTIVELY
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Keep in mind the 5-Step Process explained in Part 2.