Principles: Running your Social Sector work and life like the world’s most profitable hedge fund

Social Sector critics believe that if our organizations ran like the private sector, our problems would be over. This reasoning is wrong. The high level dilemmas, structures and missions are not easily comparable. Systems, and cultures are not easily interchangeable between these divergent worlds. 
The exception to this rule is when the high level essence of an idea surpasses the domain where it was developed. When an idea or an approach becomes a macro level principle, it can apply across every scenario. This post is about one of these high level operating systems that emerged from the hedge fund industry but directly applies to our Social Sector work and life. 

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Ray Dalio heard about the stock market in his teenage years while working as a caddy at a golf course. In that moment of learning, he became hooked. This was a lightning moment that led to a love of markets and investing. This interest propelled him to transform a one person business over many decades into the world’s most profitable hedge fund. Ray released a book about the principles that he uses to make decisions, build relationships and meaning.

My lightning moment came when I first heard about the field of international disaster response  during a  college seminar on refugees. Hearing the stories and meeting people who worked in that field hooked me. After working in Asia and Africa for many years I was an early member of Global Emergency Group, and then created my own group of elite problem solvers to design the best possible exponential solutions to disaster response dilemmas. Founded in 2015, my group Rivanna Strategy is helping organizations around the world deliver the best possible assistance using the power of exponential reach and antifragile approaches. 

Ray Dalio’s story has relevance to the Social Sectors because we are faced with a similar problem: making sense of the world and making choices that work toward the goals that we are trying to achieve. The underlying approaches that Ray uses are relevant to any type of work and life, and they are particularly useful to us, because so many of our Social Sector life & work problems remain unsolved. 

Although the world is radically better now than it was even a few decades ago, it is still not good enough. The new mega challenges that we face around global wealth imbalance and exponential change from the rapidly changing global economy, can keep all of us ‘do gooders’ with plenty of material for compelling Social Sector missions. And there are also plenty of tough micro problems, such as how to structure your day for the maximum impact. My favorite focus these days is how to find and use all relevant data to make the best possible decisions about how to help people survive and recover from natural disasters and wars. Amidst these response goals, how do we craft a life of meaning and connection, while also providing for ourselves and families? These are the core questions that I seek to answer in my own life and work. Ray answers them in his own way with this new book. 

With these macro and micro challenges, we in the Social Sectors need to look in the right places to get ideas about how to set up our work and life to best tackle these issues. 

Principles approach
The humanitarian movement and  many other Social Sector enterprises work from a set of basic principles. This is an obvious starting point. The humanitarian principles of Neutrality, Impartiality, Independence and Humanity are a wonderful foundation, but they don't give us an operating system for getting the assistance to the people. They don’t tell us how to have the greatest impact and how to grow as a professional. So I’m always on the lookout for other types of principles that we can all use to be our best. 

This is  a selection of Ray’s principles from the book that helped me move toward the edge of my abilities. I’ve added reflections on how we can use them in the Social Sectors. 

Truth - or more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality is an essential foundation for any good outcome. It is most easy to fool ourselves. This happens at the personal and organization level in the Social Sectors. Building in triangulation and other viewpoints to check our personal and organizational assumptions is hard, but essential. Asking “How do I/we know we  are right?” and getting real answers can guard against self and organizational delusion. 

Be radically open minded and radically transparent for rapid learning and effective change.
This is a tricky one for the Social Sector world. I’ve claimed to be open minded for a long time but we often track ourselves into our interest groups and like-minded opinion bubbles through our self selecting do gooder work, while the honest open mindedness falls away in small pieces over time. Ways that I’ve tried to escape that self reinforcing cycle are by talking to people with different political opinions and reading more widely (things like Ray’s principles, something I would have avoided 10 years ago because “private sector people have nothing to teach humanitarians” - former quote by me). In our Social Sector field, truth and radical transparency play out in different ways.  It has limits related to cultural awareness, and protection of people that our organizations support. Confidentiality issues to ensure that we are protecting the people we support are essential. We should never confuse that with radical transparency.

Pain + reflection = progress. 
I avoided pain in my life and work for many years. Pain means that you are at the outer edge of your comfort zone or abilities. Getting to that pain point means that you are going to a place that can help you grow. It hurts, but adding honest, open-minded reflection gets you to those solutions faster.  

5 step process to get what you want out of life

1. Have clear, audacious goals
2. Identify and don’t tolerate problems
3. Diagnose problems to get to their root cause
4. Design a plan
5. Push through to completion

The audacious goals are what hit me the hardest. If I take an honest look at my goal setting it has been more about what parameters I consciously and unconsciously put on my plans. At work in the humanitarian field we often look to what is achievable only rather than pushing through to that more audacious level. I’m working on resetting this for myself but know that it's a long process - I’ll update when I figure it out! But the awareness is there now. 

Social Sector groups often have clear problems identified, but lack the systems to make change. They tolerate problems and try to work around, leading to subpar results. Diagnosis usually happens but the planning and push through to completion get lost in political calculation and lack of clear systems. 

The up loop graphic, vs the humanitarian program cycle
Every organization has their planning and implementation cycle. Call it project management. The difference with Ray’s model is the upward loop expectation. Although the implicit upward loop is there in the humanitarian program cycle, the graphic shows the expectation of stasis and endless repetition. Ray’s model shows the opportunity for upward progress and higher level achievement. I love it. I’m never using the closed circle again. 
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Putting together the pieces
Ray attempts to tease out foundational principles that help us get what we want out of life. These  are the things that each generation re-learns and interprets for its own time. I’m trying to learn and reinterpret for the Social Sectors. Our core principles do need translation and explanation when we work in a multicultural environment. Truth means different things in Doha and Dallas. But figuring out your own interpretation, can help you make that translation when the time comes. 

There is also a useful video that distills Ray’s message if you want to skip the book. How would this type of video look adapted to our Social Sector context? 

Happy trails

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