Triangulating Success: Leveraging Triangles for Better Decision-Making
Advice from a multi-billionaire
Ray Dalio is an American investor and hedge fund manager with a net worth of over $15 billion. This is somebody who understands how to make effective decisions.
I was reluctant to pick up his book Principles because of how much hype it had but I’m glad I finally did. I primarily wanted to learn about his investment decision-making process and analysis and was a bit annoyed to find out that that kind of stuff is in his second book. Anyway, I read on and I’m about halfway through his book and thought I’d share with you a clever way he makes decisions that I think everybody could benefit from.
Triangulate Your View
There’s an old saying “There’s 3 sides to a story, your side, my side and the truth!”
How often have you been arguing (discussion if you’re more civil) with somebody only to find out you got it so wrong it’s laughable? Everybody has unless they’re lying through their teeth!
Before we even get into the physical (words) element of an argument/discussion our brains and bodies are undergoing physiological changes that our subconscious handles. We naturally also have defence mechanisms and biases that most of us aren’t even aware of. Traits that can make us unique and successful such as ‘willpower’ but can also be to our detriment such as in times like these, ‘stubbornness’.
Ray Dalio in his book Principles asks you to consider ‘triangulating’ your view with other people who he says are more ‘believable’ than yourself in whatever it is you’re making the decision on. This logically makes sense. If you and your partner are stuck at loggerheads over something getting a third opinion from somebody who isn’t biased towards one outcome or the other can add rationale where perhaps there wasn’t any.
This can be particularly effective in the workplace. That’s not to say that you get to bring in a third party every time somebody questions your views but when you’re thinking about something, asking two other people who you respect for their knowledge in this area may help you to see things that you missed. These are typically called your ‘blindspots’ and they refer to what was said above about your biases.
What we don’t know can harm us more than what we do know therefore, we need as much knowledge as is reasonable to assume before we decide when making decisions.
There will be times when you simply have to do this because you can’t understand something and/or don’t have the time or resources to figure it out for yourself. Simply forming part of that triangle and observing the two knowledgeable people have an open and frank discussion will show you a couple of things:
How people with specific knowledge can have an open discussion and share opposing viewpoints and
Help you understand the subject more
Most people won’t do the second step. That’s fine because not everybody has time on their hands but you are missing out on potential development. I often learn more from listening to people who know far more than me than by speaking. It’s why we have two ears and one mouth. Think of your side of the triangle as the mouth and the other two sides as the ears and it will help you remember that there may be something to be learned by using this system.
You can just go to one person and at times this is all you can do and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that when it becomes a two-way talk it can low-key be about a difference of opinions and if you can’t both agree, well, one of you may be disappointed with the outcome. After all, if you go to your boss about a decision you want to make and he says he disagrees there isn’t much you can say or do. If multiple people on your team have discussed openly and agree with your solution then that adds more weight.
For this system to work you have to be open-minded and the people you turn to for advice have to be as well. The system won’t work if one of you is as stubborn as anything and unwilling to be ‘wrong’ or otherwise.
People naturally don’t like being wrong and don’t like people disagreeing with them or having a different opinion. I think this is a sad mentality to be in. I think we should welcome disagreements. After all:
There’s more to be learnt in the book that’s unread, than the book that’s been read.