Imagine if everyone you’ve ever known, worked with, or related to
Well, it turns out that it could be a key to running a wildly successful business.
Ray Dalio,
It’s not meant to be an open-door for coworkers to roast each other’s outfit choices. Rather, it’s a way to openly discuss opinions, without always defaulting to hierarchy. Dalio claims that this culture has helped them create an Idea Meritocracy, where the best ideas rise to the top.
However, the culture can’t do it alone. Instead, it must be paired with technology. And when done properly, it actually gives us a glimpse of how companies will operate more efficiently in the near future.
Bridgewater employs algorithms to graph the responses of associates over time, thus creating rich profiles of each participant. Dalio likes to refer to these profiles as baseball cards because they are practically stats sheets. More likely, it’s a way to graph strengths and weaknesses, thus bringing more context to a person’s actions. You can see an example (from a company that copied Dalio) below:
Initially, you may think about how wildly inaccurate this could be, considering it’s all subjective feedback. However, you’ll actually find that the more subjective data an algorithm receives, the closer and closer it can get to objective truths. It’s really a numbers game.
For instance, another AI company known as Swarm.ai polls the opinions of large amounts of people and applies an algorithm to this data to make nearly perfect predictions. Their track record is impressive thus far. In 2016, they used their methodology to correctly predict the first four horses in the Kentucky Derby, a bet that paid off 542:1. Earlier that year, their methodology predicted 76% of Oscar winners (better than a majority of movie critics).
It goes to show that there’s actually value in using subjective data to create objective truth.
Nonetheless, the point of these “player cards” is to make better staffing decisions – consulting a person’s card to decide whether they’d fit a certain team initiative. No doubt in my mind, many other organizations will find ways to replicate what Bridgewater has implemented. However, I’m intrigued as to how this could affect the larger economy. More specifically, how it could be used to eliminate our cryptic hiring process.
Should this become a reality, effectively, they become the Hiring Department for every company nationwide because they’ll have the best system for predicting a person’s fit at a company
It’s a great vision for the future, especially considering how ineffective the hiring process is today. Jobvite found that it takes on average 38 days to hire a new employee. Combine this with the fact that the recruiting process relies on standardized resumes and potentially biased interviewers, it’s no wonder companies suffer from hiring the wrong people.
Fortunately, there are increasing amounts and diversity of data that can inform algorithms
By 2032, AI-enabled Hiring Departments will be the standard method for staffing companies.