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đĄMust-read de la semaine
đLâorganisation dâApple pour lâinnovation (HBR)
How Apple moved to a functional organization?
It grew from some 8,000 employees and $7 billion in revenue in 1997, the year Steve Jobs returned, to 137,000 employees and $260 billion in revenue in 2019.Â
Jobs, in his first year returning as CEO, laid off the general managers of all the business units (in a single day), put the entire company under one P&L, and combined the disparate functional departments of the business units into one functional organization.
What is surprisingâin fact, remarkableâis that Apple retains it today, even though the company is nearly 40 times as large in terms of revenue and far more complex than it was in 1998. Senior vice presidents are in charge of functions, not products. As was the case with Jobs before him, CEO Tim Cook occupies the only position on the organizational chart where the design, engineering, operations, marketing, and retail of any of Appleâs main products meet. In effect, besides the CEO, the company operates with no conventional general managers: people who control an entire process from product development through sales and are judged according to a P&L statement.
Le positionnement dâApple est trĂšs diffĂ©rent de la plupart des entreprises, et de notre organisation en âUnitsâ (mĂȘme si nous avons un mĂ©lange dââUnitsâ et de âCommunitiesâ). Câest pour ça quâApple se concentre sur trĂšs peu de produits Ă la fois. Lâarticle nâexplique pas clairement comment ils sâorganisent autour dâun produit, et comment ils dĂ©cident le lancement de nouveaux produits.
Functional expertise
Apple relies on a structure that centers on functional expertise. Its fundamental belief is that those with the most expertise and experience in a domain should have decision rights for that domain. [...] First, Apple competes in markets where the rates of technological change and disruption are high, so it must rely on the judgment and intuition of people with deep knowledge of the technologies responsible for disruption. Long before it can get market feedback and solid market forecasts, the company must make bets about which technologies and designs are likely to succeed in smartphones, computers, and so on.
Jâai beaucoup aimĂ© ce focus sur Construire de l'expertise. Jâai le sentiment que, dâune certaine maniĂšre, câest ce que nous faisons avec nos produits et nos communautĂ©s.
What is the target?
Instead of using overall cost and price targets as fixed parameters within which to make design and engineering choices, R&D leaders are expected to weigh the benefits to users of those choices against cost considerations.
Whereas the fundamental principle of a conventional business unit structure is to align accountability and control, the fundamental principle of a functional organization is to align expertise and decision rights.
Three key leadership characteristics: deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions; immersion in the details of those functions; and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making.
It is a company where experts lead experts.
Câest trĂšs liĂ© Ă deux de nos leadership principles : lâownership distribuĂ© (Ă propos de qui prend la dĂ©cision finale), et le member-first. Quand des experts dirigent des experts, il faut ĂȘtre vraiment bon pour former Ă certaines compĂ©tences de management.
How to make a decision?
Apple has hundreds of specialist teams across the company, dozens of which may be needed for even one key component of a new product offering. For example, the dual-lens camera with portrait mode required the collaboration of no fewer than 40 specialist teams.Â
How on earth does Apple develop and ship products that require such coordination? The answer is collaborative debate. Because no function is responsible for a product or a service on its own, cross-functional collaboration is crucial.
Leaders are expected to hold strong, well-grounded views and advocate forcefully for them, yet also be willing to change their minds when presented with evidence that othersâ views are better.
âCollaborative debateâ est une bonne appellation. Nous travaillons de façon transversale pour lancer des fonctionnalitĂ©s depuis les crews.Â
Accountability without control: youâre accountable for making the project succeed even though you donât control all the other teams. This process can be messy yet produce great results.
Jâaime beaucoup ce terme. Câest trĂšs proche des discussions que nous avons rĂ©guliĂšrement Ă propos de nos OKRs. Quand on nâest pas owner, mais quâon est quand mĂȘme responsable du rĂ©sultat.
The role of the CEO
Deciding how to organize areas of expertise to best enable collaboration and rapid decision-making has been an important responsibility of the CEO.Â
Apple has been quite disciplined about limiting the number of senior positions to minimize how many leaders must be involved in any cross-functional activity. In 2006, the year before the iPhoneâs launch, the company had some 17,000 employees; by 2019 that number had grown more than eightfold, to 137,000. Meanwhile, the number of VPs approximately doubled, from 50 to 96.
Câest trĂšs impressionnant de constater quâils nâont fait que doubler le nombre de VPs.
How leaders split their time?
For activities in the delegating box, he assembles teams, agrees on objectives, monitors and reviews progress, and holds the teams accountable: the stuff of general management.
Whereas Appleâs VPs spend most of their time in the owning and learning boxes, general managers at other companies tend to spend most of their time in the delegating box. Rosner estimates that he spends about 40% of his time on activities he owns (including collaboration with others in a given area), about 30% on learning, about 15% on teaching, and about 15% on delegating. These numbers vary by manager, of course, depending on their business and the needs at a given time.
Leur division du temps est intĂ©ressante et pourrait ĂȘtre utilisĂ©e comme exemple pour la self-organization. Ătre intentionnel sur lâorganisation de son temps est vraiment important. Quelques astuces.
đŻConstruire une entreprise
En plus dâarticles triĂ©s sur le volet, je partage un principe de leadership dâAlan par semaine. Le mĂȘme que je partage en interne et Ă nos investisseurs tous les mercredis.
đSavoir aller Ă contre-courant, et avoir souvent raison (Healthy Business)
La prise de dĂ©cision par consensus est pour nous rĂ©dhibitoire. On ne construit pas une entreprise pour flatter ou prĂ©server les sensibilitĂ©s de son Ă©quipe ou de ses clients, on la construit au service dâune cause ou dâune vision en laquelle on croit.
Cette semaine, nous avons eu un trÚs bon exemple en poussant rapidement une solution pour fournir un soutien psychologique à nos Membres.
Câest arrivĂ© car une personne a brisĂ© le consensus, a fait confiance Ă ses tripes et Ă son jugement. Si vous travaillez chez Alan, c'est parce que nous sommes convaincus que vous avez un bon jugement. C'est une responsabilitĂ©, mais c'est aussi un grand pouvoir.
đPourquoi il faut ĂȘtre excellent dans son job actuel avant dâaller vers son prochain rĂŽle. Excellent apprentissage et outil pour discuter les changements de rĂŽle en interne. (Twitter)
In 2004 I had an offer to join the new Kindle team at Amazon and I jumped at the opportunity. I was on our retail team at the time -> Kindle was new/sexy. But a week before I was scheduled to start my new job, I was told to stay put and I learned an important lesson.Â
2 years earlier I had been given P&L responsibility for Amznâs cell phone store. We sold phones + plans (like Car Warehouse and Best Buy). This was Amznâs highest margin biz, but it was tiny and not growing and I was told it could get shut down. I had 6 mos to turn it around.
The industry model at that time was give phones for free w/ service plan attach. I reinvested the service plan margin to make phones less than free, and rev growth exploded. GM % plummeted, but profit $ went way up. My little biz was our fastest growing segment at Amzn!
18 months later, others starting copying us and growth stalled. When I got the offer to work on Kindle, I jumped at it. Not only would I have the chance to launch a new biz, I could walk away from my current biz and let someone else clean up the mess. But then...
Diego P. (WW head of retail) called me into his office. He explained you donât get rewarded with new opportunities when youâre doing a bad job. He would allow me to join Kindle team, as soon as I got my current biz back on track and hired a successor who was stronger than me.
đDans lâactu
đ±Monde des technologies
đMagic Leap et comment son CEO sâest fait sortir : une trĂšs grande vision, peu de connexion Ă la rĂ©alitĂ©, nâont pas vendu au bon moment (Bloomberg)
đEmail du CEO de CircleUp Ă un ancien board member qui dĂ©crit tous les comportements nocifs (Lien)
đUn iPhone X contrefait Ă 100$ : oĂč lâimagination de recrĂ©er un iPhone sur Android (Vice)
đ„ SantĂ©
đOscar Health dĂ©voile son 0$ Virtual Primary Care program pour 2021 (Fierce)
Oscar Health is planning to expand into 19 new markets and four new states in 2021.
Oscar unveiled its new $0 Virtual Primary Care, which will offer a slew of digital and in-home services to its individual and family plan members.
Members will have unlimited access to virtual visits with dedicated Oscar primary care providers for $0, as well as no cost for tier-one prescriptions, durable medical equipment, labs, diagnostic imaging and initial specialty care referrals from Oscar providers.
The primary care program will also offer vitals monitoring kits and in-home lab draws at no cost when ordered by Oscar primary care providers.
đ AlanÂ
đDĂ©confinez votre assurance santĂ© ! (Blog) : on vous explique tout sur pourquoi la rĂ©siliation infra-annuelle est une rĂ©volution dans lâassurance santĂ©.
đđșLivres et sĂ©ries
Je vous prĂ©pare des fiches de lecture sur 7 powers et The Great Mental Models, jâattends vos suggestions pour les prochaines !
Câest dĂ©jĂ fini. A vous de jouer maintenant. Invitez vos amis Ă sâinscriređ
Et écrivez-moi pour en parler, sur Linkedin ou sur Twitter. Les JCNews sont aussi disponibles sur le Blog Alan.