Strategy in Chapters
JC Newsletter #225
Dear friends,
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Strategy in Chapters
We have an exciting roadmap for the next decade and beyond.
There are so many things we can do in healthcare, things we want to do, and things we must do. Therefore, we need to prioritize, sequence, and decide what to do today and what to postpone. We will also make some early bets, as our history shows that these bets often grow and take time to develop.
This is why we have designed a somewhat visual version of Alan's upcoming chapters.
The way we envision it has been inspired by Shopify, Airbnb, Linear and others:
Six-month cycles over two quarters
Culminating in releases in autumn and spring
These releases are stories we can eventually share externally
More importantly, they unite us internally by clarifying what we are doing and when we are exploring new topics and how they fit into the sequence.
This also reassures us that when we say no to something, it doesn't mean no forever; it means no, we will do it in one of the upcoming chapters.
The idea is that the next chapter is very strict—we have high visibility, we commit to what we will do, and we do it. Once we enter execution mode, it is no longer debatable, except in the case of significant new learnings.
The following chapters have lower degrees of conviction; they are just a direction, a potential path. As we have seen many times in Alan's history, we learn, we iterate, and we build the future.
The objective is to continue debating the sequence, the right things to do, while executing superbly on our shared vision.
Some good articles I have read this week
Building companies & culture
👉Making Meta | Andrew ‘Boz ’ Bosworth (CTO) (Lenny's Podcast)
Leadership & culture:
Know when you should “refuse to rule” and not give your opinion as a leader
Momentum: review all progress every week. Ask crews to have clear commits every week so we see momentum. Tons of little touches.
How they push for transparency even if there are leaks.
Distributed ownership is about having leaders who have very strong opinions about what we should be doing as a company, and your bottom-up-ness works within that framework.
There is no detail too small to notice.
When something goes wrong, give more context, and set more precise expectations upfront.
The importance of reiterating a point several times and in several different ways to make sure that people have a chance to internalize it.
"You're never as good as they say you are when you're winning, and you're never as bad as they say you are when you're losing."
You know more than the critics do.
Gell-Mann Amnesia is super interesting!
"You don't want to work at a company that, when times are tough, kills all future growth and just shores up in the core business."
Even when you disagree, don’t fight ideas, ask more questions!
The future of AR looks exciting
👉NIK on X: on focus (X)
I truly believe in creating automatisms that reduce stress and distractions and starting the morning with the most important topics.
“wake up and go directly to work. Do not check anything – no messages, no emails, no news, no nothing.”
I know it's counterintuitive, but for me, it makes a real difference in my life.
AI
👉How Meta is paving the way for synthetic social networks (Platformer)
The world of artificial intelligence is moving very fast, and people's habits will change very quickly. Interacting with AI without knowing it's AI will become the norm in my opinion.
👉Disruptive Interfaces & The Rise of Luxury Software (Implications)
I really like the idea of a brand agent and I wonder what it would look like to have you typified and welcomed by an agent who knows you on our website. The questions are: what does it mean to "know" and what information do we have? But it's very interesting.
I also strongly believe that there will be agents at the operating system level. Microsoft has just launched Copilot, but I think we will have this integrated into smartphones, and making it very easy for those models to read and interact with Alan is crucial.
How do we all become software artists?
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