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Thanks very much for your review. I've read and reread it a couple times to try to ensure that I internalize this feedback. First, I appreciate your positive comments about the company, and I'm glad to hear that these positives have been a meaningful part of your experience. I also appreciate your acknowledgement that every company has its struggles--that has certainly been my experience working for many different organizations. Even high performing organizations have room for improvement, and that will always include us at Health Catalyst having room for improvement.
I appreciate your comments about the need to improve our clarity on roles and responsibilities post-reorg. I acknowledge we have improvement opportunities, and we are still discussing and clarifying our understanding as a Leadership Team of roles and responsibilities, (including as recently as last week's LT meeting) which reinforces your point, likely at every level of the company. We'll keep working on this--I do feel like my understanding is improving, and that our leadership team's understanding is also improving, and we'll keep following up to try to ensure that this cascades throughout the organization.
I also acknowledge that we're on a journey of improvement regarding our software capabilities, and I feel really positively about the progress we've made, particularly these past 2 1/2 years under Dale's leadership and the tech leadership team's stewardship. In many ways 2017 has been a historic year for the company in terms of the leaps forward in our technology capabilities. And yet, with all that progress, there is still much work to do, and there are plenty of examples where we're not quite to where we want to be, in terms of leading the industry from a technology perspective. I appreciate your ongoing contributions to strengthening our technology capabilities, and feel very good about continuing an outsized investment in R&D in 2018 (and permanently) as a proportion of our overall operating expenses, to try to enable our long-term tech leadership. But we still definitely have work to do.
Thanks also for your comments about the capability set and development plans for our mid-level managers. This has been an area of attention for us as a leadership team, and I want to acknowledge that there are few shortcuts to developing great skill as a manager and as a leader. So, this is an area that will take consistent focus and effort, over sustained periods of time, to register systemic improvement. About two years ago we began a concerted effort and focus in helping new managers develop the skills, capabilities and characteristics of great leaders and managers. We started with a focus on holding regular 1:1s and in those 1:1s focusing first on listening and on asking the overarching question "how can I help you be successful" to each of their fellow team members during those 1:1s. We've added some additional trainings and more recently, we're incorporating management mentoring into our overall mentorship program. But I'm confident we can do more, here. I'll follow up with our Leadership Team on what we can do to accelerate the development of our managers. I agree with your last point that improvement in this regard is the responsibility of the leadership of the company. We take that responsibility seriously and will work to improve in this area.
Finally, I want to acknowledge some of the downside of a team-based bonus approach. We all sink or swim together, which may mean that in some cases one group may have over-performed but be hampered by another group's underperformance. But this approach also has significant upside, and I'm increasingly convinced that the team-based approach, as reflected in our bonus and in many other ways, is a core element of the mission-orientation of the company and the positive culture of the company. And my hope and belief is that we gain much more than we lose, in the medium- and long-term, as teammates, in this environment. I hope that proves to be your experience over time at Health Catalyst. Thanks again for sharing these thoughtful insights--they will help us improve as a company.
