Health Catalyst is a company for which I hope to work for an exceptionally long time. I hope to never leave. But there are some issues of concern that I hope can be addressed. The organization is very flat. The Leadership Team has a number of people who have ascended in the organization as the company has grown. That is expected, in fact desirable. But some on the LT have not grown as their role responsibilities have increased. Many continue to perform a significant amount of individual contributor work, when their focus should be on strategy definition/execution, resource management, and staff development. They should be growing the company, and the next generation of company leaders.
In addition, some on the LT are unable to delegate even the smallest tasks and decisions to their leadership team. This has led to a large layer of upper and middle level managers who are underutilized, and whose professional growth is stunted. There is also a concentration of knowledge at the LT level that presents risk to company should a key LT member depart. It also could result in attrition to key ELT members who feel stagnated and frustrated.
Associated with all of that is the risk caused by having no apparent succession plans in place. As a company owner, this issue is particularly troubling. If an LT member were to leave, all of their domain knowledge would leave with them and would then have to be learned by their replacement. It would be a setback to the company. Not insurmountable, but highly disruptive. And totally avoidable by having LT members formulate delegation and succession plans.
One other area of concern is company identity: are we a services company enabled by technology, or a technology company enabled by services? I think we originally were the former and are now moving towards the latter. But communication and training are needed to align strategy throughout the organization. There is a lot of confusion among team members on this point. And all team members must hold each other accountable to that strategic goal. Finally, both billability and resource utilization continue to be impacted by this technology/services confusion. A mandatory annual quota for Professional Services staff, while common in a consulting company, causes distraction when the primary focus becomes billability. Some team members are focused more on making their number, sometimes to the detriment of customer success.
I humbly offer these comments with positive intent in the hope that we can make an already great company better. Thanks for reading them.
