Alan’s Weekly Pulse: everything you want to know, and why we can't do without it

At Alan, radical transparency is one of our 10 leadership principles. We are transparent with our team, our shareholders, our members, and our community. For example, we share quarterly our Letter to Shareholders.

We believe radical transparency helps us build a better organization. It's why we share documents internally, broadly and systematically. Every Thursday morning, we share our Weekly Pulse to the whole team.

The Weekly Pulse gives an overview of our strategic progress, key metrics, and value creation across all areas.

First, I write a general overview, talking about :

🌟 Strategy: in this first part, I take a step-back, and share my thoughts on where we are and how we are going. It can be a reaction to one of our achievements, how what we are doing today is connected to our mission or other important strategic topics I want to share with the team.

🎯 Key metrics: we publish the number of signed members, the ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), and the Margin.

🏆 Value built this week: it is the list of main achievements done this week.

💚 Member Story: we always share a Member Story (a tweet, a comment, an email). It can be either positive or negative remarks. It is important for us to remember that our members come first, and to be always connected to some feedback.

⛩ Culture: we share a few lines about Alan’s culture.

Then, we dive into specific areas:

At Alan, Distributed Ownership is one of our key values. Alaners are owners and thus, act on behalf of the entire company: leadership comes from everywhere at Alan. Therefore, every Alaner needs to have a precise idea of where we are as a company, on our path. Sharing this weekly update allows every Alaner to have context and correctly understand what the main topics in discussion are, and where we could be better.

To make great decisions, one should have a clear overview and a deep understanding of the company activity. Everyone should feel concerned by the current discussions.

Among other things, we listed some advantages of doing such updates:

Every Monday, the document of the next Weekly Update is opened.

1st Part - General overview: I am in charge of this section. I update the Strategy, the Value Built this week, Lowlights, the Top Priorities for the next week, and Culture.

2nd Part - Metrics by stream: Each stream (Growth, Product, International…) has owners in charge of filling and updating this section. By the end of Wednesday afternoon, owners should have finished providing their elements on what we achieved and what we expect to do for the week to come.

I send a finalized email on Thursday morning.

We sent our first weekly on November 15th, 2015. And it looked like that:

From then, we sent a Weekly Pulse every week, and tried to improve it every time.

Our Weekly Pulse has changed a lot since the first time we sent it, to adapt to Alan’s changes and needs. This format fits our current needs, rhythm and way to work and is helpful for Alaners and shareholders. However, it may have to evolve in the future to stay in line with Alan’s evolution.

I don’t think this format is, in absolute terms, the good one, nor that there is a unique way to communicate and share information within a team. On the contrary, it should really depend on the company, the CEO, and the way they work.