W46 - One-Year Work Anniversary Retrospective

My first anniversary at this job is approaching. I’m pleased and, looking back over the year, there have been massive changes both inside and outside. No need to mention the outside — the world, the industry, the company, and the team have all adopted an attitude of embracing change. I’ll briefly describe how I’ve changed.

I’ve been reflecting on one question: immersed in Meituan’s crucible, among the various methodologies and fundamentals, which one has changed me the most?

Is it the “four classics”? Those seem to be methodologies and practices around broad communication, representing a top-down expectation. Is it the standardized actions in projects like continuous delivery and retrospectives? Those are things you learn, but they don’t change your thinking deeply or thoroughly.

After pondering, it should be a transformation in the way I work. What is it exactly? I think it’s the change in thinking that the internet brought to modern enterprises — Lean theory. It’s the set of lean work methods described in the famous The Lean Startup, popularized from Silicon Valley but originating with Toyota on an island nation — a mindset that grew out of resource-constrained conditions.

The core logic is the build-measure-learn loop: continuously validating each idea’s value and growth hypotheses. Under this guideline, every action is the minimum necessary, building an excellent system through iteration rather than driving it with grand, comprehensive design. Compared with costly waterfall workflows, lean theory is perfectly suited to this rapidly changing world. At Meituan, doing things this way seems to have become part of our DNA — a shared consensus and a standard for judgment.

I’d heard of The Lean Startup before, but only glanced at it and thought, “Who doesn’t know MVP? Got it.” Now its impact on me has made me realize that a year ago I was nothing more than a deluded fool. A year ago I had just hastily wrapped up a startup project; our approach then was to prepare everything and wait to reap the rewards, but when we went into the field we found we were in a fish pond, not a leek field. Meituan made me truly experience the build-measure-learn loop. It may be that it’s only recently triggered real reflection in me, which is why it now feels so important.

The loop sounds simple. Take build as an example: what should the granularity be for each build? In what form should it be built? Is there a lower-cost option? Without deep understanding and practical experience, it’s hard to accept this way of working, because when you’re in a state of delusion, resources are the last thing you lack. Building is only the first step; measurement is the stage where most companies struggle to implement. We prefer to trust intuition and other subjective impressions because they are easier to grasp and make decisions with. I recently discovered Lean Analytics, which addresses the measurement stage well — for example, how to define the single most important metric at different product stages? How to find PMF through successive experiments? Faced with a pile of daily reports, which should we focus on and which are redundant? I read the foreword and realized the topic runs deep; it’s worth diving into further.

I hope that when I look back at myself next year I’ll still be a “fool.”