A few years ago, I* was frustrated at work, because we were focused on bug smashing and not on launching new products. It felt as if we were in a lull of endless debugging and no longer moving towards our vision of making the car a fun and entertaining place to be. We often think of north stars as additive e.g. “increase the number of rides per week” (Uber), but I’ve realized that north stars change depending on the lifecycle of the org or company. They don’t always have to be positive — sometimes a north star can be a negative reduction, for example, “We want to suck less.”