I will write my views below and list the ones that I think needs all-out attention (10X)
Vision: There seems to be a lack of clarity on what Harmony is from the promoting Harmony team members (i.e. Core team).
Harmony had a vision, Consensus for 10 Billion. This led to things which meant, to connect the people together , build technology that would help them benefit and unite at a higher level. Strong technology to back it up and open source so the community builds trust over it. This was clear and presented a grandiose view that people can understand. They may have doubts but it has a logical appeal that can rally people and communities to follow as far as this vision could be expressed with deliverables forwarding the goals.
To bring more people to participate in the network, develop a platform at Layer 1 which will help many, many build on top. This implies Harmony would be technically not just building Harmony's platform but help in guidance, with training, tutorials, etc made available easily for everybody to build. Developers like to read code, test apps, sample modules, etc and less write-ups and English docs. I think there were misses here. The development community seems to be alienated somewhat, which I feel is detrimental to the value of Harmony.
To build such a complex platform (under the covers) that elicit average developers' consumable value has been downplayed a little bit.
Double down on core technology and grow the core tech team. Decentralization is a great idea and works when one pod works well. You can only clone pods that work efficiently, deliver on time and point focused on recoveries where there are miscues in past deliveries. I feel Harmony has to do some work to regain that prowess. Very smart people, doing too many things in parallel and perhaps not being in the position to enjoy the delivery and its quality. Instead of meeting deadlines as checkboxes it could be turned over to deliver a few strong and complicated stuff so that the developer community can be powered to build the other things on top. Give the core team more time to deliver and complete rather than rush things in.
Bring in more experienced operators who have a stronger track record of building good products and take them to market. To grow leaders from operators takes a long time, several years and sometimes decades (companies like Google did compromise and now have started bringing in outside experienced leaders for teams that are large revenue generators. You also have to grow your own leaders but it is important to understand that when you take somebody who is a strong contributor and push them into leadership their delivery falls apart so it is also important to understand the people psyche to see who can and who will not scale into those roles.
Keep improving what is already live by Harmony, Have dedicated team members accountable for their workings on a daily basis.
Focus on your core, build complex underlying systems components, Zero Knowledge is very important and is an ecosystem on its own, so work with partners where possible, don't try to build the whole on its own. Focus on ecosystem parts.
Core team members should have the autonomy to Define, Design, Build and Ship and be accountable for its functioning. Pushing things through to move onto the next modules and then expecting the community and others to hand hold it is going to hurt. Community and developers network is not trained to have the follow through. As famous dancers and sportsmen will say, the appreciation of an act is ever-lasting via its finesse of execution and impeccable follow through. Dedicated support is required for that.
Things for 10X focus:
Reduce the DAO emphasis, each DAO is like an organization which needs to have survivability and reasons to exist. Almost like starting a new startup, so dedication is required, 3-month elections and expecting business models to be crafted and adopted by everybody is impossible, so give a few more freedom to define and execute. The evaluators should have the skills to evaluate otherwise new participants will get frustrated and walk away, creating unwarranted dissonance. Have people who have founded companies evaluate DAOs
Native StableCoin, very , very important, this should be a key focus. Set up a team of two or three focusing on this fully till it is done. No swinging left or right, straight home run. There are many good models to base it on, so don’t reinvent, improvise on what exists.
Zero Knowledge is an Ecosystem which needs a lot of dedication from smart technical minds and you have to give it time to build a platform with good middleware for easy apps. It is almost like creating another Harmony or a baby-Harmony that just focuses on the ZK Platform. I would think it is like an incubation within Harmony that only does ZK framework and nothing else (perhaps could be an external funded team)
Double down on Harmony’s core platform to keep improving it, (You need two or three more @Rongjian Lan @Leo Chen, @Ganesha Upadhyaya likes in the core team)
@Stephen Tse , you should focus most of your time in building the Metaverse Harmony at a global level. That is a huge opportunity, way , way bigger so you need to stay focussed in that area. You do a great job when you focus on a few things and go as deep as practically possible. You need more delivery focussed operators in the company.
Divest the ones that are on the periphery and focus on the core, Harmony excels in it, that is a differentiator that you don’t want to loose.