Goodbye, Good Riddance, and Thank You!

Well, the numbers are in and we did it! We made great things happen – seemingly IMPOSSIBLE things happen –  in 2009. When I say we, I mean all the phenomenal teams my team supports. This spans a pretty wide swath of geography, so it’s no fluke. From Hawaii to Japan to Mainland (Main STREET) USA, we just blew the doors off. How did we do it?

Well, we had to, I suppose.

I’m lucky to work for great leadership that set a pretty clear direction right at the beginning of 2009. We were told to be more efficient, and we did it. We were told not to cut corners, but to keep our eyes peeled for opportunities and jump in with both feet if we found them.

And we found so many opportunities: to do things smarter, to be more direct, to work in closer coordination, to focus on our message and whether or not our customer gained from hearing it. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t, either. So at times we shelved projects and plans that (even though we loved them in theory) just didn’t make sense.

So, when we began to really open our eyes to how to be better, we found so many opportunities for change and refinement that my team literally can’t get to all of them. We’re prioritizing (and re-prioritizing) the most beneficial and moving as quickly as we can. We’re not sacrificing quality (I’m so happy to report) but we are – ahem – sleek…so we sometimes move quickly to implement a less than elegant solution that delivers while knowing we’ll come back “later” to make it as pretty as we’d like it to be in a perfect world (which this one ain’t).

In spite of the drama, we hit some remarkable new heights and one of the pinnacles is simply: We made it.

Big time.