January 1 always feels different than other days

Oh my, how January 1 has changed for me over the past 2 decades.

For the past few years, January 1 has been a day to look ahead with promise and excitement. I’ve done my reflecting and it’s time to move on! After a relatively quiet week, and some awesome, much needed time with the family, I’m gearing up to get back to work tomorrow.

As I reflect on January 1, I’m thinking back to my time at IBM. January 1 was typically the final day for me to get things organized for the year to come (or at least the upcoming week) – and always coming out of what had been a late December filled with year-end HR and finance deadlines.

I experienced January 1 fourteen times as an IBMer. While I had different roles and responsibilities across my 15 years, there were a lot of common end/beginning of year processes I grew accustomed to – and I learned a lot from.

As a company with roughly 400,000 employees, IBM has to manage and motivate its employees – and it’s culture - in a very deliberate manner. While I might not agree 100% with every policy and process, I largely understood why we had to do things a certain way. 

I’m in a very different role today, leading a great team at Conversion Marketing, but still relying on so much of what I learned at IBM. While not even a tiny fraction the size of IBM, we’re still working on what it means to be a part of the Conversion Marketing team. As we think about our goals and objectives for 2019, and the partnerships we’ve already started to build, a few key principles rise to the top:

1. We win when our clients win.

2. Be smart about being different.

3. Have accountability at every level.

These aren’t “final,” and not sure they’ll ever be. But I think it’s important to head into the year with a set of basic principles the team fully buys into. 

I know we have amazing talent and awesome clients. If we can live by these three principles – or some variation of them - 2019 should be a great year!