My hopes and thoughts of the new year - a letter to my team!

(This is an email I wrote to my team. Sharing here on LinkedIn with the hope other leaders will find the message useful.)

Hello team,

Happy new year to you all.?Hope you found your own space and time to celebrate the new year in the way you liked!?

Year 2021 has been memorable for more reasons that I could remember and reflecting on the time, I felt content with all the efforts, successes, failures, and learnings we have had together in the last year.

As we start the new calendar year, I thought I would share some of my thoughts that had been going in my mind during last few days.?

Let’s begin again - achievements of past do not mean anything for the future

2021 is over and so do our past work, success, and achievements.?2022 marks a new beginning for new goals and new pursuits of success.?While there is so much to be proud of what we did in last year, I think it’s a time for new beginning, renewed focus on our goals and pursuit of our ambition.?

We cannot be complacent with our success of 2021.?

All the work that we did in 2021 across all our teams has given us a great foundation to scale new heights this year.?We have achieved a lot in 2021 across all our teams, but the time is to set the bar higher and aim for even higher impact.?

Not more work, but more impact!

This will need renewed vigour and focus from all of us. The challenge is to surpass our own impact from 2021, to even higher scale.

Let’s begin again.

?Agility & entrepreneurial mindset are our key strengths

One of the USPs of our teams is our “agility” – our ability to respond to change.?Throughout last year, we responded fantastically to the business / situational / operational / structural changes around us in an appropriate and in an ‘agile’ way.?We *always* found a way to adapt to the new change and deliver the intended value and impact to our customers and stakeholders.

Another thing that really helped our team grow was the ‘Entrepreneurial’ (or shall I say intrapreneurial) spirit that we carefully cultivated across the team.?I like our team to operate like a start-up enterprise. I like our teams to have an outcome-first thinking approach and a ‘growth’ mindset. This helps us spot opportunities to create bigger impact, including a positive brand and commercial impact for Thoughtworks.

These two things – Agility & Entrepreneurial mindset will help us grow even faster and better this year, will help us navigate the unpredictable landscape that this year will bring for us and help us stay honest with ourselves over long term.??

Please do not trade these qualities for anything.

These are our strengths.?We should be proud of them, and we should double down on them.

?Life isn’t fair always and so isn’t work

We all want fairness, for everyone.?But we all know, life is not always fair or kind to us.??The same goes for work and with the kind of things that we do, we experience, we feel at work.?

Even with all honest intentions and efforts by everyone, there will always be moments at work that may stress you, disappoint you or make you question the fairness of the situation.?Despite the best efforts by the leaders and everyone around you, it’s possible that you may experience these things.

Like the life goes up and down, the work will also have its own ups and downs. While I am pretty sure we will have another successful year, we will also experience failures, we may take wrong decisions and some things will just go bad.?‘Shit’ happens and its possible that we will have some bad days at work.

So, if this ever happens with you, know that we are in this together and we will share all good times/ bad times together and overcome them.??Openness, transparency, trust and being intentional of supporting each other are some of our cultural values that can really help us turn any bad situation in a positive way.??I would encourage you to continue advocating and actively practicing them.?

Mental health is health

If there is one thing that the pandemic has prominently taught me, it was that of ‘importance of mental health’ and need of conditioning the mind to cope up with the situation around us.?

How and what we feel, and our emotional state has a strong impact on how we think, how we act and on our physical health.?Like me, I am sure you also have had times last year when the world seems to be fading and nothing goes as per the plan in our life.?I am sure some of you know, I have had times when I felt like giving up as life was getting too much on me.

I am sure this year will bring its own situations, challenges and ups and downs in our lives that will impact our mental health.?Some of them may be completely new and it’s entirely possible that we may not be prepared for those situations and end up feeling lost!

So, if you ever do go through this, please note that ‘work’ should be the last thing in your list of worries.?Please do all the necessary things to help yourself.?Those who are lucky enough to have family and friends, please do bank on them for support.?If you feel like talking to someone at work, please note that I am always available to talk to you.?

Some of the tips that have helped me along the way are,

-??????Try not to over invest emotionally at work.?Invest in people, not work or products.?Your career and journey is way longer than the project or the team you are in right now.?So, invest in long term relations and help each other grow.

-??????Have a passion (or a hobby) outside work that you are willing to burn your nights for.?For me, watching Manchester United play football is one such passion. Don’t be surprised if I respond to some chat messages or emails at 2am or 3am.?Its possible I might be awake watching football.

-??????Take time off.?Do not just book time off to fight stress and refresh your mind, take time off to experience new things too.?Personally, I had been pretty bad at it myself and this Christmas and new year break was my first time-away-from-work-for-a-week in almost 2 years.?Please do not become like me!

Your mental wellbeing and creating a safe workspace are my responsibilities too and I want you to feel comfortable reaching out to me or your colleagues & friends at work or your people champions should you need any support or help.?

Please do not treat mental health lightly.?When work becomes stressful, please speak out what you feel. You are more likely to get support if you speak out than if you take on the work just on yourself.

While the journey of 2022 will not be easy and bring its own challenges, I am looking at the coming year with great hope and belief that we will be able to surpass 2021 by quite a mile.

Thank you for being an integral part of the team and making us what we are today.

I wish you all good luck and another effective and impactful year, personally & professionally.

Happy new year | Feliz Ano Novo | 新年快乐 | ?????????? ????????????? | ?????? ?? ?????????? | ??? ????? ?????? | ???? ????????? ???????? | Feliz a?o nuevo?

Best regards

Swapnil

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PS - Image source link. Credit álvaro Serrano (via unsplash).