2020: The Year Hindsight Has Been Waiting For
So, here we are. The year of perfect vision. Hindsight has been waiting (yes, I know, it’s a stretch to talk about retrospect from the perspective of looking ahead) for this day to come since 1949, when the phrase was first attributed to humorist Richard Armour. It’s been a long time coming. The 2000’s are officially grown up and by the end of this decade, they might even be having children, spending all their money on diapers at Target, which will likely be a subsidiary of Amazon, rather than on concert tickets, craft cocktails, and rideshares, and possibly even kicking themselves for not setting up a 401(k) a few years earlier. But a lot can change in a year, never mind a decade.
The expression we are referencing here is not intended to bring to mind any sense of disappointment, regret, or longing; rather, we see the idea of looking back as an incredibly useful exercise to understand the present and plan for what’s next. It’s an opportunity to take learnings from previous experiences and applying them constructively. That’s what we aim to do in 2020.
With that in mind, we put together a Vision Planning Guide to help individuals and organizations examine their past wins, areas for improvement, and better understand where they want to go. From there, the guide focuses on setting some informed and attainable goals and implementing real, impactful changes on a daily, weekly, quarterly basis. Now is the time of year to dwell in the present, but don’t forget to utilize the past as a means to set a direction for the future. This year doesn’t need to be about grand or sweeping changes, although it could be, but it could also be about small meaningful changes that, over time, lead to real impact. Sometimes the best thing you can do is take some time to go back to your roots and reflect, rethink, and re-articulate.
At Medley, we kicked off 2020 by completing the aforementioned guide ourselves. The first exercise is about Values, without which, we, like most of you, don’t have a company that can persist. So, the first section of our 2020 Vision Planning opens:
Articulating your individual values is critical to understanding how they align with your organization’s and help keep you focused on what matters most to you in your work.
After selecting those that apply from a lengthy list of options, the guide then asks to boil those down to the 5 values from your individual list most important for your organization to embody as well.
As we continue to reflect on the past year and focus on goals for 2020, the following is the combined list of the 10 Values (in alphabetical order, we won’t say whose are whose) that best represent Medley and what we to carry with us in everything that we do.
Authenticity
Community
Creativity
Curiosity
Empathy
Integrity
Meaning
Respect
Sustainability
Teamwork
Here’s to the year of perfect vision. While nobody is, we’d love to have a conversation about how we might help you get a little bit closer to it.