CEO Corner: My Thought for the Year 2023

For the past few years, I have begun the annual company kick-off with my thought for the year. I want this thought to challenge us as individuals and as a collective team - to get us thinking about how we are going to conduct ourselves in the year ahead – not just at work but also in our personal lives. 

As CEO I believe it is important to bring your whole self to work. It is vital, then, that I speak to the whole person, to each and every individual who works at HeadBox. I want to challenge the 'whole you' not just the ‘work you’.   

So, my thought for 2023 has been inspired by the closing stanza of a poem by Robert Frost called The Road Not Taken.

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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

We are often confronted with forks in the road. They come to us as choices and decisions we must make in our personal and working lives. I know we will have to make many at HeadBox over the months ahead - the key is how we go about making those choices, and taking those decisions. Living your life with intention makes all the difference is ultimately what Robert Frost is saying.

Do we let them happen to us or do we make them with intent, with confidence and with a full heart?

The key to living your life with intention is to be constantly asking questions of yourself and those around you. As the American journalist, author and entrepreneur Krista Tippett said: "A question is a mighty form of words", or as the Yorkshire-born poet David Whyte said: "Beautiful questions shape beautiful minds".

As a company with curiosity as a core value, the most important question in our day-to-day is, of course,  "Why" - at HeadBox we have our answer: "to bring people and spaces together to make brilliant things happen, everywhere". So, I challenged everyone at HeadBox to think of their own personal "why". Something to anchor their 2023 and beyond, a Northstar that will help them live their life with intention. 

There are practical ways to help coalesce this “Why”  - think of writing a message on a billboard to your future self so that you can revisit this at the end of 2023 - it could be something that you just want to share with yourself or just with key family and friends or even with the wider world. It could go as far as your complete “Why”, it could for now just be a goal, a principle to help guide you in work and in life. 

This is my billboard message: "To live my life in 2023 with intention".

I want to step towards what’s important to me – to do my best to ensure that the experiences, accomplishments and choices in 2023 happen because I wanted them to and happen often.

Finally, for me living with intention will allow me to embrace the process, to enjoy it, to focus on my actions and less on the outcomes because, if I take the right actions, the right outcomes will follow.