A Snowing End to 2020

Every December we take a moment to look back before the next year starts making demands. 2020 asked more of that habit than usual.

What the year changed

For a lot of the business owners we work with, digital stopped being a project and became the business. Restaurants needed ordering. Clinics needed booking. Trainers needed video. Retailers who had been discussing an online store for three years launched one in three weeks.

We spent most of the year helping people move faster than they were comfortable moving, and being careful that speed did not turn into a mess someone would have to unpick later.

What we learned

**Small and working beats large and planned.** The clients who did best launched something narrow, watched what happened, and improved it. The ones who tried to specify everything in advance were still specifying in June.

**Distributed teams work when the writing is good.** Our team spans several countries and always has. What made the difference in 2020 was writing things down — decisions, reasons, next steps — rather than relying on being in the same room.

**Clients remember who was useful when it was hard.** Several relationships that carried us through the year began with a phone call where the honest answer was "do not spend money on that right now."

Thank you

To the clients who trusted us with decisions that mattered, to the partners who moved quickly when we needed them, and to a team that handled a genuinely strange year with good humour — thank you.

We are going into the new year with more work than we started this one with, and a clearer sense of what we are for. #WinningWithYou is not a slogan we chose for a difficult year, but it earned its place in one.

See you in January.