About children's sketching books, and other ways to connect the dots.
When I was a child, one of my favorite drawing exercises was the one where you would draw lines between the dots to create meaning of a dotted, but otherwise blank, page. Out of the dots came princesses and princes, houses, cars, and rockets. One by one, the dots became part of the bigger picture. And once the lines were all drawn, it was time to fill in the gaps.
For the last few weeks, we've had a lot of new posts in this blog. All of these have been dots in the build-up to Netlight’s 2020 theme release. Themes are an annual tradition, used for creating discussion and alignment across the company. And with the exception of a small working group, we are all left to connect the dots if we want to understand, ahead of the big reveal, what the common topic for meta-discussion and action will be for the next eleven months.
And when it comes to connecting the dots, we know what we are doing. Netlight is a company of dots (figuratively speaking). We define ourselves as a network organisation. An organisation with nodes and connections. The network has been at the center of some of our best, and most memorable, annual themes.
Dots have always been part of Netlight
In 2015 our annual theme was “Boid”, it put the spotlight on how we make decisions. The dot that is closest to the issue, is the best person to be making the decision. But not without reaching out through the lines to other dots, to gain perspective. “Be a Mensch” in 2016 was about strengthening connections between the dots, by focusing on leading with trust and responsiveness. In 2017 we had the theme “I am Netlight”, which for me was about being my own dot in the bigger picture, and to understand that I was part of something.
So, as you can understand, dots are our DNA. Connecting dots is how information spreads within Netlight. It's how we make decisions. It's how we stay relevant and in the forefront of digitalisation. Connecting dots is how hundreds of people across all our offices at all times are working to improve Netlight in small or big ways. By connecting the dots, we are constantly evolving as a company, and as individuals.
So, if connecting dots are how evolution happens, and Netlight has come to the end of our former four year strategic plan, “Evolution”. Does this mean that we are also coming to the end of connecting dots?
I surely hope not. We are simply too good at it. Each spring, all of Netlight travels to an unknown location. We don't know where we will land until the wheels hit the ground. However, a group of people have gotten together in a channel on Slack to discuss various clues that can be (often accidentally) found in the communication ahead of the trip.
Ahead of the last trip, they were able to connect the dots between weather information, people visible in teaser videos, metadata, and other less subtle clues and find the location. There was even a JSFiddle dedicated to working with flight times from various cities we have offices in. A few days from departure, the group was able to guess the exact airport we ended up landing at.
While this story is not in any way related to how we keep our business running, it's a great example of how we connect to the dots around us every day to gain insight, perspective, new information and work together to create deliveries and results that we are truly proud of. I hope that 2020 becomes a year when we connect more dots than ever before.
