At the end of a year, I measure the success of the company (and my own personal development) by how embarrassed I am at where we were and where I was as a leader at the start of the year. The more embarrassing the better because if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
This year was an absolute blast and we were fortunate to have grown considerably over the last 12 months. I find myself reflecting on four specific areas that were accomplishments for TAG, our clients, and the greater communities that we have the pleasure of working with day in and day out.
One of the top Drupal and Gatsby contributors in 2019. We love giving back to the communities where we operate. We brought on @GrantGlidewell, our JS trailblazer, and allocated 50% of his time to community contributions. To date for Gatsby, we’ve built an Acquia commerce integration, Bigcommerce starter pack, Drupal Gatsby Live Preview, and even open-sourced our entire new frontend.
For Drupal, we were one of the top 30 Drupal contributors in 2018 and have maintained our commitment to the community in 2019. We pulled the following image from the Driesnote at DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019 — see anybody in particular in this word cloud?
Strengthened our commitment to being the best at digital. We started as a Drupal engineering practice but we knew that the end goal was to evolve to meet the demands of modern digital experiences. In August, we rebranded TAG to emphasize our investment in Strategy and Creative services. It’s remarkable to watch what happens when silos are broken down and a team can take a project from soup to nuts. This is the beginning of what TAG always wanted to be and I couldn’t be prouder of what our team is accomplishing.
Did some of our best work ever. We elevated our existing clients and brought on leading brands like World Vision and King Arthur Flour. This goes back to what I was saying about strengthening our commitment to being the best at digital — we’re still one of the best engineering teams out there but we can take a brand vision and hit it from all angles now. The digital experiences we’re building are not only beautiful and functional, but they also deliver on business goals.
What’s next?
There is an old joke in sales that immediately after winning a big deal you no longer care about it because the only thing that matters is what deal you are working on next. You are only as good as your last (very recent) deal. Agencies are like that too. We transformed ourselves this year but that is in the past and doesn’t matter for 2020. What matters is that we relentlessly pursue getting better as an organization. The same mistakes are bad, but new mistakes are good because it means you are growing.
Yes, we reached a summit this year, but only the shortest peak in a long mountain range and I’m eager to get our next hike underway immediately. Onwards!