Amazing growth and amazing talent! These are the most prominent themes that come to mind as I reflect on 2018.
Amazing growth, as E-Nor has experienced it’s largest year-over-year growth ever, not only in terms of revenue, but also in the marquee clients we’re so proud and fortunate to have: the clients we’ve retained and have grown with over the last fifteen years as well as the new clients we’ve acquired in 2018.
Amazing talent, as in attracting super talented new team members, and our veteran E-Norians who continue to expand our collective expertise in new areas of knowledge, such as advanced digital analytics, data engineering, ML, personalization and more!
This unprecedented growth reminds me of what Jack Dorsey, co-found of Twitter, once said about perpetual improvement and how companies have multiple founding moments:
“in addition to the initial founding of the company, there are subsequent founding moments when the team comes together to create something special and as a result the company is never the same”.
It seems that at E-Nor, we continue to experience our founding moments as we expand our scope, deepen our knowledge, and meet bigger and bigger challenges. I’m so proud of our team and their thirst for knowledge and their commitment to learn and offer thought leadership, one of the guiding principles E-Nor lives by.
Externally, with this growth, it’s easier to forget about what got us here. We kept our focus on our clients, and as all E-Norians will tell you, we’re always finding ways to measure and improve client happiness. We invested heavily in knowledge sharing, project management, in addition to training and certifications in areas of specialization, both from a technical perspective as well as from a consulting perspective. E-Norians, at all levels, are fully committed to continuously providing real value to our customers as trusted advisors, another guiding principle we always aspire to live up to. While we were not always perfect in the area of client happiness, and there were a few occasions where we could have done better, we learn from these hiccups. I’m very delighted to see our team taking a very formal approach to incorporate “lessons learned” in everything we do.
Internally, and with our growth, it’s also easy to neglect in investing in the company culture. You can’t take a great culture for granted; it’ll slip away. We’re committed to the happiness of our team members, not only the financial part (and having very cool benefits 🙂 ) but also dedicating ourselves to creating an environment where we flourish and grow the circle of intersection between our passions, our skills and our business needs.
In addition, our guiding principle of transparency has not and will not waver. E-Norians can tell you that we share, and we share a lot, in all aspects of our business, whether it’s a tactical decision or a strategic undertaking. We owe it to our team to keep everyone informed, to encourage engagement, to get involved and participate to ensure we collectively make the best decision possible.
This growth and prosperity have allowed us, year after year, to stay committed to those in need. Between E-Nor’s direct donations and team donation matching program, we’ve contributed over $130K in 2018. Organizations we supported include the Red Cross, American Lung Association, Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation, World WildLife, Doctors without borders, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, North Valley Community Foundation, The Key Clubhouse, CSA, CSE, Dayton Visual Arts Center, The Blue Bench, RMIAN, Ninos, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Denver Santa Claus Shop, Project Read, Literacy Partners, Reading Partners, Junior League of Collin County, Community Voters Project, HEWT, the Sunny Center and Learning Skills Academy. If you’re a client, an industry friend or a reader of our blog, and have a cause you’d like us to consider supporting in 2019, please let us know. (You can email me directly or leave a comment here).
The new year ahead
As we’re about to welcome 2019, I’m not big on predictions, but I will predict one thing and that’s the fast pace of this data space we live in, all sorts of data, and the challenge of how to make more sense of it all – not an easy undertaking by any means.
In my martial arts training (Aikido, for those interested :)), one of our instructors reminds us that in Japanese, when one wishes their friend good luck (say before an exam) they would say “ganbatte kudasai”, this is often translated as “good luck”, a better translation would be “please do your best“!
So as we approach 2019, please do your best, we’ll do our best, and I wish you the best of luck as well! 🙂
Have a very safe, enjoyable Holiday season and very Happy New Year!
PS: We miss you Shiraz. You would have been so very proud of the E-Nor you co-founded!
Meet some of our team and find out what they’re most looking forward to in the industry in 2019. And share some of your predictions and hopes for the industry in 2019 with us!
