So, we’ve just completed our financial year at Home and I’m delighted to say it was another great year for us!

We’ve grown as a business,

we’ve had people come,

we’ve had people go,

we’ve been in hospital,

we’ve come out again (thank God),

we’ve held meaningful work summits,

we’ve hosted design talks,

we’ve facilitated strategy sessions,

we’ve masterminded tailgate and #epicfail parties,

we’ve exceeded our targets,

we’ve invested,

we’ve cooked,

we’ve laughed,

we’ve cried,

we’ve developed as people,

we’ve won awards (lots of them),

we’ve slept rough and gone without for charity,

we’ve raised money,

we’ve helped people far less fortunate than ourselves,

we’ve travelled,

we’ve got things wrong,

we’ve learnt,

we’ve been inspired,

we’ve made things right,

we’ve made our clients happy,

we’ve grown – individually and collectively,

we’ve achieved things that if I’m honest, I never dreamt we would.

We’re feeling incredibly thankful for the success we’ve had and feel like it’s only right to give something back…

We usually send a pull-out-all-the-stops Christmas mailer around this time of year, but instead, we’ve decided to do something a little different. You won’t be seeing the likes of the Snowman-In-A-Tin Kit from ’92 (a design classic), the ‘Copier Capers’ game from 2016 (wasted far too many hours playing that!) or the 2018 cultural transformation of Santa’s workshop.

Instead, we’re donating the budget we usually set aside to Julian House – a charity we’ve donated to before, who focus on empowering socially excluded people. This way, we can hopefully make the festive season a little better for those who don’t have a happy home to go to this Christmas.

In this crazy world we live in I think it’s vitally important to stop what you’re doing, take some time out of the crazy day-to-day stuff, and reflect on what’s happened and what the future might hold…

Everything that has happened at Home this year has its own story and narrative that needs to be heard. It’s far too easy to just crack on and not really give any thought to what’s happened… “I’ve got a deadline to hit!”, “I’ve got to go into a meeting”… there’s always somewhere else we need to be, like, five minutes ago. We’re all busy people and people is exactly what we are, not robots. We have a basic need to understand what we’ve done well and not so well, we need to share the highs and discuss some of the lows, otherwise how are we ever going to improve?

At Home we’re transparent about everything we do as a business, we share the financials every month, we discuss the big clients wins, the client feedback, the what-next, the building developments, the good, the bad, the ugly and the crazy. We make a real effort to get together every week to discuss what’s happening, we then recap every month and have a big get together at least twice a year. We try and set ourselves realistic goals that we’re all aware of, and understand our individual role in achieving them.

Without these get-togethers and points of reference how the hell would we ever know what we’ve done from week to week, month to month, year to year? We might as well just be robots. We’re fortunate to do something we love, something that brings joy to us and our clients, we don’t always get it right (and that’s ok), so let’s enjoy what we do and celebrate it as it deserves to be celebrated.

As the super cool Ferris Bueller once said, ‘Life moves pretty fast… if you don’t stop and look around sometimes you might miss it!’

Last week marked our 37^th birthday (another big milestone), we’re as thrilled and excited about what we do, and how we do it, as the day we started. We can’t wait to see what 2019 has in store for us, watch this space!

To find out more about Julian House and the incredible work that they do, click here.