The first of July was always an important day at our house. We made a big thing of New Year’s Eve of course, always had a party, lots of people singing, laughing, crying, resoluting, but six months later was in some ways a more significant marker: You looked at what you’d done (and hadn’t) and then acknowledged there was still as long to go all over again.
Somehow the second go round felt like a free pass, a chance to atone or get things done. Not guilt, just an assessment of where you were and, now, come on then, another fresh start.
It’s a habit that’s stayed with me. Somewhere on the plane from Austin to Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago I began thinking of all that’s already happened in the first six months of 2017; personally, professionally, politically. Not in celebration (or otherwise) but purely analytically. What has happened? What has been done? What is still on the table with this second clean slate of the year in front of us?
In the broader picture, a lot has happened at LPC. More research, more strategy meetings, more presentations, videos and consulting. With some clients we’ve been the cheerleaders, with others the coach. We’ve helped companies be sold and others get bought. There’s been a lot of digital (a big study across all of Europe for FINAT) and a lot of conventional too, people wanting to position better, develop quicker, understand more clearly and, in the end, sell more consistently.
We’re a small firm, by intention. We’re not interested in growing our headcount for the sake of it or getting interns to sit at desks and churn out or rehash material. This has been the right choice for us professionally, but it brings with it some limitations. Finite bandwidth. An inability to be on two planes at once (although that has been severely tested this year a time or two). But sometimes growth is best managed by ensuring you continue to do well exactly what you do well. Don’t lose focus.
Looking forward to this next new half of the year, we’re very interested to see if some of things the market told us come true (what about that 35% of European converters who said they planned to buy their first or next digital press in the next 12 months, many by Labelexpo in Brussels and the year’s end? What about the percentage of U.S. converters increasingly entering the flexible packaging space, a few of them even going so far as to purchase a central impression flexible packaging press?).
For now, and writing this beside an olive grove in southern Spain, following on from speaking at a successful European Label Forum in Berlin, I have the energy and itch to get back to the home office in Austin and, as ever, pick up the phone rather than waiting for it to ring. Still ten days or so before the new second half starts, but just like Christmas at that other end of the year; who wants to wait when it comes to helping unwrap the future?
All the best,