30 Dec 2009, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in New Work Ways,Thought & Theory, 0 Comments

Year in Pop – 2009 Themes and Goal Setting

I first heard of the concept of #themewords from Chris Messina. (I was reminded of it by Tara Hunt’s 2010 themeword post.) It encapsulates everything you hope to accomplish for the coming year in a single word. Just as the 140 character limit on Twitter forces one to strip away fluff in order to express concentrated thought, a themeword is a great tool for simplifying overly verbose plans into a simple mnemonic.

In 2008 my themeword was “transcend“. In the year and a half since I had started doing Vox Pop full time things had been ok. However, my family and I were still living contract to contract, constantly stressed about how badly my feast-or-famine income aligned with routine bills. My wish at the beginning of 2008 was to elevate Vox Pop’s business, or transcend this worry, to a greater stability. This was accomplished through negotiating more favorable terms, establishing retainer amounts, and reducing low-margin/high headache business. While each of those items was a lengthy and complex process the idea of transcending to a better professional place always remained the deciding factor.

In 2009 my themeword was “express“. With the constant struggle for stable revenue now successfully managed I started looking at the business environment beyond my immediate concerns. As terms like “economic collapse” and “worst recession since the great depression” started being used with more gravitas I cast about for ever more exotic models. Despite the doldrums why was I still finding people that had become more successful than ever? Why were these large, monolithic systems we’ve come to depend on failing while others thrive? Can Vox Pop’s actions express the same resiliency and success as I’m seeing elsewhere?

On one hand I feel like I was true to my 2009 themeword. I have yet to tally the exact numbers but, by all measures, this past year will be the best yet by a very healthy percentage. I was able to grow Vox Pop horizontally – not across industries but across people, helping to offset the economic hardship they felt from their more traditional employers. Vox Pop was a sponsor of two Ingite, SLC events. In August I helped establish the ElectroRegeneration Society, a non-profit that has a tremendous potential to some very cool things (despite us not using my logo ). There’s also pending items that I don’t want to jinx by talking about them quite yet. Regardless, I feel that Vox Pop has been able to express, through actions, my evolving sense of what constitutes a successful business.

On the other hand, I’ve done a very poor job at the most obvious implementation of “express”, which would be to blog these things here. It’s only in the last month that I’ve started seeking council for refinement and counter-point. If I would have been diligent in sharing my findings I could have started the feedback process much sooner. Instead, I went and watched Castle (Nathan Fillion is so dreamy).

For 2010 I’ve been wrestling with a few different words. For example, propagate comes to mind – I’d like to better communicate what has been working and see the same success replicated by others. Another word would be grow. I hesitate to use that, however, since my perception of growth is not necessarily the black-bottom line that most would assume. The same goes for enrich. They’re good. They just don’t encompass everything I want in the next year.

The word that is best for that is commune. Commune (verb) is defined as:

“to be in a state of intimate, heightened sensitivity and receptivity, as with one’s surroundings”

It also has the duplicitous ability of being a noun meaning “a relatively small, often rural community whose members share common interests, work, and income and often own property collectively”. It also has a humbling aspect as the variation communion is the act for receiving the Eucharist. It is perfect.

Now begins the difficult part of goal setting to achieve commune. Penelope Trunk has a fantastic post on basic goal do’s-and-don’ts. The accounting books need some tender loving (and tedious) attention. There’s also a host of geeky things I need to get done before Jan 1. But, by having a themeword in place, I can start aligning activities to best support it.

How about you? Do you have a themeword? Made a new year’s resolution? What is it? What actions are you taking to ensure that you achieve it?