Laika’s New Year's resolutions—facing challenges as a united space crew
As one wild year, with many unexpected twists and turns, comes to an end, it's time for the Laika crew to look forward to the upcoming year. Despite all the craziness in the world right now, we are still striving to offer the best communications services to our clients. From a comms point of view, this year was quite challenging for us. The ongoing recession hit so many households and businesses hard—forcing many to slam on the brakes and take drastic cost-cutting measures. This has been noticeable in our daily dealings with clients and journalists. Times are tough.
New year… new goals
For the most of us, a new year means looking for New Year's resolution ideas and setting new goals. In theory, making resolutions is great—they're a way for us to look forward to the new year with optimism that is active, rather than passive. It's a proclamation of how we want the new year to be better and how we’re going to do it. However, in practice… we need to challenge ourselves to follow through, by making SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound). We need to consider setting goals where the professional and personal align.
As a crew on an important mission to communicate tomorrow, we also had to ask ourselves what we want and could achieve in 2023. We’re really proud that we achieved kununu’s 2022 top 10 employers for the number one agency in Berlin (#HumbleBrag), but we want to push ourselves further, achieve more than simply being good employers.
The Laika Space Dogs took the time to evaluate and venture a glimpse into the year ahead. Through our retrospectives—using our former client, Echometer’s platform—we have a great way to collect crew sentiment and feedback on specific questions, and implementing actions accordingly. Fitting to the Christmas theme and the end of the year, we asked ourselves:
"Candles on the Christmas tree: What illuminations did we have this year?”
“Presents under the Christmas tree: Which of your wishes have been granted to you (perhaps by a team member) this year?”
“The wish list next to the Christmas tree: Which wishes have unfortunately not been taken into account this year?”
We evaluated and discussed the different answers. Learning to play guitar, adding a standing desk to the office, working on more varied tasks, and having more meaningful experiences in the comms cosmos, were among the things on our wish lists.
From wish lists to reality
Taking the wish lists into consideration, as well as analyzing our strengths and opportunities, we determined some key goals for 2023, and drew a road map of how to reach them.
Among others, our goals include:
Positioning ourselves as authoritative experts and thought leaders in the world of communications and innovation (sharing useful insights from the comms cosmos, and increasing meaningful engagement with our social community, partners, media contacts, clients, and prospects, etc.).
Offering our clients, as well as potential clients, even more services that will help spread awareness to their respective meaningful missions—utilizing all the Laika crew’s interdisciplinary skill set and know how. We want to support our clients in telling their stories, in the best ways possible.
Yet, like we mentioned, it’s not enough for us to have a wish list, and just hope everything comes true. By defining our goals, developing corresponding strategies and determining specific and measurable tasks, we are setting ourselves up to successfully practice our New Year’s resolutions, and not merely keep them in the theoretical realm.
We are certain of one thing… despite the difficult times ahead, we are ready to face any challenges that are coming our way, and we will handle them with full force—as a united space crew.
Wishing all, fellow space travellers, a wonderful and safe flight into 2023. May all your resolutions—through concrete actions—come to fruition. Happy take off!