A Moment of Reflection on 21 Great People
December 29, 2020 | by Dave Hills, CEO at Advanced Contextual
2020 has been a year of constant and unrelenting tests of our varied infrastructure as a society, as well as our ability to see a positive path going forward into 2021 as individuals. Unfortunately, we know there’s no switch that gets flipped at midnight on December 31st. Our world, literally and figuratively, will have the same urgent problems on January 1st, 2021, as they do on the last day of 2020. Therefore, we don’t get a break and we’re expected to keep going.
So what changes in 2021? We certainly hope COVID-19 is managed via vaccines and personal behavior. We also hope managing COVID effectively will allow millions of people to return to their jobs and their productive lives. Finally, we hope to see life return to normal while we leverage what we learned in 2020, so that the new normal includes vigilance against disease that is too easily spread, like COVID or other diseases, in the future.
What I observed in 2020 in our company gives me great confidence in what to expect from us in 2021, and the benefits we'll pass along to our customers and partners, too. We’re a small company, as you all know, and being a small company at the outset of COVID earlier this year was not something to aspire to. We saw the life and death nature of where we were as a company in March. A lesser group of people would have been overcome with the gravity of the situation professionally and personally.
But not my team. We realized we had something of value which we’ve spoken about all year and you’ll see more from us early next year and throughout all of 2021. I think more importantly we realized how dependent we were on each other and how much we had to pull together to protect and grow our company, which we did.
What I’ve learned over the decades of my career is how much one individual can do in any situation if they put their mind to it. When you’re able to put together a team of those single minded people in one company, the impact is really incredible. With Advanced Contextual I caught a huge break with the team, investors and advisors we have. To a person they performed and I was glad to be in this foxhole with them.
As noisy as things got throughout the year this team stayed focused, driven and effective. They also stayed “human” never ignoring what was going on around them, even while they created innovation upon innovation in our platform. It was a study and lesson in discipline and we’re ready for 2021 as a company and as people.
You’ll hear from us a fair bit in 2021 and we think you’ll like what we’ve developed and are deploying through our great partner network. As you hear about what we’ve accomplished you’ll also learn more about the people who I’m speaking about. Before we set out on our next journey I wanted to take a moment to thank Ali, Liz, Tanya, Bonnie, Carolynn, Kelsey, Andy, Mike, Michael, Pete, Paul, Bob, Ken, Huck, Ezra, Warren, Seth, Derrick, Jonathan, Jon and Tiffany. Pros and humans to a person and I’m proud to be associated with them.
Thank you again to our customers, partners, team, advisors, and investors. We look forward to a successful and healthy 2021!
