At our annual kick-off meeting at Tivix, each year we present to the whole team a suggested theme for the year. In past years the themes have been things such as “Growth”, and “Optimization” .

We try to come up with something that can legitimately be a internal guidepost for us all year long. As a friend of mine who has run several large companies once told me, “the most important role of any leader is to get everyone rowing in the same direction, kinda sorta generally….”

This year the suggested theme I presented to the Tivix global team was Personal Innovation.

Partly this theme is designed to play nicely with our new company tagline, Innovation Engineering, and partly it reflects the fact that we are in a fast-changing business where each of us needs to be constantly innovating ourselves in order to keep our skills and mindset up-to-date.

Tivix has always provided a generous education allowance for each employee to spend on classes, books, conferences, etc. This year we’ve renamed that education allowance as the Personal Innovation Fund, to reflect our company theme for the year. Each Tivix team member now has their own fund from which to invest in themselves.

So that’s our internal theme at Tivix for 2017: Personal Innovation, baby!

“It’s never a waste of time or money to invest in yourself. True wealth begins inwards and emits outward into everything else, including the people you surround yourself with”. -will.i.am