The journey, not the destination | The CEO's Blog | Nash Squared (2024)

January 13, 2023

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” is a quote famously attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson the American philosopher.

Enjoying the journey, ‘the getting there’, is every bit as important to me as arriving at the destination. There is joy and learning to be taken from every possible moment we live our lives, whether that is inside or outside of work.

You may wonder why I am sharing this today of all days? After all you have already heard quite a lot from me today already!

In the work context, I have been very focused on our strategy and whenever we have our town halls and video updates I take the opportunity to not only share the progress we are making but always anchor it back to where we are going and why we are going there (our strategy).

Today you heard from me that we have acquired the Knoldus business, which is a fantastic addition to the Nash Squared family and to NashTech in particular. You will hear more about this as the weeks ahead unfold so I won’t write more on that here other than to say that this carries us very much further on the road to delivering our strategy, which is exciting.

Instead I would like to write a little bit on the journey that brought us here. Of course there is a lot of work involved in finding, getting to know and acquiring a business, and it can only ever happen if there is a joint purpose and belief that we are better together and can achieve so much more when combined. It also takes time to get to know each other as people, really understand what our values are, understand how our ways of working and culture could work. Above everything it takes trust.

Hard work aside, the journey to where we have got today has been incredible. After all, some time ago we had never spoken, met or known very much about each other. I often marvel how 8 billion people go about their lives on our planet, all with our own hopes and dreams until one day we meet and only then do we marvel at how this could be, how could we have never known of each other.

Speaking for myself, I have to say this is what struck me when we first met this incredible business and learnt of how they started out, and what their purpose is. It was like meeting people you instantly felt you had known your whole life. Curiosity about what made us different and where we were similar was such an important part of discovering why this acquisition made sense to us all.

Today, as we stand on the same road together, we have so much to look forward to. We are, as always, focused on where we are heading and at the same time we are determined to enjoy every step we take together. A massive welcome to our new Knoldus colleagues. We look forward to getting to know each other better.

As we head towards the weekend I would also like to wish our colleagues in Vietnam Chúc Mừng Năm Mới, a very happy New year from us all in your Nash Squared family.

Bev

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