The Brilliant Ink team recently gathered for our annual team offsite to set our goals and priorities for the year. I always love these opportunities to step away from our day-to-day work, and this year’s session was particularly meaningful for me, as 2016 will mark my first full year as CEO. While we spent much of our session discussing ways to streamline and improve some of our work processes, the most important takeaway for me was not so much what we do or how we do it - it was recommitting to WHY we do what we do. Someone recently told me about Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk (and book on the same topic) where he introduced the concept of the “Golden Circle” – a series of three concentric circles with “Why” in the center circle, “How” in the next circle, and “What” in the outer circle. Simon explained that the world’s greatest companies are not so much focused on what they produce or provide, or how they deliver it, but why they do what they do. Companies that achieve greatness always keep their why as their core focus. Watching the talk really resonated with me, because I truly believe that’s what makes Brilliant Ink different. What motivates our team every day is our belief that all employees (including our own!) deserve to have a great experience at work – to do meaningful work, to feel fulfilled, to be challenged and have opportunities to grow. That is our WHY, and as we set our goals and priorities for the year, we always kept that WHY in mind. That question – “Why do we do what we do?” – is a sort of litmus test for us. Every goal we set and project we establish to achieve those goals must tie back to our “Why.” I believe that if we keep that at our core, we will achieve and exceed our goals for 2016, and beyond!