Janus: the two-faced Roman god of endings, gates, transitions and beginnings. It’s from his name that the modern English world derives the name of the first month of our year: January.
As we end 2023 and begin 2024, Janus has been on our mind. We’re now beginning year 3 of the grand adventure that is Interactive Workshops New York (IW NY), and we want to invoke Janus as we reflect on where we’ve been and all those who have made this journey possible. We also want to look ahead to where we’re going and the exciting things we have in store for 2024 and beyond.
Endings
2023 ends our second year operating an office in the New York Area. This past year saw us say goodbye to some valued team members who took great opportunities elsewhere. We finished up the first year of a massive leadership program that is designed to stretch over three years and beyond that saw us delivering in New York, Toronto, Nashville and Los Angeles. With another client in Brooklyn we closed the books on year four of an ever-expanding partnership. We also ended the year with our first ever client appreciation dinner where we gathered to simply celebrate. In very un-IW fashion we had no agenda, no program, no script, no plan. We simply gathered to enjoy each other’s company, eat great food, and celebrate some great work done together (ok…maybe that does sound a lot like us).
Gates
2023 saw new doors opened to us. We welcomed new clients in the finance industry, in the home renovation industry, and in the insurance industry. We also entered new doors at existing clients as we expanded our partnerships to other teams and divisions. Maybe even more excitingly, we had new people enter our doors. Our team is growing here in the New York area. We have new team members on board and a host of amazing partners who have helped us deliver exceptional work for our clients. We’re so grateful for the doors that have been opened to us, and those who have put their trust in us by entering our doors.
Transitions
Our whole purpose is to help our clients seize their moment to grow. This means helping them change, improve, and do something different. It also means we need to constantly be changing and improving as well. 2023 saw us work on projects beyond traditional learning and development. In addition to the great work we’ve done in leadership development and sales enablement, we were also heavily involved in change management projects, internal communications initiatives, org design work, and even some strategy consulting. Partnering with the amazing Studio in London, we also worked on multiple animation and video projects for our clients.
Beginnings
As we now look ahead to 2024, we couldn’t be more excited. In January alone we kick off three different leadership development series that will run the entire length of 2024. In February we are starting a new months-long sales enablement program and running the pilot of a leadership workshop. We are also in talks to shoot a video project for an existing client, running sales enablement programs for two new clients, and engaging with two other clients on creating custom leadership development programs.
We are eternally grateful to those who, in any way, have made the IW NY adventure possible. We are so fortunate to work with and for some incredibly intelligent and creative professionals. If you’re interested in being part of our “beginnings” in 2024 in any way, please reach out, we’d love to chat.