Most companies write their goals on a whiteboard that gets erased by February. We're publishing ours instead: dated, numbered, and public, so a year from now anyone can check our work. Here's what we're building toward in 2023, and why writing it down in the Journal, on the record, is the whole point.
Why we’re doing this in public
Every company sets goals. Almost none of them publish them somewhere a stranger can find in eleven months and ask what happened. We’re doing that on purpose, starting with this post, because a goal nobody can check isn’t a goal. It’s a New Year’s Eve mood with better formatting.
This is also, quietly, one of the goals in question. The Journal itself launches with this entry. If "specific, not vague" is a principle we actually hold to, the first real test is whether we can hold ourselves to numbers instead of adjectives. So instead of a "big plans for 2023" post full of soft verbs, here’s the actual list, with actual thresholds, that we’re willing to be measured against.
The research backs the instinct. Gail Matthews, a psychologist at Dominican University of California, studied what actually moves people from intention to action and found that people who wrote their goals down accomplished significantly more than people who kept the same goals in their heads (Matthews). Writing a goal down is a small act of accountability. Publishing it under our own name, on our own site, is a bigger one. That’s the bet this post makes.
What we’re committing to in 2023
01. Grow the collective past the founding circle, without leaving Long Beach. We started this haus with a small founding group and a Long Beach address. This year we’re adding to the roster, specifically in web development, motion, and account strategy, while keeping headquarters exactly where it’s always been. Growth for us doesn’t mean opening a second office. It means proving a nationwide, remote-first team can grow without the home base losing its center of gravity.
02. Publish the Code of 24 as a real, public document. Right now, the Code of 24 lives mostly in how we work, not in a place a stranger can read it. That changes in 2023. Twelve principles, twelve disciplines, published on hausxxiv.com where a prospective client or a prospective hire can read it before they ever talk to us. If it’s actually our operating system, it should hold up to daylight.
03. Land three nonprofit partnerships, built at agency rates and agency craft. We’ve said community is non-negotiable. Here’s the number behind that sentence: three nonprofit partnerships by the end of 2023, built with the same discipline and creative rigor we bring to any paying enterprise engagement, not a stripped-down version of the work handed off as a favor.
04. Keep the Journal running past launch-week enthusiasm. Plenty of companies launch a blog in January and let it go quiet by March. We’re committing to a real publishing cadence through the year, not a flurry of posts followed by silence. This piece is post one. Track how many follow it.
05. Take on at least one client engagement outside California. We call ourselves a nationwide haus. In 2023, that claim gets tested with at least one client relationship built and run entirely outside California, proving "building everywhere" is a fact on the roster, not a slogan on the site.
“One of the most sacred tenets of management is the need for clear accountability. The assumption, of course, is that people will perform more effectively if they know exactly what they are supposed to accomplish.”
Ron Ashkenas, Partner Emeritus, Schaffer Consulting, writing in Harvard Business Review
Why we’re not hedging these
Notice what isn’t on this list. No "explore." No "continue to prioritize." No "remain committed to excellence." Those phrases show up in almost every year-in-review because nobody can be held to them. You can’t walk into a room in December and ask, "did you explore hard enough?" You can ask whether the Code of 24 is published. You can ask whether three nonprofits got real agency work instead of leftovers. You can count.
That’s the discipline behind this post. Conviction over convenience means the convenient version of this article was a mood board and five inspirational words about the year ahead. We wrote the harder version instead, the one with a comparison point built in on purpose.
“We publish goals in writing because a promise nobody can check isn’t a promise. It’s a vibe. We’d rather be wrong in public than vague in private.”
David Keyes, Founder & CEO, HAUS XXIV
What happens if we miss
We will probably miss at least one of these. That’s fine. What’s not fine is pretending we didn’t say it. We’re marking this post January 26, 2023, on purpose, so that when we write the year-end recap, we’re grading ourselves against this list and not a softer memory of it. Boring is a betrayal of the craft, and so is a goal with no edges to check.
Come back to this one. We will.
