2023 at Everest

Design… and much, much more

Well, let’s say it loud and clear: 2023 it’s been a hard year.

It’s been a year of a lot of stress and some really tough decisions. AND also a year of incredible amounts of generosity and solidarity. AND a year of launching great products to the market, and generating great impact, despite everything.

So not that bad, in the end.

Throughout this last year, I felt more than ever thankful for being surrounded by exceptional humans both in the professional and personal realms. To all of them: thanks so much.

I feel we all collectively harness a massive amount of growth from this year’s events: it’s that time of the year to make some reflections.

The Everest way

At Everest, we are passionate about delivering value to our clients. We understand consultancy differently and redefine our practices to maximise impact and value relentlessly. This year has been all about the Everest way:

• we partner with our clients and truly care about their business
• we deliver business value vs. functionalities/Figma files/slides
• we know how to collaborate (and that is VERY important because it minimises waste and maximises quality)
• we are a network of knowledge, so each of our team members can access the broad expertise within Everest as they need it

and… the cherry on top of the cake:

• we are nice humans that enjoy immensely what we do… and ALWAYS pick the fun way!

Design practice

The design practice has crystallised and matured over the last year aligning with the Everest way. As designers, we are experts in delivering impact and value. The design practice is a tool to achieve business goals — not a driver. And we thrive through empathy with the clients, the users and the teams.

This year, our design community has not grown in size, but in the depth of our understanding and alignment on what design means for us. 2023 has been a year to demonstrate our capabilities and the value we bring to the table. I’m extremely proud of our wonderful design community at Everest.

Everst impact

It’s been a busy year at Everest. Our teams have launched businesses to the market and created an impact across areas like equality and inclusion, education and health care, and creating tools that will change the way industries work. These are only some of the highlights of the year:

• Kids get money a platform to enable financial education for kids to break the poverty cycle.
• ADHDLink enabling doctors to do better and faster ADHD diagnosis
• SeenCulture leveraging AI to bring equality and inclusion in companies
• Storygenny generative AI enables teams to define and build their best products
• Bugbox making education in tech and robotics easy to encourage kids into the tech of the future
• Deeligence streamlining legal due diligence work
• Heatseeker changing the way we build business through experimentation

It’s incredible, and this is only within our startup crew. We also have transformed how some of our biggest clients work, helping big and scale-up companies move forward with our design and product magic. The effort and passion that the Everest team puts into this is incredible, and I feel super lucky to get to work with such talented humans.

Academy workshops

One of the most satisfying perks of working in Everest is the work I’m doing with the wonderful Dan Pager at Everest Academy. During this year, I’ve been lucky enough to design and facilitate several workshops in the startup and innovation space, enabling startups and mature companies to de-risk their ideas and innovate at the intersection of desirability, feasibility and viability.

We are working to evolve into a more mature workshop and training offering and are very excited about what is coming next year. Keep an eye on this space :)

Visit to India

One of my highlights of the year is finally being able to visit our office in India and meet in the flesh so many people I’ve been working with (and getting to know so much personally) over video calls during the last two years. It was magic.

I came back fascinated about how similar and at the same time different we are. There is something really special about the culture in the Bangalore office. I could write a whole post about it (have a draft somewhere).

Diversity makes us better, and I firmly believe that our people in India, the innovation that is happening on that side of the world and their different ways of thinking are a massive part of Everest’s successful recipe.

Design, Product and BA come together

Last, but not least: this year happened something very special at Everest.

For years, I have believed that Design and Product are not different things, but a continuous spectrum that needs to be connected to ensure the collaboration required to deliver amazing products and build great business. The area of overlapping is growing more and more as the disciplines mature, and the key to success in teams often is to be comfortable working on a grey area of responsibilities and shared goals.

Well, from this year onwards, that will be the reality of how we work at Everest: in a very strategic decision, we merged the areas of Design, BA and Product (and Project) management into one. All the non-engineering humans will come together and define a new way to understand the practice and collaboration. How cool it is?
(and of course, this doesn’t mean that we don’t collaborate with engineering, but that is another story…)

I’m excited beyond words for the opportunity to do things differently. We are all working together to define how we want this to work, both internally and with our clients. Can’t wait to see how this shapes in the next year!

Special thanks to:

• our Everest mighty leaders Ranganathan Balashanmugam and craig brown (for a masterclass of human-centred leadership, despite the rough times)
• ALL the wonderful humans in the frontline of design and product at Everest (because you’re just the best team one could work with and I am not able to express how proud I am)
• and the whole Everest leadership team (mention of honour to my brothers in metal & startups Rick Giner & Rav, and to the wonderful Irene, for brightening the universe with her light)