Anchor points
An analogy I often use is the importance of having anchor points. They’re the things we keep hold of, but allowing for what else needs to change.
The anchor points in our lives
In 2024, my wife Rebecca and I celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary. A lot has changed in that time, including our home. We’ve moved a number of times as we’ve grown as a family, and most of the furniture and decor has changed over the years. As it exceeded its lifespan, we gradually replaced most of the IKEA furniture bought with wedding vouchers for our first flat, slowly building a home full of new and changing things for our growing family.
Immediately after our wedding we went on our honeymoon to Italy, and while there, we bought a small oil painting from a street artist. It’s a street picture of a scene in Naples which we both really liked. It cost us a few hundred euros, which I remember was quite a lot of our spending money.
This painting is now one of the few objects that’s been a constant in our lives for the past twenty years. Since returning home from Italy and framing it, the painting has been hung on every one of our living room walls. It’s been carefully packaged up and has moved house with us multiple times, witnessing all the changes in our home over the years.
The way I think about this painting is that it’s a part of us. It’s always been a fixed anchor point in our lives, something that always tells us “this is home.”
The anchor points in our work
To build on this story, we also need anchor points in our work.
How we use fixed points in our work determines how we make progress. Design principles are anchor points, and a vision or mission also acts as an anchor point for teams and organisations. Combining elements of these, shared values are probably the most important anchor points we can use.
Anchor points mean recognising that, while everything can change, what we stay fixed to is also important. This is especially true for teams and organisations going through change. It’s about the history and the stories we keep, not losing sight of who we are – the things that move with us and how they give us the stability we need – the same reminders that “this is home.”
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.