Five Impossible Years
Publicado em , por Pedro Couto e Santos
It was in a rainy November night, five years ago, that I stumbled into the street at 4 a.m., dragging my suitcase behind me to start my new job. I had just joined Impossible (at the time, called Kwamecorp), and my first two weeks were to be spent travelling for a project.
It would be the first of 25 trips, a total of 75 flights to and from München, Zürich, Amsterdam, Barcelona, New York, San Francisco, London, Basel, Ponta Delgada, Tokyo, Manchester, Leeds, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Many to San Francisco, and many to Münich, to then drive to the cosy little town of Penzberg, where our biggest client, Roche, has a huge compound.
Today, 33 weeks since the covid-19 pandemic hit us seriously enough to send us packing to work from home, travel seems like a dream. Something that was the staple of our work around the world, has become more and more a remote affair, done through screens, with no need for the humming of A380 engines, or the struggles of navigating the ourskirts of a new city, looking for the local hospital, or lab.
Impossible, however, has barely suffered. In fact, 2020 has been a great year for us, so far. We’re growing our team, and our bottom line, while continuing to push ourselves every day to be a people company.
That is the main reason why working here has been such an enriching experience in my life, professional and otherwise. I felt, going into the company at 42 years old, having had my own company, and 12 years at a large corporation (albeit within a group of rebel scum), that I was pretty experienced in most things work-related. I was happy to discover so many more things that I could learn and appreciate.
In duos with other designers, I helped create new products for very big companies, to the point of having earned a patent, something I never even thought about. I have helped people grow and face different challenges, keeping an eye on every opportunity to put the person ahead of the work, as I believe that it’s people that make things, not companies. It’s people who generate value, have ideas and make money, not companies. Companies are just shells for people to come together and make great things.
Today, I am design director in Lisbon, or, as I prefer, Chief Banana Peeler. I work every day with teams of great, committed people, all of them expressive, emotional, intelligent beings, looking for ways of bettering themselves, and the world around them.
We are all ordinary people. I just believe that, when given the right environment, ordinary people are capable of quite extraordinary things.
And with that, I leave you to one of the highest moments of my career at Impossible. Cheers!
