The following blog post was written by Avanade alum Linh Nguyen.

Friday, Feb. 12, 2021 marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year. One of my favorite traditions with Tet, which is what we call Lunar New Year in Vietnam, is the lion dance. As a kid, I look forward to this celebration and the pageantry that goes with it. In fact, growing up in my small town, I often dreamt of one day being a lion dancer. For those that are unfamiliar with this tradition, the lion dance is performed to bring prosperity and good luck. Businesses and communities would use it as a way to create a festive environment and promote happiness for the upcoming year.

In the performance, there would a lion costume worn and control by two people, accompanied by the music of beating drums, clashing cymbals and resounding gongs. The two-person team would imitate a lion's various movements while choregraphed to be as one. Between the sounds and movements, its goal is to tell a story. Sometimes there would be two or three lion teams working together; the sight and sound of the dance is infectiously exciting.

Last year before the pandemic, we were fortunate enough to be able to hire a local team in Houston to perform the dance as part of our celebration of Lunar New Year. We will not have the opportunity this year but thinking of the lion dance got me reflecting.

In many ways, the lion dance demonstrates to me how important it is for all the roles to play together to execute that story. It certainly takes a high-performing team. This makes me think a lot of how our people in Avanade and the roles we all must play to deliver a story to our client. Whether it be their journey to the cloud or modern workplace transformation, similar to the choregraphed lion dance, each one of us plays a role. From sellers to solution architects to our talent communities of capabilities, we must play our part and bring the best of ourselves while working together to perform to bring change and outcomes we promised. 

Certainly, this has been a very different and sometimes challenging year. However, as I count down the days to the Lunar New Year in my mind, it does bring me back to those early days in Vietnam, I almost can hear the rhythmic beating of the drums, and sense the smell of sulfur from freshly popped firecrackers. I was then snapped back to reality by a 15-minute Teams meeting notification. Strangely, I have a sense of happiness and a smile on my face. As we often say to each other in Vietnam: Chuc Mung Nam Moi. Good health and prosperity to all!