A Letter from the Founder

This company was born out of a process of change. Change at a larger scale that was needed desperately in my community. As I had been doing a significant amount of volunteer and pro-bono work in my community while working internationally for a larger firm that supported global fortune 100’s from my home on Oahu, I realized that I needed to bring my experience and skills home. I started with a vision for innovation but that quickly materialized into a vision for change. Our community was just starting to think about innovation, but change is what is needed first.

It always goes in that order: adaptability, change, transformation, innovation.

Social change happens along the same scale, but adaptability is actually scalability in that instance. Social change and organizational change became my passion and purpose quickly for my community is in need of both and eager for both as well. What I realized was that the way consultants worked alongside organizations was missing something. I know this story all too well for it is part of my previous work to provide a full spectrum of services to leading innovative companies in the high-tech sector. Prior to that I was leading at Microsoft and conceived of the vendor model that is still in practice today. How do you outsource and in what ways are most effective? How do you innovate within? How do you create climates of change, readiness, adaptability and innovation and do it through a mix of internal and external resources? That is tricky and needs continuous evolution in the beginning to get it right. I was quite passionate about this back in my Microsoft days. Anyone that has ever worked in the high-tech world understands this need for evolution at a continuous and fast pace. From my time at IBM to Amazon to Microsoft, the theme is innovation and continuous innovation at that. All the other things that are precursors are mandatory. Change is mandatory. It is the culture.

When change is your culture you start to understand change in a very deep and relevant way, meaning it becomes relevant to every single thing you do and how you do it. When you lead teams, you are responsible for not only the innovation that comes out of those teams but the ingenuity and the ability to adapt rapidly and change to the current needs of the future we are envisioning and then creating. We lead from the future one hundred percent of the time. There is no stagnation, no complacency, no cynicism. There is burn-out and resistance at times, but that is quickly dissolved and replaced with renewed inspiration, or you don’t stay. The expectations are high and the output is just as high, and by high I mean as high as it can go.

What is the point of this long-winded and windy story? That change is what I am most familiar with after a 20-year career in the high-tech world where change and innovation and solving complex problems at a global scale are commonplace. The larger point is change is what is needed when you want to be proactive about the world you operate in and especially if you want to create that world, or at least some of the place you will hold within it. If you cannot do this, you will remain reactive and anyone that is reactive and not able to adapt or handle change or transform or even pivot will not fare well in the future. It is true that you can operate longer, especially if you are in a place that is rather behind and quite happy with the status quo way of doing things. But sooner or later that catches up to you because we are living and working in a world that is a global economy and global community and global leadership is needed. Your company may not need to play at the global level, but you must think higher and more expansive and lead in higher and more expansive ways. That is the purpose of 84 and Sunny.

84 and Sunny was born as a branch off of a mainland firm that was deep in the trenches with the world’s most innovative companies, we were a local office for a big firm that ended up being not the right marriage. Hawaii is unique and complex and was not ready for that type of support. Hawaii needed to understand adaptability and change and systems complexities and learn how to connect to these things in more accurate and correct ways that would enable them to evolve enough to begin to really change the landscape, dip into innovation and begin to be change creators in more significant ways. We were in the infantile stages of change and innovation when I began to do more pro-bono work here and eventually realized I needed to devote my time entirely to my community. That community is small and unique and I was used to playing different. But my community is more ready than ever for change and systems change at that and I wanted to do more than provide services, I wanted to teach. The idea that outsourced services and consultants can do what you cannot is obvious, but to make it long-lasting and sustainable it needs to be done from within. Change always happens from within and thought partners and what not are helpful, but the change still needs to happen internally. Teaching became my focus. Through workshops I could begin to impart the knowledge necessary for this community in the way they needed it in order to build up their capacity for change and that is my greatest purpose now.

84 and Sunny is about change in its core. From the moment of its inception it has been a catalyst for change and that is only expanding and becoming more powerful. I hope if you are still reading this that we have the opportunity to work together soon.

Aloha,

Brandi Martin

CEO and Founder