Introduction.

Over the course of the last five years or so, I’ve developed, refined and implemented a strategy for Social Media leadership. That’s allowed us to support and develop social collaboration for business for our clients through, the internet, social networking and cloud computing (all of which has developed beyond all recognition in that time). I’ve been conscious of needing to both focus on large networks and contact spheres but still build strong quality relationships with local business.

When Social Media first became ‘mainstream’ the Societal Web and was adopted by business people from all over the world. There was a strong desire to create high levels of visibility in a wide business audience. Often that desire was resolved through activity but without an underlying strategy to support it. Increasingly, we heard criticisms of social media from groups of local business people for whom it had created an interesting distraction without creating tangible results as its early implementation seemed to promise.

Now, I wouldn’t suggest that social media is applicable to all businesses, nor that you need a well thought through strategy in order to get results. However, for the right businesses that have a well thought out strategy the opportunities are immense. Despite that, the power and benefits of small, well-trusted group of businesses who meet and discuss all aspects of operating a local business cannot be underestimated. It’s existed for decades and, in my view, will continue to exist for as long as people are organising themselves for commercial purposes.

Now they are merging.

Increasingly, the development of groups in social networks mean we’re finding much smaller groups of people coming together with a common interest to discuss local business issues. On-line this happened in wide groups on Ecademy some time ago, more recently in Facebook and LinkedIn, (and now in the form of lists in Twitter). Off-line seemed to lose importance as the lure of the reach of the internet took hold. On-line is not the same thing though, as those groups may be disparate in terms of geography and where many members may be watching and engaging only on the periphery, if at all. In most groups I belong to the activity takes place between a relatively small number of active members with the occasional contribution from others.

Local business groups are increasingly developing a desire to interact face-to-face and increasingly I see small groups starting to develop around local events where the regular personal contact can enable trust and relationships to be built quickly and effectively. The best of these groups have a strong process and culture for their meetings and create a framework in which relationships can develop quickly.

Fifteen years ago, perhaps a bit more now, BNI developed its framework and has grown throughout the world on the principle of building groups of between 20 and 40 members meeting weekly over breakfast in order to help each other through the referrals that can be generated in the network that each member brings to the meeting.

Recently Ecademy launched BlackStar Boardrooms, with a framework for the meetings, but with an emphasis on regular local small groups of people coming together in a professional, confidential business environment to mutually support and develop the businesses in the room.

BNI in their turn are developing their website (strapline : Local Business – Global Network) and creating more opportunities for people to meet virtually outside their regular meetings, one could say that these are convergent paths drawn from both ends of the same scale.

The power of integrating social media and face-to-face offline networks; of having both a local close contact personal group of business friends supporting you and to whom you offer support, and the reach of a global social network, such as Ecademy and LinkedIn, is only just being realised.

Whilst for years we’ve heard of businesses becoming more global, of globalization, and all of the issues that come associated with that, it’s my belief that the globalization pendulum has turned and that local is now embedding itself into those things which have become truly global.

It is an interesting time.

William Buist

The Societal Web – Social Collaboration for Business

Social media in particular, and the Societal Web in general, are great places to reach out and create content for others to find and learn about us, our products and what problems they solve or resolve for our clients. Done well we create advocates and champions and a steady stream of referrals. All good.

Little things can make a massive difference though.

Some Background

When we blog we share aspects of our Knowledge, but in truth very little knowledge is unique to us (or can’t be researched and found from other sources). Knowledge gives us confidence to do what we do. When we demonstrate that we have it (with understanding) to others we give them confidence that we can do what we can do. When we demonstrate the knowledge we also free other people from the need to gain our level of deep understanding and enable them to relax.

We do that best when we also demonstrate Skill in the application of that knowledge. That shines through as a demonstration of finesse and timing in delivery.

Skill is one thing, Experience is another. Experience allows us to manage risk, to apply the Knowledge and Skill that we have in the right ways at the right time and to be robust enough to manage changes in conditions that make the previous knowledge imperfectly matched to the actual situation.

When we demonstrate Knowledge applied with Skill and Experience to situations we build Credibility in what we do.

Those four things create “KSEC” and I think demonstrating high “KSEC” is critical to building advocates and referrals (See ‘The Journey to Advocacy Part 1 > and Part 2 > and Building referrals on Ecademy >

Visibility – The final piece

It all means nothing though if you are invisible. Quite a few times in the last few weeks I’ve seen questions raised on the blogs pages and in private groups where someone who I suspect has great knowledge, skills and experience, has replied by saying something along the lines of ‘Give me a call’. The impact is that for all of the audience to the original question their KSEC has ZERO Reach, and they only educate the questioner, if indeed they do call.

The alternative is to provide, through a detailed comment, the knowledge sought, demonstrate KSEC and give it the reach of all of the audience, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. They all learn more about you and your knowledge, skills and experience and create a view about your credibility from that. When we teach others what we know and how well we can apply it, we teach them to bring business knocking on our door.

How well do you do it?

William Buist
Understanding effective use of Social Media and the Societal Web – Teleconference

Introduction

The development of the Societal Web has enabled individuals to become publishers, authors, musicians, radio stars, and commentators on anything and everything. Hierarchical structures have broken down and leadership is something which no longer comes as a result of position, at least not online.

Leadership Principles

By definition, a leader is somebody who goes to new places or existing places by new or difficult routes. In doing so, they attract others to follow their example and to aspire to achieve the same goals as they have achieved. Followers have to be able to see enough of the leader’s aims and goals and methods to believe that they are appropriate for them; they must remain in touch, and close. In the Societal Web visibility is universal, so the ability to be seen is equally available to each of us.

When we look to see who can bring each of us on, to a new level, we seek out those people who we believe provide additional knowledge and skills through their contributions online, but also whose knowledge is attainable, reachable, and comprehendible. If we are bamboozled by technical terms, lost in acronyms, or confused by detail that is beyond our current knowledge we will seek others and grow our understanding from them. For this reason, I describe leadership in the Societal Web in the context of being (no more than) half an hour ahead.

If a leader is seeking to build a strong following and is providing knowledge which requires detailed study and effort, then hours of work lie ahead to become an expert through that knowledge, people follow those who make those hours a pleasure rather than a chore. Malcolm Gladwell indicates over 10,000 hours is required for true expertise in his book ‘Outliers’, so we are talking about years of following, not reading a few articles. Throughout that time the leader needs to be just far enough ahead to be reachable, just far enough for you to strive to learn; half an hour at a time. If that effort is too great we simply move away.

So for each of us it is likely that the people we follow closely are close to us; their abilities and skills, or ability to communicate their knowledge and skills, is done at our level. If you seek to be a leader in the Societal Web this is a point that has to be borne in mind with care. We need to be attracting followers at every level through our knowledge and skills, not just those who are capable of being within half an hour of our own current pinnacle of our knowledge and skills.

Adaptability: a key skill for leaders.

When we produce content on the Societal Web, when we write a blog, when we distribute articles, PDFs, when we engage in conversation in groups and social networking sites, we create levels of engagement with others. Those near us who challenge us and bring us on, and those near us who we are challenging and bringing on, are clearly our closest cabal. But a great leader will be able to communicate his knowledge and skills so that to all of his followers he appears no more than half an hour ahead.

To do this you need adaptability, an ability to see when messages are being misinterpreted and misunderstood, an ability to engage in different mediums and different ways according to the needs of those whom you lead. Leadership has always been an honour, not something that can be bestowed by one person on behalf of others but which you earn through the followership of others, on the Societal Web that followership is much more visible and in many ways more tangible. For many, this is changing the nature of leadership, and their ability to communicate with, and build others.

Conclusion

As a democratizing force, the Societal Web has enabled us all to become both leaders and followers, to be seen by many as an expert whilst simultaneously learning from expertise elsewhere. As we bring people towards us as leaders through sharing our knowledge, skills and experience, so we too have a duty to them to maintain our lead, to keep as Stephen Covey would say, “sharpening the saw”. The best, the very best, don’t forget their roots, they maintain a presence wherever their leadershipk is needed and they provide a skill and an experience of leadership in this new world in ways which others are still struggling to find.

For social networking, the masters of an offline world that have made a transition online are demonstrating that ability to be adaptable and to change, Ivan Misner is one such, for those involved online, Louis Gray, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, and others have all created their own niches and followerships in that market and demonstrate effectively the skills of leadership by being half an hour ahead.

This is not a new type of leadership, nor does it require new skills, it’s a new framework in which to place your leadership when you consider those whom are following you and whom you seek to support. It needs strategy and thought to be consistent and make it work well, but I hope that these thoughts help you towards developing your own Leadership in the Societal Web.

I read this morning that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had said:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.

I think that highlights the direction they will travel in over the next few months.

Why is this? Well it’s stilting growth in revenues is my guess.

Most people on Facebook have few friends, 10’s not hundreds, very few have thousands. A tiny proportion have 10’s of thousands. For most that means they can’t spread information and recommendations quickly to a large audience. Many people I know guard their Facebook friends closely viewing them as a personal group, and one to keep those social ‘exposures’ limited too because they can be trusted, right?

Suddenly in December that changed, content locked inside your trusted group wasn’t so secure although you could go and make it secure again. Most people didn’t.

My sense is that things leak from Facebook anyway, so the golden rule is never put anything on line you don’t want others to find.

As they saying goes, what happens in Vegas, stays on YouTube.

Zuckerberg’s been clear, he’d have created a more open environment if he had a chance to do it again. He will take Facebook there anyway, and the advertisers will ove him for it. Reach is vital and in a network of millions reach is actually pretty small at the moment.

Open networks are now the norm, Open-ness is still a skill to be learned by many. Intersting times.

The Societal Web in 2010 – Our Predictions

The start of a new year is always a good time for making predictions, so here are ours in the context of developments in the Societal Web at least. Yesterday I reviewed how our predictions for 2009 had done here > but now it’s time to look forward again.

Prediction One: World economies will continue to struggle. Advertising revenues and traditional marketing techniques will continue to be under utilized as companies struggle to maintain their low costs base and seek alternative ways to interact with customers and prospects. We expect developments in business pages on social sites to drive new marketing models for the major players, and branding and brand recognition through social sites will become stronger.

It’s possible that some of the larger social networking sites may become sponsored by big brands or even purchased by them for the purposes of developing a marketing channel for a particular brand.

Prediction two: The use of authority in search engines will continue to develop, although at a slower pace than we predicted last year. The identification of real experts who can influence search at a fundamental level will take some time in terms of the algorithms to identify, follow and take account of the activity of those people. Individuals however will find new ways to source their information through social media followings of respected and trusted individuals, and software support for that will increase.

Prediction three: On a similar note, semantic recognition of content will continue to be developed as a means of pushing appropriate content to appropriate people at appropriate moments. It’s likely that as a result some traditional search routines embedded in websites will shift to a more open search model across many arenas and engines. Semantics will change search in unusual ways, driven by customer demand. As a result we wil lspend less time searching and more time finding the right things and that will change the advertising model for the giants like Google. That may not be very apparent in 2010 but developments in embedding advertising are likely to be clear in the next year.

Prediction four: Because world economies will continue to struggle (see prediction one), collaborative groups will develop that cross international boundaries for business in a way that has previously not been seen. Some new brands will emerge as a result of those collaborations, partly as joint ventures between existing brands, but also perhaps with one or two major new players for services.

Prediction five: Banking will continue to be in the spotlight for the wrong reasons as legislation around the world restricts the ability of financial services companies to act freely in open markets. It’s likely that the impact of that on small businesses will continue to be a restriction in funding which will mean alternative collaborative structures for the best ideas. The best entrepreneurial companies will change in 2010 as those businesses seek to manage their finances through a collective organisation as opposed to a centrally controlled one.

Prediction Six: Individual companies will engage more strongly in the Societal Web, driving customer service and sales & marketing in particular online to an extent not seen before. That will change the way consumers interact with the internet as well as the businesses themselves.  We may well see a shift towards further opening computing standards and payment methods to facilitate those changes, as an example through the continued consolidation of functions on devices, such as the iphone, and the use of alternative means of payment such as using your mobile provider to manage payment transactions (“Add to my phone bill”).

Prediction seven: Cloud computing will take strong hold in 2010 with many businesses interacting and operating virtually across many countries and time zones, enabling small business to compete with the large in a very effective and open manner. It’s likely that the flows of capital around the world will shift as a result with effects seen in the balance of payments of the most connected and advanced (technology) countries.

Prediction eight: Unemployment will continue to rise, putting pressure on governments as the double impact of centralized spending cuts to meet government deficits in America and Europe coincide with private contractions in staff numbers as cost saving continues to be the primary focus of most major corporates. This could become a ‘perfect storm’. The end result is that civil disobedience and disturbance may become more common, and terrorists around the world may seek to leverage that effect. In essence, we made this prediction too last year and thankfully it wasn’t realised, in some ways we hope that this impact will not be felt this year either although we have less optimism about unemployment than before.

Prediction nine: Climate change will remain high on the political agenda and will create some shifts in global demand and approach in relation to fossil fuel energy sources. Oil will continue to rise sharply price causing some inflationary effects in the west. We anticipate mean prices in the second half of 2010 could roughly double to be around $150 per barrel. Small businesses and collaborative virtual groups will become more cost effective as large central office based companies find the impact of inflation hits them relatively harder, provided they plan and wprk in ways where they are less affected by the impacts of that change.

Prediction ten: Opportunities to source appropriate skills and experience for businesses will be easier than ever in 2010, with large numbers of unemployed but skilled people the opportunity to engage on short-term contracts or individual project-based pieces of work on a portfolio basis will be stronger than ever. Businesses seeking to minimize their own costs will look for the skills that they require at the best possible price, competition will be fierce but opportunities will be immense. We anticipate that this business model, portfolio, project-based, individual working, is likely to become embedded as the norm for millions of individuals in the major economies in 2010, for some a traditional employed role on a salary will never be seen again.

As we said last year, these could be right or wrong, but in 12 months’ time we’ll know.

The Societal Web in 2009 – Follow Up

This time last year I laid out my predictions for how developments in the Societal Web would progress in 2009 – see here > so it’s time to take a look at how we did.

Predictions

First prediction: that world economies would shrink. We were spot on with this one, although it appears as though it was a racing certainty, at the time the ’smart money’ was expecting the total world economy to continue to show growth overall, it didn’t. Highlighting that web traffic and business models of social networks would change was also right.

The second prediction: that search companies would start using authority to direct future searches.

On this one we’ll give ourselves a partial success. More people are using and searching on Twitter than ever before and there’s definitely been a change in the underlying algorithms used by the search engines. The use of authority hasn’t been as rapidly taken up as we expected but we expect that trend to continue.

Third prediction: collaboration will become more important. On this we give ourselves a resounding tick, and again we think this trend will continue.

Our fourth prediction was that there would be fewer new social networks, again a partial success on this one. Perhaps the major significant new entrant is FourSquare. Aggregation has continued and evaluation of social networking sites has fallen as predicted.

Fifth prediction: about semantic recognition of content we feel has been missed.

Our sixth prediction: about the importance of wide and deep networks seems to have been realised and without doubt there are more opinion leaders in the social media sphere. Partial success.

Our seventh prediction: that social networks would develop a more serious focus. Again, partial success. We think some social networks have developed a more serious focus while others have moved in different directions.

Our eighth prediction: that governments would struggle to maintain traditional economies, maintaining interest rates at or close to zero and money supplies would grow as governments printed money in order to get things moving, absolutely spot on. We also suggested that one global organisation in each major market may fail before each market can recover, and again we think that’s holding true. But the third part of that prediction: that the UK would hold an election which would have an indecisive result has not been realised; it’s inevitability for 2010 that the election will take place. The result appears, at the moment at least, to be more indecisive than previously thought.

Our ninth prediction: social pressures arising from unemployment will put a strain on society as a whole and petty crime would increase has not been realised, thankfully. We also anticipated that the UK and US would pull away from foreign wars whereas in fact they’ve increased their involvement in both major areas of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, so on that front we missed.

Our final prediction was that societal opinions would become polarized in the early part of 2009, that new ways of working together would emerge as we begin to focus on helping people as individuals rather than relying on centrally controlled decision making. Sadly, I think on this too we missed. These things have not yet happened but we still believe that they will.

Overall, we’re pleased with our predictions and feel that we made a reasonably good stab at seeing what would happen in 2009. Our 2010 predictions will follow very shortly.

and the internet’s a drug……

Ecademy is my coffee – I have it relatively fat, strong, and unsweetened, latte with an extra shot please.

The last few days I was reminded again that none of us “use”in the same way. when we go to Café Nero, or Coffee #1, or Starbucks or … The array of choices is massive but the product is similar. But I drink my coffee in the shops that meet my needs best and let me do what I need to do the way that I want to.

Same on Social Networking sites like Ecademy.

I tend to view content through RSS in Google reader, It’s rocket fast, everything is quick and at one level superficial until something gets my attention. I read the headlines and a few lines and click through to the content if I want to comment. Sometimes I share them from Google reader to the people who follow me there, and sometimes I click through and engage with them at source directly. I may tweet too. The best public groups on the Social Media sites I use get sent to google reader too, where they have RSS feeds anyway.

BTW Google reader is colour blind – no stars there except starred content. It’s the content that matters.

Addictive thing Google reader, it makes things easy, then it integrates into your life, then you can’t live without it.

In the social media world we model the journey people make from becoming concious of the environment to making it cohesive in business terms thus:

I sense that annoyance on Social Media websites such as Ecademy often arises when people are in different parts of this journey. New members becoming concious of the environment may seek to sell, or overtly market their services whilst others are seeking conversation.

When you talk to people face to face, you don’t add a whole advertising piece after each speaking part. The conversation flows because one thought expressed leads to another and people converse through a mutual desire to understand and to be understood. So, if we don’t know if we are marketing, advertising, selling, conversing or something else we aren’t going to get a good understanding.

Advertising isn’t bad, but advertising in the wrong place and time is. We don’t call a dog food advert in a commercial break spam, but if David Tennant had suggested we all took up smoking small cigars in the recent production of Hamlet we might have felt cheated and annoyed. Most annoyance occurs because our expectations aren’t met or are met in the wrong way.

On-line then we need to be careful – are our words and links and signatures appropriate, it’s probably OK on an article to link to our websites and have a signature which advertises our other services, but not in the conversation that ensues.  I used to think otherwise, but the more I think about the 5 C’s model the more that I see the importance of thinking about how what you do would translate into the ‘real world’ – After all, what is the on-line world emulating? Marketing/Advertising, or conversation? On Ecademy’s marketplace we are clearly advertising and marketing, so we should, but on the blogs pages we are mostly seeking conversation, and cooperation. Sales and Marketing may crop up en passant, but in general we should act as we would when having a face to face conversation, dealing with uncertainty, correcting misunderstanding, exploring the topic and having tangential discussions. Big signatures, overt selling and marketing is just an interruption and just as annoying.

In general, our websites advertise and inform, our free standing blogs market us and our products, share knowledge and add to our credibility – they tend not to be that conversational, but our social networking is conversation, so let’s be chatty, be open, and gain the understanding of each other that helps us all grow. In addition each conversation can be left, rejoined, developed, or ignored, now or later, or interrupted with inappropriate stuff. It really is up to us how they progress.

If we strive not to interrupt 2010 may be the year we all have the best conversations of our lives.

Introduction

In ‘Social Conversation – Six Key Areas of Influence‘ I talked about the six areas which work to influence others through that content that we provide. These influences were originally discussed by Dr Robert Cialdini in his popular book on persuasion in marketing ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’. I’ve already discussed ‘Reciprocity in the Societal Web’, ‘Influencing others through scarcity on the Societal Web‘,  ‘Do you have to be liked to be social?‘, ‘Authority as a means of influence in the Societal Web‘, and ‘Social Consistency, an influencing minefield‘

Consensus

Consensus, or Social proof (sometimes known as peer pressure) arises when we change our behaviour based on the behaviour that we see elicited by others whom we respect and trust. On the Societal Web that influence is most usually expressed in the form of comments made on blog postings or similar content. One thing that has become apparent is that the first response on any blog often sets the tone for all of the responses that follow it.

Why would this be?

We all recognise that it is hard to introduce tone of voice into writing on the Societal Web. English, particular English written online, is often abbreviated or short-hand phrases used such as ‘IMHO’ meaning ‘in my humble opinion’. But often more obscure phrases are used in business related to a particular market, for example I might refer to the ‘FSA’ which for those who know me would probably interpret as the Financial Services Authority because of my financial services background, but many readers may not know me, may not even be in the UK, and so the FSA might be interpreted in a number of other ways. In the UK even for those working with government agencies it can create confusion as it also references the Food Services Agency, another branch of the UK Government.

So, articles and knowledge can easily be misinterpreted if context is not clear.

The first response on any blog posting or article usually provides a new version of the context the author intended. That new version being the context that the first responder read. Of course, what can then happen is that subsequent readers, reading both the original posting and the subsequent comment, draw conclusions about the context based on the interpretation of the first respondent. That’s particularly true if the subject is not a specialism of the reader.

That can create difficulties if a blog posting is written in a language which may be interpreted as aggressive but was intended to be informative, if the first blog poster reacts in the context of the aggressive posting.

Image via Wikipedia

Consensus also creates the risk of ‘group think’. When groups of individuals who like each other and have known and trusted each other for a long period of time interact online their views can become aligned in particular contexts, when those contexts are set by an individual writing about his specialist area, that ‘group think’ can create an interpretation of the posting before even any other comments are written. That too can create an issue.

In the United Kingdom on matters of internal national importance there is often a consensus expressed, the need for Welsh to be protected as a language for example, where Social Proof binds the nations and ensures they retain their identity and purpose even though there is a central overarching UK wide constitutional framework. In the USA and increasingly throughout Europe the importance of local consensus and (inter)national constitutions provides a framework for influence and operational design.

So what does that all mean?

When we read articles and blogs online from people that we do not know and we see a particular style of response we should bear in mind that that may be created as a result of social proofing rather than as an absolute response to the points made in the original article.

Sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves what the context really is rather than what the context appears to be, particularly if we’re basing our conclusions on the initial response, or responses to that initial response.

Many experiments have been conducted where individuals change their opinion based on the arguments created around them by their (apparent) peers. For example, in one experiment somebody with a green t-shirt walked across a stage and a group of people were asked what colour the t-shirt is. If the first 20 ’stooges’ say that the t-shirt is blue, the test subject in 85-90% of cases also responds ‘the t-shirt is blue’. Social proofing means their opinion is changed, yet when asked if they gave their answer freely of their own will they believe that they have.

Online, in the Societal Web, we need to be really certain of our own position if we are to remain truly independent of the views of others, in reality it’s unlikely that any of us ever actually succeed in doing that when we’re engaged on busy sites, such as Ecademy, reading the words of those people whom we know and don’t know, and people whom we trust and those we don’t trust.

Turning this around, it also means that we can influence discussions by setting context in our responses and in our writings. Those who follow and trust us may change their opinion based on ours and therefore we carry a personal responsibility to ensure that the context that we do set, inadvertently or otherwise, is a fair representation of our beliefs rather than being done in order to create a particular context for our own vested interest or agenda.

Today at the BlackStar Christmas Lunch I had the pleasure of talking to more than 40 committed enthusiastic BlackStars who heard me speak about the Seventh decade I am shortly to enter into. Many people told me I should share the thoughts with a wider audience so here is a precis of that speech:

Where has the time gone, it seems only yesterday that we were celebrating the millenium and we are, in a few days time to slip out of the ‘Noughties’ and start a new decade. It will be the seventh that I have seen.

1959

In 1959 at this time of year I was about 15 months old and being prepared for only my second Christmas, I probably didn’t know much about it, and I probably cried. I doubt I got the presents that I wanted.

1969

10 years later and I was now at the end of my first term of a new school. I’d learned to walk, to read, to write, and had the basics of the sciences and the arts, of language and of sport under my belt. The family was at it’s largest, Father. Mother, Two Sisters and my Grandmother, plus occasional Au Pairs. My Mother’s mother, my grandmother, was a feisty woman born in 1884 and a suffragist who had under her own steam travelled to see Queen Victoria’s funeral, not bad for a 17 year old woman in 1901. Her Husband I’d never really known, a Scottish Lawyer who bred a sense of fair play and justice that was strong in my parents too, and I think in me. I have come to know him through his blogs (yes no mistake in the language) and now own a few of those Journals which he wrote in the 1920’s about his travels with my grandmother, stories he kept up to date as the years flowed by with cuttings and news about the people he had met.

1979

A further 10 years on and I was now in my final year at University, St Andrews, about to graduate with a course including economics and psychology. A university I hadn’t expected to attend, but had indeed followed in the footsteps of my grandmother (Lady Literate of the Arts – 1901 – did I mention she was a big influence?) – and both my Mother and Father. I’d not spent years working out what to study, but enjoyed my time there.

1989

By 1989 I’d been working in the Insurance Industry for around nearly 10 years. I never intended to do that, I’d been a specialist reinsurer and now worked in London for a specialist insurer – a division of an American company. I had a great team around me and we were growing fast, it was a hectic and exciting time. A year earlier I had met my wife, we met and married in just a few months and still share our lives now, 21 years on. That’s been a relationship I could not and would not be without.

1999

Another 10 years slips by and I’m working as the head of Business Risk Management at a major UK bank, organising and preparing for the Y2K projects to finish. Whilst much was done and much seemed a bit of a ‘damp squib’ it was a great success too. That wasn’t (retail) Insurance now, just an Insurance company, the work was different and the team and people were great. At home my Daughter now nearly 5 was turning into a young girl for whom I had another focus and purpose. None of that could have really been predicted in 1989. Change remained the constant.

2009

So, now, another 10 years on, My daughter is an accomplished musician, playing piano, cello, guitar and singing, an academic too and winner of awards for that, she makes us very proud. Here, I now run my own business which is sought out for the skills those years of experience shaped by today’s context bring to its clients. I’d like to thank Thomas and Penny and Glenn for their faith in what I deliver for them, and the Members of Ecademy for their outstanding support and help and challenge. Yet again I see that none of what I now do would have made sense in the context of 10 years ago, yet everything I have done makes sense in the context of today.

And so to another decade…

My point here is that the chances are that whatever we are doing today, and whoever we are doing it with today, we won’t be doing that in 10 years and we won’t be doing it with the people who now share our working life, at least not all of them. We will grow and we will develop and change and our time here, on this earth, moves on and changes us and others. Robert Oppenheimer (he of Nuclear bomb fame) famously said, “The world changes as we walk in it” and each of us through what we do and how we behave and how we affect others, changes the world a little (or a lot) every day. We change people a little (or a lot) by the ways we interact with them. It is through the collective learning of the teams and people that were and are important to me in each (and through each) decade that makes me who I am today, and to all of them I say “thank you”.

But mostly, as I look forward to a new decade, to the next 10 years it is to us, each and everyone of us, that I know, together, can make this the best decade of them all, whether, like me you are entering your seventh, or like Ecademy, their third.

To all of us – I wish you a Happy Christmas and a fantastic New Year, together.