Reasons to look forward to 2012
As an antidote to the doom and gloom all around us at the moment, particularly in terms of the economic outlook for the coming year, I spent ten minutes this morning thinking of reasons why we might be looking forward to 2012. I surprised myself:
We’ve won, over the past few months, some really interesting work for the next year or two. We’re going to be working with old clients again and new ones, in countries we’ve worked in before and in places we’ve never been. We’re in the middle of pitching for other projects that are, in various ways, utterly fascinating. We’d love to do them all, but would be happy if just one of them came our way.
The world is changing. We have to change too. We’re looking at everything to see how we can be better, how we can be more adaptive to the changing world. We’re trying to be more proactive in our approach – this has led to some potentially great strategic relationships with key partners, and in key regions of the world. There are new opportunities out there – we need to do all we can do to ensure that we are open to those. We’re looking forward to that challenge a lot.
Just as the world is changing and, as a company, we need to change too, so each of us is developing individually. One of the real joys of my job is seeing how everyone here strives to improve each time there is the chance to do so – I’ve never heard anyone say, of anything, that we’ve ‘cracked it’ and that we don’t need to try to make the next project/report/proposal better than the last. And, time and time again, they somehow manage to achieve just that.
Our work continues to gain recognition. We don’t set out to design courses to make ‘Top’ lists – our goal is to listen to clients, to understand what they want and then to deliver it. Flawlessly. But, it always helps when others do recognise what we’re doing – this year’s Top 100 Courses in Europe featured five of our projects, which we’re hugely proud of. It ranks us, along with Cabell Robinson, as the most recognised design group in Europe.
The market is tough, and it doesn’t look like it will be any less tough for the coming months, but we’re determined, we’re working hard and we’re very optimistic.
We wish you all a very happy Christmas and a healthy, successful year ahead.