My prediction for our professional working world in 2018 is that increasingly we will be working differently, and more co-operatively, with our customers and clients.
 
This change is being driven by the digital world which is influencing our working lives as professional people more and more and providing new challenges for us and for our clients.
 
We can no longer work in silos providing our advice, be it financial or legal or commercial, from our professional bubbles of knowledge, ignorant or at least agnostic to the pressures and problems of or clients.
 
This new way of working is summed up by a word I first heard in this context just before the Christmas break - co-creation. This is a management initiative, or form of economic strategy, that brings different parties together (for instance, a company and a group of customers), in order to jointly produce a mutually valued outcome.
 
Another definition is “the joint creation of value by the company and the customer; allowing the customer to co-construct the service experience to suit their context.”
 
The concept articulates for me something I have become increasingly aware of over the last few years. As professionals, the things we have taken for granted and which are the sacred tools of our trade, like our knowledge or even in the context of robotics our skills, are available sometimes even on Google or in some more sophisticated artificial intelligence.
 
At the same time our customers are facing parallel challenges as business and processes move on line and robotics and AI disturb the supply chain model and churn up traditional business channels. See this article on why brands will need to collaborate to survive and also this McKinsey article on how leading companies involve outsiders in the creative process of developing products and services – which it observes is not always easy.
 
All of this is an opportunity to get closer to our clients and to work with them sharing knowledge and experience to solve their problems whilst still providing the high level of professional contribution which goes beyond mere knowledge and could be said to be the sum total of our experience applied to a new and novel situation.
 
I recognise that to some extent co-creation has to date been considered in supply or consumer co-operation but I think its principles will increasingly apply to professional work for clients if we want to continue to make a viable contribution. The subject was even the subject of a thesis in 2012 by Stig Rasmussen at the University of Oslo entitled Co-creation in professional service firms : Problem solving processes as an opportunity for enhanced value creation and creative and innovative project solutions.
 
For me however it is the digital revolution we are all a part of it which is going to change how we work as professionals and to demand some form of co-creation with our clients. This will mean more and more change in how we and our clients work together but as John F Kennedy sagely said in the last century: “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future”.
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​I have always been interested in the conjunction of media and computing, working for many years as a lawyer in private practice in TMT Departments. This summer I realised how far convergence has truly come – and all because of trees.
 
We have Sky satellite TV, mainly for sport and movies. However, in May it stopped working with an error message saying it was receiving no signal. I cut back one of the 5 large beech trees we have at the front of our house where the dish is directed. It still didn’t work so I called out an engineer who patiently explained that due to the satellite dish’s horizon or something I would have to cut back several of the trees substantially – which I could not really do in the growing season.
 
So for the summer and autumn until the leaves fell we watched a diet of Netflix and Amazon Prime – and all through the internet using variously laptops, an Amazon Firestick and a PlayStation 3 largely abandoned as a gaming device by our grown up children.
 
And here’s the thing – we didn’t really miss most of the traditional programming and got into a whole genre of new series such as The Queen and The Grand Tour which are not available on terrestrial or satellite television. It’s not going to stop either. According to this article next year Apple has budgeted to spend 1 billion dollars on original television series and films, Netflix will have spent more than 6 billion dollars on content in 2017 whilst Amazon has invested 4.5 billion dollars. Netflix is planning to spend nearly 16 billion dollars on content in the future – see this article.
 
These OTT services – audio, visual and other media content delivered direct to consumers over the Internet, bypassing broadcasters – have not only caught up with they are supplanting the traditional services.
 
Of course, not all entertainment, online, broadcast or otherwise, is wonderful. A long time ago Winston Churchill commented: “Television is cheap and vulgar entertainment” while Woody Allen once said: “Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
 
I think I prefer Walt Disney’s approach: “I never called my work an ‘art’. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.”
 
Still good and bad there is an awful lot of entertainment available these days – something to consider as we watch the Queen’s Speech at 3pm on Christmas day (this is only available on BBC One, ITV and Sky News), and probably a lot of other programmes available from multiple sources over the festive season.

I was thinking this week about networking and the art of both remembering people’s names and remembering to call them by their name when you greet them.

As reserved Anglo Saxons we tend, even if we have recalled the name of a vague acquaintance or contact, to mumble hallo or good evening or something similarly low key if we meet and greet them at an event. But it really matters. I like this quote I found: We feel more valued and respected when someone remembers our name. ... “A person's name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language,” writes Dale Carnegie (an American writer and lecturer) in his classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People. When you use someone's name, it shows you see that person as an individual.
 
Perhaps the most famous exponent of remembering and using names was the former president Bill Clinton who had an almost legendary ability to recall names even when he must have been meeting hundreds of people over a few days in the Oval Office at the White House. But this was no accident. Apparently as long ago as in his early twenties whilst a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University Bill Clinton was writing people’s names and information about them in a small black address book saying: "I'm going into politics and plan to run for governor of Arkansas, and I'm keeping track of everyone I meet,".
 
This article also suggests that Bill Clinton’s amazing ability in this field comes down to his ability to give everyone he meets his full undivided attention. How easy it is to let your mind wander as you chat to somebody, maybe to your phone beeping with a new text or WhatsApp messages or to the next person you plan to meet who you have just spotted over by the bar.
 
Here's another article that gives some interesting tips on remembering names including deliberately repeating the name of a person you have just met when saying goodbye.
 
I also like this relevant quote from Dale Carnegie, whose book I have just downloaded on Kindle, realising it is of those famous and influential works I seem to have missed: “Using a person’s name is crucial, especially when meeting those we don’t see very often. Respect and acceptance stem from simple acts such as remembering a person’s name and using it whenever appropriate.”

As I sit here at a chess table in front of a roaring fire looking out of the window of an old English country house over frosty lawns with wild geese wandering around and a wintry lake I am reminded that we should always aspire if not to greatness at least to doing better – we should seek inspiration in our daily lives.
 
I am on our once every six months weekend retreat to a Champneys health spa, which is a great time and place to take stock and recharge batteries and also put things in perspective.
 
It is so easy in the pressures of day to day professional life just to accept mediocrity or to think that everything is ordinary. Never to raise your eyes above the mundane and look to higher more inspiring standards.
 
The law for example is not just about getting the better of an opponent in contract negotiation of litigation. It is founded on greater things, setting the foundation for commercial and personal society. Henry VIII’s Chancellor Sir Thomas More in a conversation said: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
 
And medicine despite all our travails with the National Health Service in the UK is a noble profession that saves and enriches lives. Paracelsus the Swiss physician and alchemist who was one of the most influential medical scientists in early modern Europe said as long ago as the sixteenth century Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.
 
We should I suggest seek to inspire and to be inspired by things greater than the ordinary in our working lives. This Harvard Business School article explains “Why Inspiration Matters”:  In a culture obsessed with measuring talent and ability, we often overlook the important role of inspiration. Inspiration awakens us to new possibilities by allowing us to transcend our ordinary experiences and limitations.
 

I was at a large family event this weekend where we were privileged to be sitting on the top table which was great fun.
 
However, it struck me that everybody aspires to be at the “top table” not just at social events, but at conferences or more generally by analogy in the workplace. But what’s it like when you actually get there and achieve your life’s ambition to be a partner or a director or vice president with a hand in running the business? Is it what you expect and are you really prepared to be there?
 
The strange thing is that in business whilst it is a huge privilege it can be a bit of an anti-climax if the truth were told. Having spent years climbing the slippery tree you find yourself at the top and expect automatic enlightenment and revelation.
 
Instead in my experience you tend to find that the people at this senior level have pretty much the same challenges in life as those who are still lower down the pecking order, at inferior tables as it were - except that they have greater responsibility – to make a speech to fifty people, or make the business work by selling enough products or services to keep 400 people in a job.
 
And the amazing thing is that in many professional businesses very little training is provided to would be partners. One week you are a very skilled fee earner excelling at pleasing clients with your technical ability – the next you are a business leader expected to bring in business, manage people and still be a great lawyer or accountant or architect.
 
This Harvard Business Review article quite rightly suggests: If you want to become a leader, don’t wait for the fancy title or the corner office. You can begin to act, think, and communicate like a leader long before that promotion. Even if you’re still several levels down and someone else is calling all the shots, there are numerous ways to demonstrate your potential and carve your path to the role you want. It then suggests some great ways you can help prepare for senior office.
 
Being on the top table is an honour and a privilege – but it needs to be anticipated and worked at. Great speeches like the one I heard this weekend don’t come about by magic.
 
As Winston Churchill, who actually had to work very hard at speeches said: The price of greatness is responsibility.