It’s always all about people
In the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of travelling once again. Last week I was in Belgium and the Netherlands. I got to meet our fantastic colleagues, many for the first time because of Covid-restrictions in the past two years.
Getting to speak in person is just magical and uplifting. Microsoft Teams continues to serve us well, helps us connect and do our work efficiently, but when we together in the same place we really get to understand each other.
There is time for humour, for questions, to hear stories of what has been achieved over the years, and to really get to know each other on a personal level. There really is nothing to beat meeting in person. We really are blessed across our businesses with the very best people in our industries.
I heard first hand from two of our top 10 global clients just how much they value our work and how we can help them develop their businesses even more on the future. We have worked with these two clients for many years.
I met them in both cases with our Country Managing Directors Ronny Lommelen for Belgium and Occo Lijding in the Netherlands. It is great to see first-hand how strongly we build relationships with our clients and as a result how much they trust us and confide in us, not only continuing to work with us but to place more work with us too.
Our values shone through in these many conversations with colleagues and clients. Open, hungry, collaborative, human and entrepreneurial. The words themselves never needed to be mentioned – they came to like in our discussions. That is great culture in action.
I reminded myself this week too of the value of being human. I had unintentionally forgotten to brief my senior team on something amidst the busyness leading up to the Christmas break. Being human to me was for me taking the first opportunity to apologise for this in person and reconnect, get back on track.
We will all make mistakes, we are human after all. For me it’s about always being true to your values and respectful to each other.
I had two days in our lovely new London office this week too. It was full of life, people working solidly all around me and lots of laughter too. Our new hybrid way of working seems to be working well for us.
That mix of being in the office and working from home gives us the opportunity to reconnect in the office, collaborate together alongside the perhaps quieter home based time to plough through more solo based work. We are all learning together how to adapt to these new ways of working.
Next week we start our new year and many Kick-offs are scheduled to get us off to a good start. I look forward to seeing you at these and for the opportunities we will have in the coming year to catch up in person.
In the meantime I wish you a good weekend ahead. Keep safe and well.