To stay on track or not?
For the last many years I’ve been working as a consultant through agencies, and early 2014 I started Collibre, a consulting company focusing on digital collaboration and Enterprise Social Networks.
For over a decade I believe have grown an important network of intranet, collaboration and communcation specialists inside companies and I worked with a number of companies to accelerate collaboration digitally.
As a Microsoft Enterprise Social partner Collibre is focusing on collaboration using Yammer and Office365 as tools in combination with new ways of leading and changing organisations — and feel I have become a trusted advisor with some happy clients over the years!
So in early 2014 I felt I was on track, the rails where laid out, the customers even started calling me and also my network of a trusted partners — like Mads Richard Møller, Intrateam and IT vendors as PeopleNet and Klingenberg Data was growing with great synergies ahead.
But I kept running into a headache about the business model on traditional consulting, An hour is an hour and it has a price, and I also kept trying to find a way to get rid of the ”get-your-cut” of a partners fee for a referral. Hiring employees which only revenue stream is the hours they can deliver was not what I wanted either. I didn’t want to start just another Microsoft Partner consulting agency.
And overall I started to feel fatigue being the product myself …. which is a regret I have heard from others in the consultant business during the years.
Am I ready to head in a new direction?
Then the question starts popping up “What else can I do?” “What can I create” “Am I ready to change track?” “What is the risk?”
Now — somehow out of the blue — an opportunity to change track and head in a new direction has come. So do I have the courage to do it? Am I ready to start a new journey?
My biggest concern is slipping away from my existing network, the circle of people I frequently run into on conferences like the IntraTeam Event and others similar. The people I have been seeing for over a decade and whose career paths I got to know and for some has been a part of… will it vanish if I shift my focus?
The new rails are laid out
I am going for it! And I am now a part of a four person start-up focusing on Online Privacy Services — I’m leading relations right now, and my finest task is to be ready to gain some traction later this year for our online services. — If you are interested you can read more about the project and about creating findx.com a Private and Independent Search Engine at www.privacore.com
A lot of new stuff for me — and I am as excited as I can be!
The opportunity to build a responsive organisation from scratch
It has also shown a new opportunity in the role I have been given - the possibility to create a responsive organisation. I have been running the ResponsiveOrg CPH meet up group since late 2014 to get inspiration and share experiences, and lately I have been looking into how Holacracy is a way of operating a business — I am not really sure if it fits a start up of four, but I definitely has the chance to to see if it will.
Follow the journey if you like
I hope the journey will take me exiting places, there will be both down- and uphill trips, but building a product with a purpose I feel strongly about is such an opportunity.
I am here, reach out if you come by and if you want to follow the journey you are more than welcome, I’ll keep an eye out for you as well - even that we will not run into each other in the places we used to do.
Discalimer: #F*ckitjustshipit - the grammar ignorant.