Going back to my CinqC roots
Back in late 2016 when I left my job as IT & Innovation Director at New York Times International I set myself 3 goals:
- To create my own company
- To continue doing Pro Bono work to support APOPO HeroRATS
- To continue my solo budget backpacking travels and adventures
Over the course of the following months this is exactly what I did. I created CinqC.co in November 2016 and have since established my company internationally with clients, including Google, La Poste and startup accelerators, from across Europe and beyond.
Having supported APOPO HeroRATS since 2014 I joined their US Board in 2016 and in late 2018 was humbled to be asked to become the Chair of the US Board — a position I love and from which I continue to learn as we grow and evolve the organisation. And CinqC has brought me plenty of travel opportunities. I’ve often been able to tag side trips and adventures on to business travel and I’ve found myself working remotely and in-transit even more than when I was with the NYTimes!
Come mid-2019 and having accomplished these three ambitions I started to ask myself, what would I like to do next?
So, after a few months bouncing around an idea with a group of 4 guys, I decided to engage with them and together we co-founded a startup. I was drawn to both the idea and the ability to do more as part of a team; creating a new company in itself was going to be another journey and adventure. Knowing I couldn’t continue to run CinqC at it’s usual 100% capacity, support APOPO and commit to this new project I decided to reduce CinqC’s activity to focus my time on the startup.
Now as we know journeys don’t always take you where you might expect — that’s part of what I love about them — but no matter where you might find yourself it’s usually a good idea to ‘check in’ from time to time to determine if that’s really where you want to be. It can be easy to be carried off course, especially when you’ve got your head down and are focused on the near ground rather than the horizon, so ‘checking in’, like taking a compass reading, is something I always make a point of carving out time for it’s something I’ve regularly benefited from, both personally and professionally; at the New York Times when having to make strategic decisions- how much resource to commit to continue to develop a platform or project, or when was the right time to start to sunset an idea and move on to something else.
After a few months with the startup I pulled out my compass and noticed that, for various reasons, I wasn’t where I needed to be. The startup wasn’t working as imagined so I needed to change course; not just for myself but also because I wanted the rest of the team to be able to continue on their path to realise their vision.
This wasn’t an easy decision to make. COVID and confinement had reinforced the bonds in our team and our twice daily scrum calls were a big part of my day and brought me pleasure, but I knew we had to go our separate ways. In early May I announced my departure from the team and was happy to leave on good terms and to keep the relationships we’d formed during our time together. I had no regrets. Now, after a couple of weeks of reflection and some good conversations with great friends I’ve decided I’m going back to my roots and I’m now ramping my CinqC activities back up.
I’m shifting things slightly, to concentrate on driving business evolution through strategies, new business models and disruptive technologies and methods — what I’ve always enjoyed doing most, be it with the large multinationals or the countless startups I’ve coached in accelerators.
Looking back I realise that much of this business focused and strategic work has been less visible than most of my other CinqC activities. Many of you primarily know me as being someone who creates and curates great live content and brings new innovations and change makers to a wider audience; you’ve seen me onstage or on your laptop when i’ve been emceeing and engaging audiences at major and online events, speaking or moderating discussions about how technology is impacting our business, society and culture around the globe.
To give you a better insight into my strategic and business evolution work I’ve decided over the course of the next few weeks, to spotlight some of the projects, challenges and people I’ve had the pleasure of working with through CinqC over the past three and a half years and through these stories demonstrate my 5 C’s in action. So stay tuned for Change, Continuity, Creativity, Community Intelligence, multi-Cultural awareness, and of course, how to keep ‘Making it work in an evolving world’. Yes, the ‘tagline’ I chose for CinqC some three years ago is more relevant today than ever!
Update: You can read my first article on Business Modelling here.
My article on Coaching, Mentoring and making great mistakes is here.
