Well, that it is once I have delivered the text of my first book to the publishers, Gower, at the end of March.

For me 2010 will be the year of intensive doing, helping businesses develop management and learning environments that enable them to do what they do better or differently.

This sounds insultingly simple. Of course it is not, otherwise we would not be reading about so many failures of governance in 2009, plus events like GM going into bankruptcy.

Here are some of the things other people have said that have stayed with me:

“China and India are phenomenal innovators. We won’t just go down, we’ll go down big time if we don’t watch out. We have to think of the clever new ideas and be ahead of the game while we have the affluence and economic growth to invest in way‐out concepts.

That includes the way we work.”

Professor Cary Cooper, Director, Jan 2005

That was in 2005 and this selection is from 2009:

“Governance practices are, by their nature, organic, dynamic and behavioural rather than akin to black letter regulation. But it is critically important to know how the boards of entities that best survived the storm were different or “better” than the boards of entities that were effectively taken over by the state or lost their identity through forced merger.”

Sir David Walker, Para 1.16 Review Of Corporate Governance In UK Banks. Nov 2009

“I strongly believe that the real underlying cause of all the problems was simply this – a total failure of all key aspects of governance. In my view and from my personal experience at HBOS, all the other specific failures stem from this one primary cause.”

Paul Moore, ex-head of Group Regulatory Risk at HBOS plc

“… in GM this is a specific case. There is a theory-driven set of practices that are about monitoring people below, incentivizing people above, and always trying to make sure that you set up the relationships so that you extract everything.”

Yochai Benkler, www.edge.org

“The history of modern business is the history of GM, and vice versa … if the success of GM defined the management agenda for 20th century, then its failure defines the management agenda for the 21st.”

Professor John Kay in the Financial Times

Reasons To Be Cheerful

Innovation and co-ordination processes embodied in lean systems provide base knowledge about how to facilitate knowledge development and sharing through continuous innovation and problem-solving. In addition, decades of case studies and research on lean and quality have left us with a legacy of learning on effective collaboration across process boundaries – including across organisational boundaries.

Cross-boundary collaboration and knowledge sharing are crucial competitive requirements in today’s globally fragmented and networked knowledge economies. The picture emerging from research on employee engagement is that people seek jobs that give them opportunity to learn and contribute.

We now have unprecedented opportunity to build on what we already know about creating operating and management environments that nurture continous innovation, improvement and collaboration. What was previously localised continuous innovation is now powerfully enhanced through electronically connected knowledge networks, globally distributed through inter-linked social structures. Every person a business employs now comes with an associated and electronically-connected network of distributed knowledge, influence and contacts.

What a phenomenal opportunity for astute businesses to think about how they can take advantage of all this creativity and brainpower. In doing so, they will be putting in place ways of working and managing that people find engaging. And ways of governing that not only protect the viability of the oganisation but that also ecourage a tranparent and open culture, where people can challenge without fear of bullying or recrimination.

Now that is something for businesses and workforces to be optimistic about. Here’s to a connected  and energised 2010 for us all.