As part of the Useful Simple Trust Away Day in June 2011, eight Trustees and Directors were each asked to compose and present a five-minute piece giving an overview of the Useful Simple Trust in the year 2020. These pieces, in various formats, from a virtual 3D Skype teleconference to an epistemological exchange were presented to the audience from within a hanging shroud of black material – an opaque tent representing a barrier between the future and the present. Below is an approximate transcription of what I said.

“Hello, can everyone see me? Looks like it. Good. This 3D Skyping system is incredible: it feels like we are in a room together when in fact we are all of us is in different parts of the world. So, greetings to the team of consultants working on the 2020 Qatar Olympics. Hello to the team working at the UN’s floating HQ for climate change mitigation strategy, currently moored somewhere over Norfolk. And of course, hello to the team of engineers in Belgium working on the infrastructure reconstruction programme following the recent civil war out there. I will begin.

“I have been asked to say a few words to characterise the way the Trust works, and describe the key moves that we made over the last decade to get us to where we are now.

“I would say that the environment in which we work is firstly characterised by extensive and complex overlapping networks of personal and professional contacts. We use these networks to learn, to share information, to collaborate on work and to market our services.  We make far more use of our personal social capital than we ever did before, and our communication using these networks is completely decentralised.

“The second characteristic relates to where we add value. Information is cheap, and with the development of automated Google research projects, there is a phenomenal amount of data available at our finger tips. At the same time, much of the process work that we used to carry out in the UK is now carried out for a fraction of the price abroad. Our skill as an organisation has therefore become the assimilation of information and the creative design of strategic solutions to problems, on which we must then collaborate with other partners internationally to deliver.

“Thirdly I would like to characterise how we work as individuals within the organisation. Seeking to avoid specifics, I describe the staff as being made up of ‘omni-workers’, apprentice ‘omni-workers’ and mentors. The omni-workers have the key trinity of skills: assimilation, creative problem solving and business sense. Plying the avenues of their complex personal networks, these members of staff work as individuals, collaborate with other organisations, or collaborate with other omni-workers wherever the work may be. They are accompanied by apprentices who are learning their trade, and they are guided by mentors who offer up their own experience by way of training.

“To conclude a description of the working landscape, I will describe where it is we work. The short answer is wherever the work needs to be done. We are a highly decentralised interconnected workforce but with robust links to centralised online resources and administrative functions that support us.

” I will now describe the five decisions that the Trust made that were key to getting us to where we are now:

1. We recognised long ago that specialism would increasingly become a liability, and that the asset would be the skill of information assimilation and collaboration with others.

2. We also recognised the immense social capital of the organisation, and the power of an individual’s personal and professional networks to share information, to collaborate on projects and to promote our activity.

3. We decided to identify a number of key societal challenges that we would seek to collaborate on and work towards solving in our projects – thus developing a polemic for the organisation.

4. We recognised the need to raise the level of overall business strategy awareness of the organisation, and set up an internal business school to do so.

5. We packed up our bags and left Morley House, our former HQ in Oxford Circus, and we followed the work.

“As for any regrets over the last decade? I would have to admit to at least three: working far too hard in those early years – not recognising the need to prioritise; not identifying the key societal challenges that would be the focus of our work; and only taking one sabbatical in the last ten years and not two.

“Thank you very much”