Plan your year ahead like you plan Sibos week

I am sitting at the back of the class at the Innotribe stage for the Swift Hackathon on day 4 of what has been one HELL OF A SIBOS (well done team!).

The focus is interoperability.

I feel old, but in a really good way.

It’s not so long ago we were explaining what that word even means.

I remember designing slides with cables and tool boxes and sparks on them (doing slides is not my strong suit) to explain to my bosses, my clients and the audience at events like this what interoperability is.

And then the next frontier was why it matters.

It was only after we crossed that bridge we even got to talking about why it is a good thing. A good thing for the industry, for the organisations we sat in, for the future.

And with a constantly maturing regulator and a steady stream of learning, here we are now and Sally Sfeir-Tait just said “the industry is crying out for this”. It does my heart good to hear it.

And yes I feel a wee bit old, having been here for this entire journey. But I also feel hopeful.

Yes, it’s clunky and stop-start and often harder than it needs to be but… but… we are making unmistakeable, steady progress.

As we come to the end of the first Sibos of this new era, an era that we have no idea of how long it will last or how much worse it may get. (I know, I know… but we didn’t expect a war and a global energy crisis on top of a pandemic and a global supply chain crisis; so you know, I am not holding my breath about anything anymore).

As we come to the end of this event with dazzled eyes and sore feet, we need to hold onto this feeling… of how much is possible in a number of four days.

I am not suggesting you should always work 14 hours straight and then go straight to a client dinner and sleep for five hours and start again. You would die. I don’t want that.

But even allowing for sleep, and exercise and down time, if anything, Sibos week is a constant reminder of how much we can pack into a day when we get together and put our minds to it. How much learning and thinking and coming together to plan and agree. If we plan our time with intent.

Because let’s face it.

Sibos is the best of its kind, as events go, not just because of its size, content and production values but also because of who’s here and how much business gets done in these halls across the four days we spend together.

So it’s not just that we spent our four days chatting and learning - now we need to go back to some doing.

Things start here that represent real work as well as thinking, learning and relationship-building.

That’s all I’m saying.

As we go back to our homes and offices, please do me this favour.

Hold onto this urgency; this ability to fill your day with learning and energy and meaningful conversations that move things forward. And sure, don’t hold onto all the intensity. Chill a bit. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

But if we approach the year ahead the way we approach our Sibos planning, we may make strides.

If we look at the next 12 months, until we meet again, as a finite period of time in which (just like our four days at Sibos) we have to prioritise the most important things as, even if we work all the hours, it won’t be enough to do everything. So. What do we prioritise? What has to absolutely get done?

What else can fit in once the SOS topics are covered?

That’s it.

And if we approach the next 12 months like we do our Sibos week and seek to learn and then take the best of what we have learned and use it and try to make the most of the next 12 months as we make the most of these four days… if we do that, we may find that we make more progress in a year than we have in the last ten.

That’s all I’m saying.

Let’s see the challenge of the next 12 months as one of using the time in the best way possible to keep doing better.

Until we meet again.