Although a few organizations are embracing CBD, most of our clients are still hesitant about CBD. We are monitoring industry progress in standards, methods and tools, and keeping in close touch with the early adopters. Some of our clients have only recently started work in this area; others have plans sketched out for pilot projects, but are not yet ready to start.

In addition to these activities, we've been addressing the relationship between business risk and IT risk in a number of large organizations. This work has been done in association with Antelope Consultants (now reconstituted as Antelope Projects), and we've been using their SCIMITAR Risk Management methodology.

For the future, we are trying to develop new and innovative ways of packaging consultancy services to add more value to our clients's business. We have been working with other independent consultants to create these services, and we hope to lauch at least one such service around Easter 1999.

We have also run a number of training courses for Learning Tree.

June is currently completing a book with Valerie Walkerdine and Helen Lucey, based on their study of girls growing up ("Transitions to Womanhood").

"Incrementalism is no longer good enough", he says. "We have set our people very aggressive targets that will force them to explore every possibility." [Source: Financial Times, December 17th, 1998]

So set yourself a real challenge for 1999. Find some area of your working life or private life that is really worth improving. Then find a way to double your effectiveness, your productivity, your satisfaction rating, your benefits.

Small improvements can be achieved by merely working harder - but most of us are working hard enough already. To make large improvements, you need something else.

Interesting goods don't obey this arithmetic. Holding it too tightly merely reduces its value. The more you give away, the more you use, the more you have.

Knowledge seems to be one of these goods that obeys this paradoxical arithmetic. Some people are secretive about what they know, hesitant to deploy it because they don't want to give anything away to their competitors - and the hoarded knowledge gradually becomes worthless. Other people share their knowledge liberally - and they usually find they gain far more than they lose.

Security and commitment is also paradoxical. Some people seek to make their life more certain by dumping risk onto other people - such as weaker trading partners - and avoiding making unforced commitments. But as Peter Marris has shown, this can be counter-productive. It often merely makes the whole environment more unstable, which damages everyone. There are often real benefits from making unilaterial and unforced commitments to other people. [Source: Peter Marris, The Politics of Uncertainty].

Many spiritual traditions make this demand of their followers: to give away what they most value. But what are the things you most value? Love, respect, praise, power, trust? Give some to someone else, spontaneously, without thought for the immediate consequences. Just try it. Just a thought.

Take a fresh look at what you're doing. Write down your conclusions. Talk to someone who isn't so directly involved.

Or are you permanently too busy? Are you going to be too busy for the rest of the century? (Not long to go now.) Are you going to enter the next millennium, driven forwards or sideways by forces you don't or won't understand?

(This may apply both to you as a person, and to your team, group or organization.)

So my third suggestion is: Find time during 1999 for some serious and sustained reflection.