20 Years of Impact
As we are approaching the New Twenties it felt right to close the books on the first 20 years of Netlight - the company I have been working with for the past 20 years. One thing you can say about the past 20 years is that very few people stay for 20 years with their company. What do you get for such loyalty? Personally I got to be David Bowie for a day. But you can become whatever you like. And that is the whole point…
I was never employed at Netlight. So the story goes. I merely came and occupied a chair at the very first Netlight office in Solna, Stockholm. I sat on that chair and started to work and after a while somebody had to pay me. This was 20 years ago.
20 years later quite a few people are impressed by Netlight and some are searching for the secret recipe. What was that brilliant business idea and who was the master mind behind it? Even though we at the time had no lack of ideas, we were no master minds. (And no master minds could ever have constructed something nearly as delicately complex as Netlight). We were no master minds, we were… Netlight: 25–28 years old, highly educated but with limited experience, ambitious, curious and full of energy. I think most new starters at Netlight can recognise themselves in that description, and the more seasoned Netlighters can probably recall the day when they started themselves. Everything that we today might consider Netlight’s brilliant business idea derives from that detail — who we are, or were when we started at Netlight.
With our limited experience we were not able to compete against existing consulting firms on their experience turf. We had to start delivering consulting services in the only area where there was no experience — the mobile internet. Stockholm was Wireless Valley; SMS and WAP the hottest technologies there was! Netlight developed mobile ticketing solutions, location based services and virtual mobile operators. But we also knew we were not going to do that for ever. Simply because we didn’t want to. We were instantly looking for the next thing, being too ambitious, too curious and too full of energy. Instead of settling to be mobile internet consultants, we invented a new business that does not settle. We call it Genuine Consulting, to help clients with solutions to new challenges, based on new technology making new business, where there can be no experience other than how to deal with what is new. Today this business area is called Digitalisation. And instead of recognising that cool new stuff as part of that piece of the cake we work with — like the kids we were — we simply licked the sweet icing off the cake and put the dry cake back on the plate for the parents to eat.
Our limited experience changed our views on consulting but also affected the way we we consider consultants. Since we had no CVs at the time it was easy for us to claim that “CVs are not everything. You have to have talent!” (Remember: ambition, curiosity and energy). And we started looking for talented people, regardless of their level of experience. Today this is commonly known as Talent Management, bit we simply called it to grow talent. Instead of settling with people like ourselves, i.e. people of our age as we grew older, we continued to employ people like ourselves as we had been back in 1999.
Last but not least our limited experience and taste for challenges where there was no prior experience in the first place made it natural for us to collaborate. While this is rather unusual for consultants, who have to keep their experience safe, for Netlight there was never a way to deliver alone. Not for us. Not for anyone. Instead of settling with challenges in reach as we became more experienced in them, we continued to engage in challenges almost out of reach. Ambitious, curious and full of energy as we were, we wanted to create things, preferably together!
All of this was no master plan. Neither was it a lucky shot. It was our conscious response to our situation. Sensing and responding, making 20 years of impact.
Five years into the history of Netlight, the founders went sailing in the Stockholm archipelago, together with the new chairman of the board. This was right after a recession that blew Netlight back to the stone ages — back to 1999 — with merely 13 people remaining. The chairman asked the founders what they were planning to do with their lives. Five years later means that we were 30–33 by know. Sweetspot Netlight. The average age of Netlight around which it remains forever young (even if some of us get older). Most Netlighters are in their thirties. Still ambitious, curious and full of energy. But also with some experience. And more mature when it comes to what you want to do with your life and career. We told the chairman that we were not yet done with Netlight. We wanted it to become a monument. Something you can rely on and be proud of. Something to hold on to for a longer period of time, for a career, asked possibly beyond.
We started to make up our minds regarding what company we wanted. Like choosing the perfect employer: kick-ass client service… committed personal development… operational excellence… Only we were at the same time the employer. There was nobody to blame. The responsibility and liberty was ours. We introduced things like a Delivery Model, a Mentor System, Career Stepd, Core Processes and Best Practises. Again we did not settle but created a flywheel of continuous improvement, claiming that “old is ugly, let’s make it new” (our very own interpretation of the modernist manifesto…). We started to connect the dots between the new 25-year olds, that we had just started to employ again, and us, the thirty somethings. We thereby created new space for us to develop, as well as ground for new people to assume responsibility and grow. A flywheel of growth and development, fuelled by change. Generation after generation! The 25-year olds of then are Netlight’s partners of today. Every generation adds a growth ring to the tree that is Netlight. For the monument is rather a tree, than a cathedral.
You build from without. We build from within. You build with yourselves as bricks, collapsing from the inside and in. We build from within, like trees, and bridges grow between us that are not of dead materia and dead compulsion. Life emerges from us. (Karin Boye, Kallocain, 1940)
Today it is impossible to say what at Netlight was introduced when and by whom, was one thing build upon the other. Beautiful and incredibly solid in its delicate complexity. Another five years into the history of Netlight this was proven as we entered into another recession — the Financial Crisis. Instead of being blown to the stone ages, Netlight was then able to grow by 20 % despite the market. Would we be able to do that again? Possibly! We’re a bit out of practise, but the systems remain the same. What it takes is dedicated commitment and trust in reach other. This dedicated commitment and trust in each other, in good times was in bad, is as close to a secret recipe of Netlight was you get. It cannot be dated to any particular year. It’s been with Netlight always.
This connection, more than anything, can be experienced by the Horse, uniting 1300 Netlighters in Netlight’s nine offices of today. No closing of books would be complete without mentioning it.
The Horse entered Netlight roughly 10 years ago. The story goes that we were planning a job fair event at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. After the event some people wanted to get rid of the horse that was blocking the entrance to the already crammed office at Münchenbryggeriet. In a rescue attempt the horse lovers bought two more horses and sent them for Christmas to the offices in Oslo and Munich. And the rest is history…
But in fact that is only the beginning… of the many stories behind the horse from many different locations. Situations that we can all relate to even if we weren’t there. (For example when the horse was caught by the Bavarian police for drinking Glühwein…).
Netlight isn’t one story and it isn’t following a straight line. It is a universe, where many stories happen in parallel. Stories about people in offices. About adventures at clients. About fantastic beasts — like unicorns and boids — and where to find them. A never ending story!
The old twenties were the decade of modernism. Let’s revive their motto “old is ugly, make it new”. Cheers to the New Twenties!
