Come out of the trenches! Make change happen

2024 is already an energizing year! It has been wonderful to be back fully in face-to-face meetings and to feel the enthusiasm of the community that continues to build around WorldCC. Such diversity – geographic, functional, industry – yet inspired by a common belief in the importance and contribution of a fresh approach to contracting and commercial thinking.

Commercial innovation is the foundation for human progress!

This fact is often overlooked – and those who are key to creative thinking and its implementation are too often relegated to the back room, their work seen as an afterthought. And many have allowed this to happen, accepting a role that focuses on risk avoidance or compliance, rather than the creativity that our dynamic world demands.

So what is energizing me?

In just a few weeks, I have had the chance to interact with contracts,, commercial, procurement and legal practitioners in the US, UK, France, India and Saudi Arabia. Very different places, with their own unique and priceless characters. Yet everywhere I find the same buoyancy, a sense of optimism and a readiness to escape the constraints of the past.

And I am excited!

What better time than WorldCC’s 25th anniversary for real change to take root, for this powerful community to move to a position of leading and inspiring fresh approaches? In 2024, we are introducing major shifts in our training and certification. Empowered by AI, we are able to elevate the services and support we offer. The research that is needed to generate the insights and authority for new approaches is gathering pace. And our community is gathering, coming together in a rich series of local meetings and international summits.

So we have the foundations: now is the time to climb out of those back rooms, to come into the light and implement those new approaches to the way we establish and manage our trading relationships. It is actually not complicated to formulate fresh commercial models, simplified and balanced forms of contract, improved models of governance.

What it requires is a belief in ourselves, a unity of purpose. Come together, stay together – and change will happen.