Twenty-three years, three things
I have been here twenty-three years. Nobody can remember twenty-three years — not even me — so I am going to give you three things instead of a summary.
The first thing: what I got wrong
In my second year I ran a project that failed publicly and expensively, and I spent about a month quietly deciding that I was not cut out for this work.
A colleague named Frank sat me down and said something I have stolen for the rest of my career: "You are not allowed to conclude anything about yourself from one outcome. One data point is weather."
I have repeated that sentence to maybe forty people since. It is the most useful thing I learned here, and I learned it from failing.
The second thing: the work is the people
I cannot remember a single deliverable from 2009. Not one. I remember the night four of us ordered terrible pizza and rewrote a proposal, and I remember laughing until we could not type.
That is not nostalgia talking; it is the actual ledger. The documents go into a folder that nobody opens. The nights go into you. Twenty-three years from now, you will not remember this project either. You will remember who was in the room.
So my advice, which nobody asked for: choose the rooms. Choose the people you would stay late with, and then stay late with them, on purpose, while you still can.
The third thing: a small handover
I am not going to give you a vision for the next decade. You do not need one from somebody whose badge stops working on Friday.
What I will do is hand over the three questions I ask at the start of every project. They have never once failed me.
One: what would we do if we only had a week?
Two: who is going to be quietly annoyed by this, and have we talked to them yet?
Three: in five years, what will we wish we had written down?
Write them on a card. Put them somewhere you will see them. They are better than a strategy document, and they fit in your pocket.
Thank you
Thank you for twenty-three years, for the terrible pizza, and for Frank, who is here tonight and who still does not know that he changed everything.
I am going to miss this more than I can say in a room without crying, and I have decided that is fine.