In 2019 the present form of the business was established. The Dubai office was opened, the way decisions would be made was agreed among the principals, and the operating model that the four activities still run on began to take shape. The choice of Dubai was a practical one, based on the clarity of the rules for privately held companies, the depth of the talent available, and a time zone that overlaps with clients and suppliers from London to South East Asia.
The four activities were not assembled overnight. Each took its present form over the years that followed. What 2019 marks is the year the business was given a single spine: one office, one group of people responsible for the whole, a habit of writing decisions down, and enough separation between the activities that each could be judged on its own work.
The habit of writing things down has done more for the business than any structure chart. Decisions about which activities to start, which markets to enter and which work to decline were recorded at the time, with the reasoning attached, which makes it possible to look back honestly at the ones that were wrong. It is also the habit we recommend most often to the owner-led businesses we advise, because it costs nothing and it settles arguments that would otherwise repeat every year.
Two decisions taken in that founding period have not changed since. The first is that the business would stay privately owned and funded by its own work. The second is that the family behind it would not be named publicly. Both were considered carefully, both have been kept, and neither has needed revisiting.
Keeping to one office was a choice rather than a stage on the way to something larger. It means the people who plan a piece of work are the people who deliver it, and that a client speaks to the same team from the first conversation to the last report. The cost of that choice is that we can only take on a certain amount of work at a time, which is a trade we have been willing to make.
The office has moved through the ordinary changes any small company goes through, and the working principle has held. Everything the business does is run from one place by the people who are accountable for it, which is a simple arrangement that becomes harder to keep as a company grows.
For the Dubai office as it is today, see Dubai. For how the business describes itself now, see about Kaelo Global.
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