Ndarala End Year Message 2006

Photo: Gordon Smith Gara River near Armidale

Ndarala is shutting down for the Christmas break, resuming activities on Tuesday 2 January.

Each year for the last ten years (Ndarala was founded in April 1996) I have taken the opportunity in December to review Group activities and look forward to the new year. This year with the development of this blog I am posting the review for the public record.

2006 has in fact been the most difficult and complicated year since our foundation. Each year to date I have been able to report solid progress. At times over 2006 I have wondered whether we would have any progress to report by year end.

As a Group we have to constantly reinvent ourselves. Our mission was and remains helping the independent management related professional and professional practice achieve personal, professional and business objectives through cooperation while retaining true professional and business independence.

This is not always easy. The very fact of independence that creates the need also creates the main impediment to meeting that need. Sometimes running the Group is a bit like trying to herd cats!

The world in which we operate changes all the time.

Since we began there has been a proliferation of social networks and social networking tools, meeting some of the needs we were created to fulfil. Our attempt to reinvent ourselves by investing in support of cooperative business development activities failed because it did not properly meet the needs of our membership base. Worse, our ordinary operating income collapsed, leading to the close of our central operating company.

Yet despite all this we have survived the year and look forward to the future with some confidence.

Part of the reason for this lies in our previous heavy collective investment in the creation of our own intellectual property. Part lies in the creation of Group infrastructure independent of the previous operating company or indeed of any funding support what so ever. The very changes in the on-world that created part of the challenge we faced also created part of the solution. But in all this the most important reason lies in our people and their continued support for our core vision and mission.

I have no idea just how 2007 will finally evolve. I do know that we will survive and grow and that the Group will be very different by year end.

Finally, I would like to thank our clients, the Group management committee and our key members for their support over 2006.