What if and what next...

March 4th, 2022

Dear ?What Iffers! past and present, Accenture colleagues, clients, business partners, friends and families.

On March 4th we are hanging up our ?What If! spurs. Our beautiful baby is now a full-grown adult – healthy, ambitious and provocative. We are immensely proud and a little sad. But the time is right for us to adventure elsewhere.?

It feels like only yesterday (actually it was 1992), that we scraped together what little money we had and swapped our corporate careers for this wonderful and crazy adventure. We wish we could say that we had a plan, that we had thought the whole thing out, but we hadn’t.

What we did have was a real belief that innovation should be a force for good in the world. That great new leaps would not come out of the boardroom, but by immersing decision makers in the environments in which customers felt let down, disengaged or plain angry. Our hunch was that making solutions real and bringing them to life quickly was the best way to make senior executives believe radical new things were possible.?

We had an unshakeable commitment to building a fester-free culture - a place where ego came second to trying another route (that’s called pivoting these days). A place where you could bring your best self to work. And a place to share this journey with adventurous colleagues and fabulous clients with whom we’ve built longstanding and inspiring relationships.

We hope that Whatiffers today and over the last 30 years share our deep sense of pride around the impact we have had in the world.??From global mega corps to local not-for-profits, in so many countries and across just about every sector, we have partnered with the most fantastic clients on a?soulful journey to deliver meaningful change.?

In the mid 2000’s the Financial Times twice named ?What If! as the no 1 Best Company To Work for in Europe. In 2020 we won Business Culture Consultancy of the Year at the UK’s Business Culture Awards. Our US office won three gold medals in the prestigious Brandon Hall Excellence Awards.??And 30 years later we’re still punching - last month (Jan ’22) The FT’s peer and client led review of the leading UK management consultants gave us two Bronze medals.

Today ?What If! is part of Accenture where we have the capability to tap into world leading talent, technology, and capabilities. We can build and deliver globally scaled innovations and organisational transformations, that re-shape industries and customers lives.??And we are now a bigger organisation, with several hundred of us in offices across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.??We’ve trained over 100,000 people and sold an equal number of copies of our innovation books. At a more personal level 18 babies have been born out of ?What If! marriages and partnerships and we’ve created friendships that will last a lifetime.

So, as we walk out of the office for the last time, we want to say thank you to all those ?What Iffers! across the world who will spend today working on an exciting assignment. To the Not Ifer’s who joined our adventure, made their mark and are now shaping new careers beyond our doors. To all our clients and partners, who have trusted us, supported us and given us the chance to help shape their own futures, both of their businesses, and the people who work within them. And finally, to all the friends and families that have been our bedrock of energy and love, through the hard times and the good— to all of you, from the bottom of our hearts,?thank you.

Looking forward we remain full of optimism. This is an amazing time to be in business. Innovation is a force for good in the world. Technology disruption is fuelling a revolution in almost every sector. Customers are outstripping corporations in their ability to try new things and at work and strategy formulation, as we have known it, is dead.?

Our beliefs from 30 years ago still hold true - the winners will be those who know how to create purposeful businesses, powered by technology, and fuelled by experimentation. Building fast, fluid experimentation engines, that embolden senior executives to take the audacious path and fuelled by conviction and purpose to make the lives of the people who live on this increasingly fragile planet, better.

On a personal note, our plans are pretty simple; get some sleep, dust off the exercise bike, hang out with family and friends and plan the next adventure…

With love and thanks,

Matt:??[email protected]

Dave:[email protected]

Founders of ?What If!