Christmas eve eve, office quiet, customer-portfolio operational tempo settled into the holiday slow-down. A short note in front of the break.
The company is at sixteen years. The 2020 ten-year-anniversary marker was deferred and substantially absorbed into the 2024 book-launch event in February; the 2025 sixteen-year mark is unmarked except in this writing. The arc continues.
The team. Forty-three at year-end (one hire in Q3, one hire in Q4). The senior leadership team is mature and the operational-leadership delegation is substantively in place. The lead engineer is now nine-and-three-quarters years in and is the engineering-function director and a director of the company. The customer-success function lead has been five years in. The senior partners across the vCISO, pen-testing, and SOC functions have been with the company between four and twelve years. The team is the company.
The customers. The Browne Jacobson, Towry, and Northcott engagements that I started writing about in the 2010-2012 period continue. Browne Jacobson is now in its fifteenth year of engagement; Towry is in its sixteenth (every full year of the company's history); Northcott is in its sixteenth. The manufacturer is in its tenth year. The financial-services firm is in its tenth year. The retailer is in its ninth year. The customer relationships-as-a-personal-experience continue to be the most rewarding professional dimension of the work.
The personal-direction question that I have been thinking about more across 2023-2024 has, through 2025, settled into a clearer disposition. The strategic-and-external-facing work — the books, the conference contribution, the customer-engagement work, the writing — continues to be the part of the work that I am most engaged with. The day-to-day operational management is increasingly the lead engineer's, the senior leadership team's, and the various function-leads. The shift has been progressive rather than discrete; the personal-direction question is not, in practice, a discrete decision but is the cumulative pattern of how I am spending my time. I expect the pattern to continue through 2026 and beyond.
The next book — on regulatory-environment-as-customer-organisation-discipline — is in active drafting. The 2025-end draft is at approximately 70% completion. The 2026 publication target is plausible. The fifth book in the series.
The Christmas tree is up. The lights are on. The customers and the team are in their respective rest. The pubs await.