It’s been a month since UC22, our United Capital group leadership conference, which took place in Dubai, and as a group, we’re still processing what came out of the time we spent together.

With such a strong group of people in the room, from the most senior leaders to some of our brightest young apprentices, we expected to leave the conference with some great ideas – and we did.

Some are bold and ambitious, some are smaller (but all the easier to implement for it), some are designed to innovate around our processes, and some to improve our communication and problem-solving skills.

Now that we’ve been back at our day jobs for a month, we’re pushing our leaders to make good on these ideas and promises. Accountability is critical to a successfully growing business, and Graeme and I are as tough on ourselves as we are on anyone else – so when we look for progress we expect to see it!

The benefits of UC22 will be long-lasting, and across the group we hope to see everyone interacting differently from now on. Every single conversation that took place helped to build the future of our business forward in some small way, every interaction was an opportunity for better relationships going forward, every idea was the seed of a change that could transform the delivery of a service or product for our 150,000 customers.

The group before the conference was, by definition, different to the group post-event. What I love about United Capital is that we have instilled a culture where there’s no such thing as a baseline or a default setting; we’re constantly improving and moving forward. The problem we solved yesterday will be more easily tackled next time; the last acquisition we made taught us lessons we’ll take onto the next deal; the relationships we built at UC22 will only keep growing and making our group a better place in which to thrive.