As the year comes to a close, I have found myself reflecting more than usual.

Not on milestones or titles, but on patterns. On what I have seen repeatedly over the last two decades across different companies, markets, and roles. On why so much effort in our industry still produces inconsistent outcomes, despite good people, strong technology, and genuine intent.

This reflection is not about looking back nostalgically. It is about making sense of why my career unfolded the way it did, and why the work I am focused on now feels less like a pivot and more like an inevitability.

Different Companies. Same Friction.

I have had the opportunity to work inside global technology vendors and regional organisations at different stages of growth: Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia), Polycom (HP), Nuage, Barco, Kramer.

Different portfolios. Different cultures. Different moments in the market.

Yet, across all of them, I kept encountering the same underlying issues.

Strong products that underperformed once they hit the real world. Sales teams working hard but struggling to create momentum. Channel partners delivering uneven outcomes. Customers frustrated by inconsistency rather than capability. Buyers overwhelmed by choice but lacking clarity.

What struck me over time was that these problems were not isolated. They were not caused by a single bad decision or a weak execution team. They appeared again and again, regardless of brand strength or market position.

At first, it is easy to explain this away as market complexity. Or regional nuance. Or execution gaps that can be solved with better enablement or tighter governance.

But eventually, you realise something deeper is happening.

A Front-Row Seat to How Work Actually Happens

Most of my career has been spent at the intersection of vendors, integrators, enterprises, and buyers. Especially across Asia Pacific, where cultural, operational, and market diversity exposes weaknesses faster than most global playbooks anticipate.

I was not only seeing what was sold. I was seeing what was delivered. Not just what was promised, but what was experienced. Not just strategy decks, but day-to-day reality.

And what I kept observing was this.

Everyone was working hard. Everyone was optimising something. But very few were optimising the system as a whole.

Vendors focused on product roadmaps and differentiation. Integrators focused on projects and delivery milestones. Enterprises focused on tools and internal ownership models. Buyers focused on price, compliance, and procurement efficiency.

Each perspective made sense in isolation.

Together, they created friction.

The Realisation That Changed Everything

At some point, it became clear to me that most workplace problems were being misdiagnosed.

Meetings were not failing because of cameras or microphones. Hybrid was not failing because people were remote. AI was not underperforming because the technology was immature.

These were symptoms.

The underlying issue was that the workplace had never been designed as an integrated system. It had evolved in fragments.

People worked one way. Processes were designed another way. Spaces reflected assumptions from a different era. Technology was added incrementally, often without removing what came before.

And then we expected everything to work together seamlessly.

It rarely did.

Why Strategic Pathways Had to Exist

Strategic Pathways was created because I needed a platform that allowed me to step outside single-company constraints and address this misalignment at its root.

The work initially took familiar forms.

Channel ecosystem orchestration, because ecosystems fail when alignment is assumed rather than designed. Sales enablement, because teams struggle when value is unclear and inconsistent. Value proposition design, because technology rarely fails on features but often fails on relevance. AI transformation, because intelligence without foundations only amplifies chaos.

But over time, a pattern emerged.

No matter the client or the entry point, the same structural questions surfaced. Not just about technology, but about how work actually flowed through organisations.

That was the beginning of a deeper shift.

The Metamorphosis Into Something Larger

Through workshops, diagnostics, and real client work, I began to see that enterprises, integrators, vendors, and buyers were all struggling with the same root causes, just using different language.

They lacked a shared architecture. They lacked objective visibility into maturity. They lacked a way to align decisions across people, processes, spaces, and technology.

Most importantly, they lacked a common frame of reference.

What emerged from this was not a product idea, but a structural one.

The idea that the workplace needed to be treated as an operating system. That alignment had to come before optimisation. That evidence had to come before opinion. That AI could only succeed if the foundations were coherent.

This is what eventually became the Intelligent Workplace.

Not as a concept invented in isolation, but as a synthesis of everything I had seen fail when alignment was missing.

Why This Moment Matters

We are at an inflection point.

Hybrid work is no longer temporary. Tool sprawl has reached its limit. Delivery inconsistency is no longer acceptable. AI is accelerating faster than most workplaces are ready for.

The cost of fragmentation is now visible, measurable, and strategic.

In this context, continuing to treat the workplace as a collection of tools, projects, and policies is no longer sustainable.

The organisations that perform best over the next decade will not be those with the most technology. They will be the ones with the most aligned systems.

Strategic Reflection

Looking back, my career feels less like a series of moves and more like a continuous exposure to the same unresolved problem.

Work is harder than it should be. Technology delivers less than it promises. People adapt constantly to systems that were never designed for them.

The work I am focused on now is about changing that dynamic.

Not by adding more complexity, but by creating clarity. Not by chasing trends, but by fixing foundations. Not by replacing human ingenuity, but by giving it better systems and better intelligence to work with.

As the year ends, this feels like the right moment to pause, reflect, and acknowledge that some paths only make sense once you have walked them.

The next chapter builds on everything that came before.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Marc