LAST week I was delighted to host a business conference at Sandy Park, the home of the Exeter Chiefs.

This inaugural annual conference was organised by the South West Society of Chartered Accountants (SWSCA), supported by the Institute of Directors (IOD), and it was aimed at getting a range of businesspeople from across our region to come together and discuss 'How we do business in the future'.

We were very pleased to have Andrew Knuckey, the chief financial officer of Flybe, give the keynote speech. Andrew talked about how the airline had expanded very successfully over the last few years, by following core principles and overcoming some substantial challenges, to establish itself as a major regional operator.

In order to plan for the future, Flybe had to truly understand and embrace changes in its market, such as the impact of low cost carriers and online bookings.

They then had to develop a clear vision and strategy, which involved substantial innovation and flexibility. Flybe is now set to become the leading regional airline in Europe, and I have to say that I think it's great for us that their base is in Exeter. Andrew finished by saying that of course nobody knows what the future really holds, but that those businesses that stick to the key principles will manage better than the rest, whatever happens.

The second speaker was Richard Worsley, who heads up The Tomorrow Project. This is an organisation that spends its entire time looking at the future, and taking informed guesses at how changes in areas such as population, technology and politics are likely to impact individuals, business and governments.

Richard believes that we are facing one of the most uncertain periods in decades, because of huge challenges globally such as population growth, fossil fuel depletion and water shortages, and climate change, and in the UK with national debt and deficits, and burgeoning public sector pay and pensions.

Business faces the need to respond to ever increasing demands for mass consumer customisation and choice. Individuals will be tested by the challenge of funding very long retirements, as life expectancy will move beyond 90 years.

Dr Peter Bunce, from the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, looking at how companies manage their finances, presented his thoughts on the 'straitjacket' we call the budget, and how business could escape from this top down, bureaucratic style of management by adopting a new approach that would be more in tune with the competitive imperatives of the future.

Companies would benefit from a looser structure that is more adaptive and devolved. Managers would be able to do intelligent and continuous reforecasting, not bound by year or month ends, but informed by what is actually happening. Throughout an organisation, self-managed teams would constantly innovate and respond, and control cash resources accordingly.

Finally, the UK's time management guru Mark Forster spoke about how we could manage ourselves better in the future.

He gave the audience some very useful tips; one of my favourites was his advice to write a daily 'will do' list rather than a 'to do' list. In other words, only set yourself the most important tasks to get through, that you know you should complete in the time you have, rather than ending every day frustrated with half your tasks uncompleted due to interruptions and so on.

Another tip was to 'batch stuff together'; so for example do all of your phone calls collectively, not spread out over the day, and in particular only look at your emails at certain times, perhaps every hour, so that you're not a slave to looking every time your PC goes 'ping'.

Somehow, in the future, we will have to better manage the ever increasing daily deluge of information.

Overall it was a fascinating day and I look forward to next year's conference — who knows what the theme will be or what the world will look like then!