This decade has seen celebrity directors rise and corporate reputations in tatters

So far, this decade's been dominated by the World Wide Web. It swept new entrepreneurs and investors up in its wake in the late 1990s, beached them in the early 2000s, then has slowly rebuilt momentum as "Web 2.0" has taken off. As Myles Runham, director of strategy at search engine AskJeeves, said earlier in the decade: "The internet has come of age."
It even began to influence the way business people looked: "dress-down Fridays" swept City workplaces, as Director noted in 2000: "British business execs are shedding suits for combats and chinos in a bid to be more at ease with their US and European business partners, and particularly the dot-com digerati, those of the new economy."

But directors still had to wrangle with the same boardroom issues whether they were wearing trainers or a tie. "No matter how virtual your store front, the old rules of customer service still apply—good price, good service and delivery on time," said Director in 2000. Uptake of online activities began to spread, with travel and estate agencies and recruiters particularly successful. In April 2004, the now ubiquitous Google was the subject of fevered speculation about a rumoured flotation, and as its first day of trading closed four month later, its shares soared 18 per cent to over $100. In the UK, dotcom boom survivor Brent Hoberman of lastminute.com sold his business to US giant Travelocity for over £500m in 2005. Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point provided a guide as to why an invention that was already 11-years-old was only now beginning to gain momentum.

Convergence of technology has also gathered pace in the 2000s, and that other ubiquity of the noughties, the "Crackberry", made its debut in the magazine in 2002.

No-frills airlines have gained status, with the market quickly consolidating and business travellers taking full advantage of ticket prices that make train fares look extortionate. By the end of 2002, Easyjet's founder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, had acquired BA's Go and was bringing in a new broom: "I don't see myself as an airline chairman, " he said. "I see myself as a serial entrepreneur."

Leadership has also taken on a mythic quality in the noughties, with Director charting the "corrosive" trend towards celebrity CEOs in 2002—to no avail, as Dragons' Den and The Apprentice were to prove. A good leader, said the magazine then, "inspires on a personal level". A corollary was the "people are our greatest assets" mantra—oft said, sometimes meant.

British directors in the early noughties have also become ever more concerned about skills gaps: a 2000 IoD survey found that members were having more difficulty filling positions for skilled craftsmen than anything else and qualifications became the preoccupation of government: "education, education, education" has been the chant of New Labour, yet younger, ex-Commonwealth countries continue to lure away Britain's public-sector employees, in particular.

At the same time, flexible working legislation and extended maternity leave combined to give employees greater power. Coaching has emerged triumphant as the best management approach for the new individualised employee; yet the cosy sounding "personnel" has become the more distant-sounding HR—a recognition that people were, in fact, a resource—or the even more Orwellian Human Capital Assets.

In 2004 the UK's labour pool expanded when Poland joined the EU. By 2006 more than half a million Poles had entered the UK, while a lot of companies had outsourced chunks of their business to India and China. "If we are no longer involved in the process, how can we perfect the product," asked Director. How indeed?

The Climate Change Levy in 2001 ushered in a greater awareness of green issues, with environmental concerns having an impact on that most prized perk—the company car, which got slapped with emission taxes in April 2002. Another green revolution was taking place in the organic sector as consumers began to worry about genetically modified crops. Organic pioneer and Whole Earth Foods co-founder Craig Sams remembers when organic was "perceived as cranky, the preserve of oddballs." Over the years, it's gained credibility and there has been a proliferation of new products and distribution methods. "In future, assuming energy prices go up and we all have to pay greenhouse gas costs, the organic market will become the model," predicts Sams. He also touches upon another trend of the noughties when he says: "It's really important that you believe in your product if you want others to believe in it. Customers smell authenticity; they know when it's right. That blend of belief, authenticity and conscience came together neatly in one of the UK's great noughties bloomers, Innocent Drinks.

CSR has come into its own in the 21st century, as have social enterprises. An article in October 2000 addressed social responsibility in its infancy:  "Becoming socially responsible will simply become a necessity," said then Institute of Business Ethics' Ken Rushton. In 2001 the FTSE4Good index—based on the principles of socially responsible investment, was launched. Directors' duties and responsibilities also took a giant leap to the next level in the wake of rail accidents such as Paddington: the Combined Code enshrined the work of the previous corporate governance reports and regulators went back and forth on the issue of whether or not to create a corporate killing offence—until this year. 

In terms of competing for the best employees, a survey by Roffey Park Institute noted that the "triple bottom line" (environmental, social and economic impact) was "becoming a source of competitive advantage" to those companies able to demonstrate their responsibility. Said Director in May 2005: "Fuelled by a stable labour market, greater career mobility and ethical consumerism—and in reaction to "fat cat" pay awards and boardroom corruption—the question that many of us want answered is not so much how I can get a good job, but what does my work mean in the wider world?"

The other "r" of the decade is reputation: big corporate scandals such as Enron and Worldcom have done little to improve the image of the business leader. These, allied with pay, were this year named as the most likely to influence public perceptions of business people, according to Good Director research. Yet, in spite of pressure from shareholders and the media, corporate governance guidelines and the threat of legislation, big company directors' remuneration packages continued to outstrip inflation and, in some cases, share performance.

Among Director readers, however, a typical MD would have earned between £62,000 and £126,000 in 2005—not chickenfeed, but hardly the excessive rewards that make headlines every year.

In the past few years the pace of change seems to have accelerated. But enterprise remains positive, as Director's guest editor of 2005, Simon Woodroffe, made clear: "Everywhere you look, something is being customised, reimagined or jerry-rigged by a new generation of can-doers.... What you stand for today and the spirit of your organisation is every bit as important as the thing you sell. And the funny thing about the new bottom line is that, when you get it right, it delivers the old bottom line, too."