Actually, what is far more useful is for each of us to take our own personal audit.
Acquiring our skills as brand owners, marketers, agency suits, account planners, media strategists, or agency creatives is a never-ending, lifelong labour.
We are continually honing our skills, calibrating our talent, because we know that what lies ahead is far more challenging than all our achievements and failures of the past.
It's all about the struggle to attain perfection in our discipline, in our craft. And when it comes to personal struggle, I always turn to the great actors and teachers of theatre for inspiration. The legendary stage actress Uta Hagen is an American theatrical icon. She is also an immensely respected teacher. Talking about the actor's struggles to attain perfection, she said, "It includes maintaining innocence (as opposed to cynicism), curiosity (as opposed to smugness), a willingness to question and to search for new answers, the readiness to take risks and the daring to fail."
The parallel between the actor and anyone on the cutting edge of marketing communications becomes immediately palpable.
Especially when we consider the issue of risk-taking. Risk-taking has been devalued in our business. Genuine risk-taking is a noble human endeavour.
Unfortunately, too many campaigns masquerade as "risk-taking creativity" when in truth they are shallow, gratuitous and self-indulgent. I'm sure Miss Hagen would agree: self-indulgence has no part in the actor's craft, and should have none in marketing communications either.
Also like actors, we don't work in a vacuum. Brand builders and creatives must be aware of the world in which they live. But how often we all forget that. We get lost in our own little worlds of statistics or strategy or craft. If we agree that the best marketing communications should be bigger than just "ads", that our work should transcend its commercial purpose and become part of the architecture of consumers' lives, then in the broadest sense these words of George Bernard Shaw have a message for all of us:
"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations ..."
Yes, you could argue that Shaw's plays were a fine gift to future generations, but we are just commercially-driven mortals flogging products and services.
I disagree. Artists of any field - the people in client organisations who create the brands, the people who design the packaging, the agency planners, the media strategists, the creatives - can all aspire to his aims.
In fact, anyone who touches the life of another human being, which means everyone involved in brand communications. We can all, and we should all align our ambitions with Shaw's.
We all have to face up to challenges in our specific fields. And we all have choices. We should all be torches. If we aren't, we will belong to the large grey majority that accepts mediocrity, our lives bound in the shallows, falling prey to the worst turmoil in our business, victims of the conditions we all deplore.
It is too easy for us to blame the industry, or the recession, or 9/11, for our ills. So take heart, and take a personal audit. As that other great acting teacher Lee Strasberg said: "Neither life nor talent stands still. Standing still leads inevitably to retrogression."
Going forward into 2003, remember: it's not what the industry makes of us, it's what we make of the industry.