John Kay

By the time Stephen Byers could slip from one cabinet post to another without taking responsibility for any of the blunders that seemed to happen wherever he was in charge, ministerial accountability had been replaced by T.S. Eliot’s cat: “When a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there.”

When an industry model is broken, the best business strategy may be to manage its decline.

People in the middle of events often know less about them than those watching from the outside, which is why interviews with senior business figures inform us about what these people think rather than what is happening.

At the medieval courts Shakespeare described, the exercise of power was not a means to an end, it was itself the end. The political and economic environment has been transformed. But human nature has not, and the factors that drive powerful men today are little different from those that drove them five centuries ago.

Today’s managers are victims of the tyranny of the quarterly earnings report. And that is why yesterday’s cost-savings are so often today’s corporate crisis.

The modern cult of the heroic chief executive is at the root of the problem. Greater shareholder activism may help, but the most valuable restraint would be more effective checks and balances within the company itself.

Most people dislike confrontation, and, given time, an aggressive minority will find itself alienated. Meet the reasonable demands, and appear to treat the unreasonable ones with seriousness; always engage in discussion, however futile.

Teachers and doctors strongly resist the introduction of a bonus culture: not just because they resent measurement of performance and accountability for their activities – although they do, and with little justification – but because they oppose importing the culture of assembly lines.

The richest men are not the most materialistic. Nor has it ever been otherwise.

To learn from mistakes, you must first acknowledge them.