Lucy Kellaway

Profile: Timeline view Full name: Lucy Kellaway (see also Martin Lukes) Area of interest: Management Journals/Organisation: Financial Times Email: lucy.kellaway@ft.com Personal website: Website: FT.com: http://www.ft.com/management/lucy-kellaway Blog: FT.com: http://blogs.ft.com/dearlucy Representation: Aitken Alexander Associates | Personally speaking... Networks: https://twitter.com/#!/lucykellaway

Biography: About: Education: Camden School for Girls; Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University: Philosophy, Politics and Economics Career: Currency dealer; Investors Chronicle, 1983, joined FT 1985: FT: Companies reporter, 1985; Oil correspondent, 1986; Lex columnist, 1988; Brussels correspondent, 1989; feature writer, 1992; Columnist and interviewer (business people and celebrities for the Lunch with the FT series), 1994- Current position/role: Management columnist also writes/has written for: The Irish Times - weekly management column Other roles/Main role: Appointed a non-executive Director of the Insurance Company Admiral plc, 2006 Other activities: Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Lucy Kellaway: My Life In Media, The Independent, 24th July 2006 Broadcast media: http://podcast.ft.com/index.php?sid=18 Video: Controversy/Criticism: Marketplace: Lying is essential to doing business - Publicradio.org, April 2007 Awards/Honours: Wincott Young Financial Journalist Award, 1984 Industrial Society WorkWorld Award (won twice) Columnist of the Year: British Press Awards, 2006 Scoops: Other: Married to Prospect magazine founder and editor, David Goodhart

Books & Debate: The answers: all the office questions you never dared to ask OCLC 228776673, 2007 Martin Lukes: who moved my BlackBerry™ OCLC 62172875, 2006 Sense and nonsense in the office OCLC 44402399, 2000 Latest work: In office hours (£12.99, Fig Tree) is published on May 6 2010. Extract here Speaking/Appearances: Personally speaking... Current debate:FT.com online forum - share your views on a Lucy Kellaway column

Financial Times: Column name: Lucy Kellaway Remit/Info: "For the last ten years her weekly Monday column has poked fun at management fads and jargon and celebrated the ups and downs of office life." - FT.com (n.b. column formerly called 'Lucy Kellaway on Management') Section: Business life Role: Columnist / Associate editor Pen-name: Email: lucy.kellaway@ft.com Website: FT.Com and online forum Commissioning Editor: Day published: Monday (in print) Regularity: Weekly Column format: Average length: 900 words

Articles: 2012 Beware the wild management consultants - The story of Bain and the buffalo makes one question business travel more than ever - 21st May Small mistakes attract the biggest trouble - Smart people will always make stupid errors - 14th May My logo obsession is more than a game - Our stock of brands is so ingrained that they have become part of who we are - 7th May Affiliations matter more than achievement - The ambitious should go for prestige every time - 23rd April Break bad habits and you’ll deliver profits - No amount of huddles will crack Royal Mail’s rubber band problem - 16th April The female of the species is more scary than the male - Successful women are more frightening than men - 2nd April Online life can teach us about the office - Virtual working might one day happen properly - 26th March The perils of parting shots - Why listening to departing employees is foolish - 19th March Women’s inequality isn’t what it used to be - There is no further need for bellyaching. Better causes can be found to fight - 12th March Office tittle-tattle makes having a job a pleasure - Gossip is the thing that unites us even in hard times - 5th March Meetings of minds are effectively a tool for dulling them - I’d always thought working alone was the best way to get things done - and now I have the proof - 27th February The fine art of penning your own ‘brief bio’ - Eight rules for this trickiest of literary genres - 20th February Stephen Hester deserves a bonus for good language - Last week the chief executive of RBS wrote to staff in a way that was more or less straight – and more or less motivational - 12th February UBS’s silly menu leaves a bad taste in the mouth - It is time to worry when companies write witless things and then hand them to their customers - 6th February The best I can do for today’s youth is quit - In almost all professions, the young can’t advance because everywhere they find my complacent generation is in situ - 30th January If you have to reject me, tell me straight - No one appreciates hollow good wishes from someone who is telling them to shove off - 23rd January If you want adult behaviour, treat people like babies - Imposing an arbitrary structure on adults may be less alien than it sounds; history suggests humans rather like it - 16th January And the winners of 2011’s guff awards are... - There is an economic law that says all markets are cyclical save one: the bullshit market, which knows only the bull phase - 9th January The FT’s management columnist names a trip to China and finally learning how to say no as high points of her year - On this day every year I make my family take part in a little ritual. Each person has to think about the year just ending and name a couple of highs and lows from it, possibly along with something that they’ve learnt - 3rd January

Articles: 2011 Christmas and work are a turkey of a combination - We may have all finally reached the only sensible conclusion about Christmas in the office: it doesn’t work - 19th December Social networks upend office etiquette - What is acceptable and what is shameless? The answer is that no one has the foggiest – we are all making it up as we go along - 12th December Money’s too tight to mention if you have lots of it - It is surprisingly hard to be good at having money – harder than acquiring it in the first place. The perfect amount of money is when you hardly have to think about it at all - 5th December We all deserve to be told the terrible truth - ‘Protected conversations’ between employees and bosses are a good idea but they won’t make any difference in practice - 28th November Stick to the rules and abusing your colleagues is OK - So long as top people in the City are continuing to behave in an uncivilised fashion, the world as we know it isn’t coming to an end - 14th November Copying, the mother of the best inventions - No one seems interested in teaching us how to get better at mimicry, despite it being the key to success - 7th November Management guff lands in China - When the guff germ arrives big time in China, my prediction is that they will be better at dealing with it than westerners - 24th October BlackBerry blackout left me happily unlinked - Most email messages are exceedingly stupid, and none more so than the ones that arrive from LinkedIn - 17th October Everyone benefits from a beast in the boardroom - All companies need someone on board who stirs things up and couldn’t care less what people think, just don’t confuse it with ego - 10th October Pretenders to power are the most dangerous - Power may corrupt, but absolute power corrupts much less than partial power – as too many lower down the pecking order show - 25th September My cure for an outbreak of weak excuse tendency - Sufferers from WET aren’t skiving or lying; they just have an inadequate notion of what it means to be reliable - 19th September Bartz flubs her lines as she leaves the Yahoo stage - Watching the former chief executive go down spitting obscenities was exhilarating in an immediate sort of way, but it also confirmed at least four of my most deeply held prejudices about life, work and language - 12th September Do teddies have a place in the boardroom? - Research from an expert in ethics at Harvard University suggests people behave better when teddy bears are in the room - 5th September Chief Googler’s ‘amazing’ clichés are dull and void - Larry Page’s thinking on his decision to spend $12.5bn on some mobile handsets, patents and set-top boxes is woolly at best - 22nd August Age-old bonds make the office tick - The idea of working exclusively with people my own age is loathsome to me: it would be like going back to school - 15th August Six little words and one very big question - It’s good sometimes to wonder what keeps you in your job; the tight word limit makes waffle and pretentiousness out of bounds - 8th August Switch off and stay on through worlidays - A bit like holiday and a bit like work, worlidays are the future for most professional workers, and they are really rather nice - 1st August The next problem: Is being a full-time mum diminishing? - What worries me is how much of my esteem is tied up in the idea of my job as a lawyer and not as a mother - 25th July Anti-PowerPoint revolutionaries unite - The ubiquitous piece of software can leave one feeling grumpy and passive and in no frame of mind for proper work - 18th July Unrequited love and corporate idiocy - When the new head of Tesco in the UK said he wanted staff to love customers, I followed up by visiting my local store - 11th July Cheers to those with a half-empty glass - In business, optimism is good and pessimism bad – but now pessimism may be coming back to the mainstream - 4th July You’ve got mail but you need to get your life back - People may agree to the e-mail charter in theory, but I very much doubt if they will manage to change their bad habits - 27th June Path to happiness runs through the office - It is a terrific relief to find that the true path to happiness involves doing what most of us do most of the time, whether we like it or not – work - 13th June E-mail contract is not worth the kilobytes - Legal disclaimers on e-mails are not only unenforced but unenforceable – making one wonder why they are so popula - 6th June The wonders worked by womanhood - Lagarde is right to play the female card – this is the best time there has been to be a woman with talent, charm, and an appetite for advancement - 30th May Despite the offer, I won’t fill in for DSK - I don’t like the idea of deputising for someone who was sorting out the financial crisis and might have been president of France - 23rd May No need to fret over no-show shareholders - If no one turns up to an AGM, it doesn’t mean that the whole exercise is pointless, it means that it is not paying its directors too much or polluting too many rivers - 16th May Must I remember my kids’ ages just to log on? - In the early days of computers I never forgot my password because the top secret word I’d chosen was ‘Kellaway’, which I found could be effortlessly recalled even in the most fraught moments - 9th May The dull names of those who rose - Research shows that with CEOs overwhelmingly having boring first names, the drearier the moniker, the greater the success – and that diversity is bunkum - 2nd May No ordinary Guy - He won a place at Oxford because they thought he was different. Lucy Kellaway meets financier and investor Guy Hands, who, despite losing control of EMI, has lost none of his confidence - 25th April Drivel is in the detail with CEO pay - The reams of justification for executive remuneration are mind-numbing and likely to make one succumb through sheer weariness - 18th April You might be a total genius, but I won’t tell you - Even though I prefer to have genius status granted for big things, I’m prepared to accept it for any achievement at all, even for pressing send on my computer - 11th April Tablets to cure our smartphone sicknesses - Small devices are more dangerous because we have no scruples about their use at all – when I have a BlackBerry in my hand, I suspend all normal rules of politeness - 4th April Writing is on the wall for ‘customer care’ - A letter posted on a lavatory wall to amuse with its verbosity highlights the deficiencies of another missive by a virtuoso at apology – and guff - 28th March China rekindles fondness for western ways - In accepting the invitation to go on a debating tour, I had expected to return with a mind full of management ideas and a suitcase full of rip-off handbags - 21st March Business leaders are worse than they think - When it comes to describing their dark sides, leaders feel bound by one rule: any weakness is perfectly admissible, so long as it is really a strength - 14th March Pen and paper: the forgotten management tool - Handwritten thank-yous are so thoroughly effective as a way of making other people feel good, it is mad that no one writes them anymore - 7th March Female quotas would target the wrong women - If you are reading this column during office hours on Monday, you can think of me sitting at a large table engaged in deep discussion about dividends, internal controls and appetites for risk - 28th February Aiming to be America’s Next Top Student - Tyra Banks’ trip to Harvard Business School may be inspired by a fear that there is something she’s missed out on, but she should beware of lessons in vacuousness - 21st February Talk like a loser and you might win - Most employees are fed on a never-ending diet of flannel, so when they are dished up a helping of stark truth, the effect can be invigorating and galvanising - 14th February Two banks, a conman and a homeless bloke - Two stories in the papers about bankers being taken for a ride by conmen and nutters were profoundly enjoyable – seeing investment bankers with egg on their faces is always cheering - 7th February A good employer offers more than Botox - The problem with Fortune’s workplace rankings are that they make an extremely simple thing seem fantastically complicated - 31st January Pointless conditions should not apply - Internet consumers should not have to read six pages of nonsense each time they buy something – what matters should be in plain language on the first page - 24th January Finnish lesson on principles for Goldman - The bank has much to learn from a retailer in Finland which has a more concise and honest set of stated ideals than its pithy and often boastful offering - 17th January My awards for management guff - Every year I observe that the quality of the jargon has been the best yet, but in 2010 it was so outstandingly good it has shifted every paradigm in the book - 10th January

Articles: 2010 Better to waste time at the office - Companies are groups of people and in order to thrive they need to spend an inordinately large amount of time holed up together - 20th December Two memos divided by understanding - Christmas is the ime for bad tidings as well as good – and there is a proper way to deliver them and that does not mean a volley of ‘visions’, ‘goals’ and ‘objectives’ - 13th December A glimpse of ambassadorial life - The world has become over-run with ambassadors. If WikiLeaks had seized all the e-mails of everyone with this title the volume of traffic would have caused the site to crash - 6th December Better to save face than look in the mirror - When it comes to our performance at work, blithe indifference can beat the cold light of truth - 29th November Breaking the glass ceiling at home - The lesson for a future corporate queen is to give more thought to her choice of spouse - 22nd November Don’t give hiring a moment’s notice - Lucy Kellaway considers the idea that companies would be no more worse off if job promotion was left to chance. It worked for ancient Greece after all - 15th November Being happy is a serious handicap - Lucy Kellaway examines a problem that is increasingly common among boys who have been blessed by fortune: if life is agreeable as it is, why lift a finger to change it? - 7th November The thief, his victim and the company laptop - The only problem with losing stuff is not that harm is done, it is that people fear that harm will be done and the loss does not look pretty in the papers - 1st November Glass ceiling in management drivel is broken - It is usually men who talk more management nonsense, but Lucy Kellaway finds they are no longer the only ones capable of talking guff - 25th October Go on, give us a smile - Lucy Kellaway attempts to coax a smile out of the entrepreneur and television star as she talks to him about the coalition government, Amstrad’s demise and Americans - 23rd October Listening to customers can be bad business - Management accepting humiliation in order to satisfy customers seems like a good thing but Gap’s climbdown on its new logo is feeble - 18th October We need more CEOs willing to speak out - Everyone lives in mortal dread of getting into trouble – CEOs are all shacked up together in a glass house in which no stones ever get thrown - 11th October Power posing and flattery beat an MBA any day - To make it, you simply have to fake it - 4th October Time to spit out more praise for Apple - The exchange between Steve Jobs and Chelsea Isaacs prompts Lucy Kellaway to congratulate him on his clarity, tetchiness and for being completely in the right - 27th September Words to describe the glory of Apple - The company has discovered something others have forgotten: language can be beautiful and easy to use - 20th September Why CEOs cry all the way to the bank - Toddlers, apparently, are not negative role models but have the perfect range of skills to run public companies - 13th September Twitter is no way to manage a smelly mess - An offhand comment on the site by a well-known smart alec triggers corporate overkill from Starbucks - 6th September Personal life has invaded the office - The only thing people choose not to do at work these days is give birth - 30th August Raise a glass to lust and liquor at work - In today’s offices, our laces are now pulled too tight; so tight, in fact, that they are cutting off the oxygen to people’s heads - 16th August Why financiers are leaders in drivel - The management drivel that we are familiar with comes from corporate bosses who are wage slaves and whose words are, therefore, fettered. These guys are so rich they feel no restraining influences - 2nd August Nice dud is key to office harmony - Rather than damaging performance, an underachieving colleague or manager can improve morale and teach us a lot about the nature of our workplace - 19th July It’s time to sack job appraisals - Performance reviews are of little or no value for employees and allow managers to delude themselves into thinking they are managing their people - 12th July Don’t just dress down on Fridays - All governments are looking for ways big and small to cut spending. But there is a better way that no one has yet considered: cut Fridays - 6th July Time to kick the gender gap into touch - There is only one clear difference between men and women managers: women are less likely to put their feet in their mouths - 28th June BP is the company we all love to hate - A slick of corporate hatred is spreading even further and more uncontrollably than the slick of oil - 28th June A self-help guide for Tesco’s retiring CEO - Quitting while ahead was a masterstroke, but the leap into the unknown might take a bit of managing: there are some definite don’ts - 14th June The road to the top is paved with good lies - Modest lying is not bad; indeed it is absolutely essential to get through a day in the office - 7th June Principles for living we could do without - Ray Dalio, Bridgewater’s chief, is deluded, insensitive, emotionally illiterate, simplistic, breathtakingly smug, weird and plain wrong with his top 300 rules for life - 24th May When the FSA comes calling... - A summons to a 90-minute interview with the regulator sent me reeling through the stages of grief - 17th May It’s the little things we should fret about - One of the comedies of working life is pretending to care about the big things - 10th May Fabulous Fab is far scarier than you think - Is Fabrice Tourre one of the most boastful men in the world, or is the Goldman Sachs trader a man who looks dispassionately at himself and is well aware of his weaknesses? - 4th May Lucy Kellaway on office romance - It’s easy to see why offices are Petri dishes in which jargon grows, but it isn’t so obvious why they are also the perfect breeding ground for sex and love - 1st May Ash cloud helped productivity - It was miraculous what the volcano did to conferences, meetings and business trips - 26th April The joys of long service - Does 25 years at this paper make me a disgrace? - 19th April Why I don’t care about online reputation - There’s no point trying to manage your reputation on the internet any more – it’s too late - 5th April My first law of success: a big lucky break - Most successful people have had big lucky breaks at birth and a succession of smaller ones thereafter - 30th March Generation game plays out on Facebook - This gap between the Facebook/non-Facebook generation is wider than the gap between my generation and our parents - 22nd March You can’t always get what you want - The current trend of using rock bands as models for business school study is deeply flawed - 15th March Why feedback forms leave me fed up - The wrong questions are asked at the wrong time to people who generally are in no frame of mind to answer them properly - 8th March A corporate calendar that is so last year - ‘A client a day’ makes no sense at all, especially in a business where people often work with the same client for months on end - 1st March Why insensitive bosses make more sense - This is the single most sensible word I’ve seen on the flabby subject of leadership in at least a decade - 13th February My new motto: Nomina Rutrum Rutrum - Latin gives oomph, partly because it lends an air of learning but also because most people have to look it up - 8th February Memory doesn’t matter when you have the net - The only things that are absolutely essential to remember are one’s computer login details, pin number and (possibly) names of a few key workmates. The rest of memory can be outsourced to the computer - 1st February Clooney won’t do in business - I can think of three possible explanations why in mainstream corporate life in the UK and the US, the ugly mug rules - 25th January My proven formula for cheerfulness - The most depressing day of the year is upon us. But Lucy Kellaway has found a better way to keep up morale than the motivational gurus - 18th January Why forecasters should stick to the weather - Cold air has been blowing out of the Arctic, and hot air has been blowing out of the mouths of business forecasters - 11th January Good year for management guff - Even in bad times, some can still push the envelope and go the extra mile when it comes to talking bull - 3rd January

Articles: 2009 Tomes to make you groan - There is no shortage of bad business books, but Lucy Kellaway feels that giving them as ironic presents to bankers would be irresponsible - 20th December Give office idiocy Dada treatment - I come across a lot of angry people in the course of my work, writes Lucy Kellaway . They take exception to anodyne things written by me - 14th December Rebels who look ridiculous - A bright tie, red socks, a flash of crimson in the lining of a suit – these attempts to stand out in the office smack of desperation - 7th December How to land on your feet when speaking in public - Make sure the person who’s onstage before you is boring and uses plenty of slides, and pick the right audience - 30th November When too much information harms the office - Staff are responding to overload by not digesting anything. No one reads e-mails any more – except from the boss - 23rd November The return of managerial bone-headedness - The bear market in bull may be over but the bear market in courage is not. Fear and paranoia are even more a part of corporate life - 16th November Don’t work with your spouse - To allow husbands and wives to co-work has always struck me as a bad idea financially, socially, practically and emotionally - 9th November When a longer working life is good for us all - Work is a bit like taking exercise. It can be boring and stressful while you are doing it but it is preferable to not working - 2nd November Why ‘chillaxing’ isn’t cool - Chilling is seen by today’s children as the natural order of things. However, taking it easy in the office is not a good idea - 19th October Taboo or not taboo? Some new office guidelines - A search for the sacrosanct subjects of the workplace was almost fruitless as most of the old strictures at work are on the way out, but there are still some no-go areas - 12th October The perils of revealing your illness at work - Gordon Brown’s questioning over whether he takes pills to cope with the pressure reveals the new taboo in the workplace - 5th October How to be a top female boss - Anna Wintour’s longevity in the fashion industry and hard-nosed approach provide a useful model for women executives - 28th September Drug dealers are perfect gurus in a recession - With their ruthlessness and brilliance at managing cash flow, hustlers such as the reformed 50 Cent can provide useful lessons to executives - 21st September Letting the office go to the dogs - For one day in September, several thousand of the unemployed will make their way into UK workplaces. Most will have exceptionally low IQs and will be capable of following only the simplest instructions. The occasion is Take Your Dogs to Work Day - 14th September Wash away management’s verbal germs - Hygiene at work is in. In office toilets, grown-up employees are being told how to wash their hands. But now businesses are being urged to keep metaphorically clean - 7th ?September Unhappy lessons in smiling - A Japanese scheme to rate the curvaceousness of staff smiles is flawed not because it’s like Big Brother but because it wrongly assumes that a bigger smile is a better one - 20th July The career choice that delivers - The last time I’d seen this 56-year-old he was a marketing director but now he triumphantly announced he had become a postman - 13th July Women in the boardroom - After decades of discussing women in the boardroom we should have gained enough confidence to go post-PC - 4th July Take it easy about ageing - My contemporaries seemed to have stopped playing the obsessive game of age comparison – its time for me to join them - 29th June The missed trick in the new pay reality - The old relationships between work and leisure and money and no money have started to break down - 22nd June School exams fail the office test - They teach lessons about work that you need to unlearn pretty smartly if you want to get ahead in business - 15th June What transparency on expenses would really reveal - Executives who take their customers to McDonald’s may be losing goodwill faster than they are saving money - 6th June Kudos to bosses who use praise wisely - At a time when no one can afford to reward people with more money, to reward them with handouts of ‘what a star‘ would seem a no-brainer - 25th May Underdog tale sheds light on pushy parenting - I think it does one good to fail in a small way. It means one then has to work hard to catch up, and that one may have a fresher way of doing things - 18th May How a thief gave me 10 reasons to be grateful - It was a great morale boost that this time I was victim rather than perpetrator, and people have been astoundingly sympathetic - 11th May Denial, fear, acceptance and a burst of cheer - We are fed up with being fed up: the green shoots are sprouting vigorously in our minds, even if they are not sprouting in the economy - 4th May Twittering executives reveal too much - Either they fill their tweets with mundane personal detail, or they fill them with mundane professional detail – which is possibly worse - 27th April How to take safe revenge on the boss - Anti-boss rage is more in vogue than it has ever been in my lifetime and I find I’m watching the display with alternate surges of glee and discomfort - 20th April When chore-chore means war-war - The trick is not for husbands and wives to get to a 50:50 share when doing the housework. It is to stop counting and to stop minding - 6th April Career counsellors should find a new job - The whole idea of advice is hopeless – the best tests in the world would not help, as there is no formula for matching round pegs to round holes - 30th March One subject that songwriters labour to avoid - Work has been overlooked in pop lyrics – there are office novels and office sit-coms and office movies, but almost no office songs - 23rd March A Fred Goodwin or Dick Fuld in all of us - There are many theories about the mess we are in, but it is simply what you get when you take human beings and put them in an organisation - 14th March Lord Lucan and the vanished charm of desks - His desk was crafted about 200 years ago from rosewood and tulipwood, my modern design is made from a slab of medium density fibreboard - 9th March Management metaphors are out for the count - I have seen an article that marks the first evidence from the management guff industry that ‘soft’ is finally on its way out and ‘hard’ is on its way in - 2nd March Welcome back, semicolon; c u l8r, informality - The pendulum has swung away from slouchy language towards correct usage of punctuation - 23rd February Stay smart and pull your socks up - To survive this economic downturn we need to smarten up and buckle down. We really need to get some work under our belts - 16th February My new guilt as a selfish working mother - An idea about children’s happiness that had given me solace for years has been rudely overturned - 9th February I have fallen into recession’s web of fear - Through blogs, websites and e-mails the world’s economic ills are fed to us on a drip all day long, multiplying troubles everywhere - 2nd February Nothing to fear from your inner child - I dare say the US president hoped his words would resonate beyond the toy cupboard and sweetie jar, but even so they are feeble advice - 26th January Memories of my $10m trading blunder - The first episode of a business reality television programme rammed home the message that being a trader is the worst job in the world - 19th January Cool reaction to colleagues’ colds - If any more were encouraged to take to their beds just because they have a sniffle there would be no one presenting themselves for work at all - 12th January Twaddle thrives amid the turmoil - In spite of my fears that management had renounced waffle, the art of business people talking rubbish is alive and well - 4th January

Articles: 2008 Expect to get dirty when a name is mud - If one’s occupation involves making off with investors’ money, then it is proper the name ‘Made-off’ reflects that. There is a fine tradition at work here - 21st December 2008 Money is the new secret of a happy job - When one’s job is at risk and one’s savings are a shadow of their former selves, the search for meaning at work becomes meaningless in itself - 14th December 2008 The hottest recessionary activity in town - If there has been a mass shift from taking risks in financial markets to taking risks in the domestic market, will it mean mass domestic instability - 7th December 2008 Go short on letters to investors - I would like to know whether hedge funds’ letters to their investors have calmed their recipients by distracting them – or made them even crosser - 2nd November 2008 No mistake that blunders are still bad - The theory that making errors is good is one of the most insidious, dangerous and downright moronic management ideas of all time - 27th October 2008 How to save a column from Armageddon - Newspaper articles covering these tumultuous times are so tightly packed with cliché that it is hard to do anything other than join in - 19th October 2008 The supercalifragilistic answer - ‘Mary Poppins’ may feature a City of tail coats rather than chinos, but its depiction of unsustainable wealth speaks about our own woes - 12th October 2008 The scarcity in silliness - Another market has crashed, bringing to an end one of the longest bull runs ever: the bottom has fallen out of management bullshit - 5th October 2008 A novel approach for chief executives - A course at Harvard Business School makes chief executives sit down and talk about novels and think about writing - 28th Sepember 2008 Why salaries are the final taboo - Transparency on our earnings might make things fairer if there were a ‘right’ amount that everyone should be taking home but this isn’t the case - 14th September 2008 Teen troublemakers and business parents - The children of business leaders can screw up in life as much as they like without doing any damage at all to their parents’ career prospects - 7th September 2008 The pen is mightier than high-tech gadgets - New technology tempts us with the latest version of this or that, but the customer service associated with modern products is far from alluring - 31st August 2008 Turning customer delight into disgust - It was the worst ‘service’ I’ve ever had: my pulse now quickens with rage every time I see the hateful orange and white livery of EasyJet - 24th August 2008 The City lawyer, the intern and the strip club - A tale of drunkenness and alleged harassment resulted in a lawyer being dismissed and the reaction has split the City of London - 17th August 2008 Dying wish to spend more time in the office - Climbing into a coffin and pretending to be dead is breaking new ground in what business people are made to do in the name of self-improvement - 27th July 2008 Strange kind of capitalism - For a capitalist economy to work, we all need to believe that more money is better than less money, and that a pay rise is a good thing - 20th July 2008 My guide to snoopology - Lord King’s photographs were trying to tell me he was important; instead they said that he was a namedropper and general pain in the backside - 13th July 2008 Board battles won on playing fields of youth - Almost half of the chiefs of Britain’s biggest companies have gained awards in the field of sport – twice as many as have any academic trophies - 6th July 2008 Shock of BPC: before personal computers - I have just started a 24 hour low-tech vigil – sans PC and e-mail – to remind myself what life was like when windows were things that let the light in - 29th June 2008 When complaining to wrong person is right - Not long ago, a friend opened a can of Heinz baked beans to feed her children for supper. As she poured the orange slop into a bowl she spotted two brown beans among the hundreds of orange ones - 20th June 2008 A bouquet of office barbs - Last week Sir Alan Sugar said “you’re fired” to three of the last four candidates in The Apprentice and 8.9m people sat on sofas all over Britain gawping at the expressions of bitter disappointment, shock and anger that these two words inspired - 15th June 2008 Joys of haircare and soldiery - When we were at primary school, my sister and I used to steal our mother’s rollers and nail varnish and curl each other’s hair and paint each other’s fingernails. My brother, meanwhile, would spend hours with his Action Man commando, pulling the cord in its plastic back and listening to it croak: “Enemy tank approaching!” and “Give me some cover!” - 15th June 2008 My message to letter-writing chiefs: you're fired - Last week on The Apprentice television show, two teams had to design a box of tissues and come up with a telly advert to catch the attention of consumers - 26th May 2008 Marriage demands due diligence - Every year 1m married couples in Europe decide that they cannot stand the sight of each other and split up - 18th May 2008 No, I'm the greatest - Boasting used to be a very un-British trait - but in a world of work where it's hard to measure one employee against another, it's increasingly important - BBC News magazine: A Point of View, Friday, 16th May 2008 Aim low to find meaning at work - At a party last week.I met a man who until recently was a government minister. We chatted about this and that, and he said how much he was enjoying his assortment of sinecures – non-executive directorships, speaking engagements and so on. He had both more money and more spare time than he used to have; in all, life was good. I asked him if he was missing the power. He looked at me as if I were a simpleton. Government ministers don’t have any power, he said - 11th May 2008 Decade’s spaced-out legacy in business - In May 1968 I had my first sexual experience. I was almost nine at the time and that afternoon had been practising French skipping in my bedroom with my best friend, Tabitha. When we had tired of leaping over the elastic that was strung tightly between two chairs, she told me about French kissing and – briefly and rather less enthusiastically – we practised that instead - 4th May 2008 What if women ran the world? - What would it be like if women ruled the world? Over the past 10 days, the question has been put by newspapers and broadcasters to all sorts of people – and all sorts of answers have been provided - 27th April 2008 With no losers, we wouldn’t have any winners - Last week a reader sent me an e-mail pointing out a mistake in my latest column. Blogs and posts, he explained, are not the same. A blog refers to the whole thing; a post is an entry on a blog - 20th April 2008 On monetary matters, nuttiness kicks in - Last week’s big news at my office was that the tills in the canteen were on the blink, and could no longer swipe our vending cards. So in order to buy, say, a large latte and a lemon muffin, we had to open our purses and find £1.80 in coins instead - 6th April 2008 Seven types of rot that appeal to big cheeses - When financial markets are crumbling and banks are crashing, the natural response of people in positions of authority is to talk rot - 30th March 2008 Trapped workers develop a line in doodling - I draw boxes. I draw them carefully in 3D and then put a little circle at each corner. My husband draws arrows. A line, then a triangular head at one end followed by a similar one at the other - 16th March 2008 Put an end to the trauma of the telephone - I punched in a London number and far away in Singapore the phone rang twice. “This is Bloomberg, the home of customer service, innovation and creativity,” said a recorded voice. “Please stand by and listen to one of our seven global television channels whilst we find you a service genius.” - 9th March 2008 Green holiday that makes me see red - Last Friday, when others were toiling away as usual in the office, the 5,000 employees of the National Trust were at home changing light bulbs and making compost toilets on their allotments - 2nd March 2008 Rekindling a 25-year bond - In my head is a dull ache and in my handbag a stack of business cards. One is from an acupuncturist. Another from a racehorse trainer, and further cards from asset managers, venture capitalists and people who are presidents of companies bearing their own name. It was quite a party - 24th February 2008 Happiness is finding your inner receptionist - A couple of months ago a friend asked if I’d write her a job reference. She is bright and witty and sophisticated and for about 20 years has held a succession of powerful jobs in television and newspapers - 10th February 2008 Unpolished exchanges put soul into shopping - Let me tell you about two things that have happened to me in the past 24 hours. The first concerns a shabby pair of brown suede ankle boots. The second, a glossy lipstick called Nude Lips - 3rd February 2008 Accenture’s next champion of waffle words - When one door closes, another one opens. On Thursday the prison gates clanked shut behind Martin Lukes in Florida but, in London, the door of an office inside swung ajar, revealing Mark Foster, a middle-aged white man with a long-winded title - 27th January 2008 (Accenture) No way to manage a bleating luvvie - A few weeks ago I had lunch with my brother-in-law. First we discussed our unseemly mid-life urges: his to do triathlons, mine to buy bright green shoes with six-inch heels. We then moved on to our respective professions – opera singing and writing – and the question of how one can go on getting better at these after having spent a quarter of a century trying - 20th January 2008 Bonuses for the incorrigibly childish - Normally, if someone was to give me a large sum of money, say £1m or so, I’d be quite pleased. But if I was an investment banker, I probably wouldn’t be. Just like the thousands of them who at this time of year will be receiving more than £1m, I’d be eaten up with insecurity, envy and greed - 13th January 2008 A New Year’s resolution that will last - I may not be getting better at much else, but I am getting better at making New Year’s resolutions. Mine for 2008 is the best I’ve ever made. It’s positive, it’s ambitious, it’s inspiring but it also has a highish chance of success. It is to be competent - 6th January 2008

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