Simon Caulkin

THE REAL British disease is the unerring talent for putting together entities that are less than the sum of their parts.

The way top managers are paid does influence a firm’s performance – but not in the way the textbooks indicate.

How can Toyota fulfil its dream of building a car that never crashes or breaks down and has zero effect on the environment? The same way it does everything else – by patiently solving one problem at a time.

Targets, claim their defenders, are simple, they provide focus, and they work. Yes, they do. Unfortunately, these are also their fatal flaws.

How does a company go from great to gruesome overnight? And if it wasn’t overnight, why didn’t anyone step in to stop it?

YOU WAIT years for a chink of light in the management gloom, and suddenly flashes of illumination go off all over the place.

A new book views management as an unfinished and crippled project – thanks to the business schools.

There’s little in business that hasn’t been seen before. Wait long enough and the cycle will come round.

The Tavi’s influence has always been way out of proportion to its size.

LIKE BIRDS that forage on the back of rhinos, a key success factor for small firms is the ability to move smartly to avoid being crushed by giant competitors or customers