Morgen Witzel's Blog: http://www.morgenwitzel.com/rss/

Leadership in a time of crisis

Signed a new book contract this week, a book with a difference and hopefully a book that will make a difference. Right from the beginning of the pandemic, I was determined that something good had to come out of this, something positive to take forward once the virus finally relaxes its grip. Being a writer, the first thing I thought of was to write something. But I knew this wasn’t just down to me. 

At the University of Exeter Business School I am fortunate to have a peer group, the Fellows of the Exeter Centre for Leadership, who had very much the same idea as myself; how can we make a difference? Within a few weeks of the first lockdown we were already putting our heads together and planning the book, and now we have a green light and are going forward. The book will be published by Routledge, probably in the autumn of 2021. The book will be a collection of essays on leadership, some of them high-level and general, some focusing on particular regions or sectors. We have contributors with backgrounds in business, charities, education, the armed forces, politics, the arts and healthcare, from Europe, India, Africa and North America, from established scholars and from younger people at the beginning of their own leadership journeys. 

The single idea that draws all these diverse contributors together is to challenge conventional ideas about leadership. The Covid-19 pandemic has shone a harsh spotlight not just on the leaders of organisations, but on the concept of leadership itself and the way we lead. Many of those who were in positions of power before the crisis have been found wanting; too often, our idols have turned out to have feet of clay. 

As Warren Buffet famously said, when the tide goes out, that’s when you find out who has been swimming naked. Quite a few of our traditional leaders are standing before us now in their birthday suits, petrified and trembling as they await their fates. The organisations and societies they have been leading are unlikely to forget or forgive. 

But does the problem lie with the leaders themselves? Or do the roots of the problem lie deeper? Do we need to start rethinking and reimagining the kind of leadership we will need in a post-Covid world?  We believe we do. 

The focus of the book, then, is on what we need to change in order to make leadership fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. We argue for a fundamental rethinking of the concept of power and a recognition that leaders can emerge from anywhere in society; even that ‘leading’ may be possible without ‘leaders’ being present. We argue also that concepts such as kindness, fairness and a genuine care for the well-being of others need to be central to leadership; leaders need to care about those they lead, rather than seeing them as a means to an end. Ultimately, successful leadership is something that is done ‘for’ people and ‘with’ them rather than ‘to’ them. 

That is only the tip of the iceberg, but I thought I would share this project and see if other people are thinking along the same lines. This is without doubt the most exciting leadership book I have ever had the privilege of being involved with, and I cannot wait to see it in print.

It’s down to us, now

Ten years ago, during the course of my research into the Tata Group, I interviewed one of the group’s grand old men, R.K. Krishna Kumar. When I met him he was head of Tata Global Beverages, but he had been involved with many companies in the group over the years. 

I asked him, as I asked everyone, what he thought the values of the Tata brand were. He did not answer immediately. Instead he gazed out the window for a while, steepling his fingers, and it was perhaps five seconds or so before he spoke. ‘What you must realise’, he said, ‘is that this is not a brand story. This is a story about good and evil.’ 

I have to admit was dumbstruck. I had asked a question about marketing; why were we suddenly discussing metaphysics? I was also a little uncomfortable. I am an ordinary cynical agnostic Canadian; I don’t tend to have conversations about good and evil, and find them rather emotive subjects. But I listened while R.K. Krishna Kumar explained his philosophy, and I began to understand. 

The world, he said (and I am paraphrasing heavily here) is full of bad things. War, hunger, sickness, poverty, illiteracy, refugees fleeing persecution, destitute people trying and often failing to hold their lives together. Those things, he said, can fairly be called evil. That means we as business leaders have two choices. We can turn our back on the evil, in which case we become part of the problem. Or we can use the very limited power we have to try and make a difference, to alleviate at least some of the problems we see around us. And if we do so, then we can with fairness be called good. 

And now, the time has come to take sides. Right here, right now, we need to decide which it will be. Not every business or every organisation is able to join in the fight against Covid-19; for many of us, all we can do is hunker down and wait. But the time will come when we must emerge from our bunkers and foxholes, and start the rebuilding process. When that happens, everyone will have a role to play. 

Nor is it just a matter of returning to the old normal. The world we knew before the crisis will not return, and nor should it. Rampant inequality, climate change and many other issues mean that even once the economy has been restored to health, we still have mountains to climb. Our businesses and public institutions need to pull together as never before and learn to collaborate and harness each others’ power, and that means we will to change our ways of leading managing, often quite dramatically. 

To paraphrase Charles Darwin (but only slightly), it is not the strongest or the fastest or the most intelligent that survive, but those that are the best able to adapt. As of now, as of this very moment, we need to begin to think about how we will adapt and what contribution we will make towards building a better future. That is the imperative that faces everyone of us. 

But, of course, no one can compel us to join in the effort of rebuilding. We have free will, and we can freely choose to be selfish, greedy and uncaring, if that is what we wish. As Jean-Paul Sartre pointed out, no one can decide on ethical issues for us; we have to choose for ourselves. But we cannot delay the choice any longer. This, as they say in snooker, is make-your-mind-up time. 

So, back to R.K. Krishna Kumar. What choice do we make? Which do we want to be? Part of the problem, or part of the solution? 

Management from the Masters





























From Confucius to Warren Buffett Twenty Timeless Principles for Business

The belief that everything is changing led to the disasters of the dotcom era. This book reminds us that some fundamental rules do still apply by taking readers through 20 imperatives derived from the wisdom of great leaders and management theorists including Peter Drucker, Henry Fayol, Andrew Grove and bankers and financiers such as Thomas Gresham and Warren Buffet.

This entertaining run down of the fundamental laws, rules and principles business professionals should break at their peril is complemented by case studies that document the consequences of ignoring these key laws. Management from the Masters is a book to be read and re-read to reinforce the fundamental rules of business for all successful managers.

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Reviews

“Morgen Witzel’s new text covers millennia of distilled management wisdom. The author has an almost-encyclopedic knowledge of the field. The book is both highly readable and informative and truly brings the topic to life. It should thus have a wide appeal to students, lecturers and practitioners.” –  Malcolm Warner, Professor and Fellow Emeritus, Wolfson College and Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

“A rip-roaring history of managerial, philosophical and scientific thought that captures twenty enduring principles of human and organisational behaviour. Few other authors could cover so broad and complex a range of ideas in such a straightforward and engaging manner.” –  Richard Bolden, Professor of Leadership and Management, University of the West of England, UK

“This entertaining book offers time tested wisdom and provides insights that will be instantly useful to anyone involved in business.” –  Peter L. Howell, Managing Director, Rabobank International

“Morgen Witzel, one of the world’s leading management historians has done it again. He has written another outstanding book that is a pleasure to read and at the same time makes us think deeply about important management principles that are historical yet entirely relevant for our challenging global economy.” –  Karl Moore, Associate Professor, McGill University

“Did you know that the law of entropy as applied to business derives from the second law of thermodynamics? Or that Arthashastra, Kautilya’s classic work on politics and leadership, was written in India over 2,300 years ago? Or that the ‘concept of the span of control was first formally identified by the Lithuanian engineer V.A. Graicunas in the early 1930s’? These and many other fascinating references, all still highly relevant to contemporary – and doubtless to future – business practices, are peppered throughout Morgen Witzel’s delightful and thought-provoking volume of cautionary notes. They are culled and interpreted from sages across the globe and centuries, and concern the art and practice of managing.” –  Bob MacKenzie, Organizations and People magazine

Managing for Success





























Spotting Danger Signals – And Fixing Problems Before They Happen

The damage that incompetent managers do is incalculable. Every year they wipe tens of billions off the value of companies around the world. But the routinely incompetent behaviour that leads to failure is often covered up, incompetent managers are paid off and the causes of failure are swept under the carpet. Yet, most of these failures could have been avoided if only we knew how to spot the signs of incompetence in advance, and take steps to prevent it happening. Prevention is always better, and cheaper, than cure.

Morgen Witzel tackles the problem of incompetence in the round by exploring the political, cultural, psychological and personal factors that lead to incompetency at every level of business. Arrogance, excessive reliance on formal plans and metrics, lack of professional pride, and poor and misguided business education and training are among the problems that drag businesses down.

Using international case studies from Ford Motor Company, Royal Ahold and Lehman Brothers, practical solutions are provided for avoiding incompetence by changing the culture within organizations and the ways in which managers are trained and developed to truly manage for success and minimise failure.

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Reviews

“Morgen Witzel writes with precision, clarity and wisdom about a subject that far too many business books – and leaders – choose to avoid; the social nature of leadership that makes sensible people in good companies make foolish judgements and then follow them through diligently to failure. Read this book, and reflect.” –  Ward Crawford, Former President, Cadbury Adams Japan, and Former Managing Director, Green & Black’s Ltd

“For too long, the focus of business has been solely learning about ‘best-practice’. Well what about learning about ‘bad-practice’ and how to avoid it? Morgen Witzel’s excellent, thoughtful and enjoyable book masterfully addresses this question. Only by learning from corporate weaknesses and failures can we really manage for success. Highly recommended.” –  Antonio E. Weiss, International best-selling author of 101 Business Ideas That Will Change the Way You Work and Key Business Solutions

“There are two reasons why you should read this book. First, it’s a sad fact that one learns more from failure than from success. Better still to learn from other people’s failures. This book can help you do that, showing you how to look out for the early signs of a ‘culture of incompetence’ in your organization and address them before the virus spreads. Secondly, it’s a cracking read. Witzel is an experienced business historian and a master storyteller.” –  Patrick Barwise, emeritus professor, London Business School, co-author of Simply Better and Beyond the Familiar

“This is an intelligently argued and impressively thorough handbook, which ought to be lobbed in to boardrooms and executive offices. Businesses and organizations find so many ways to fail, and Morgen Witzel has charted the most important ones. Read it, and think.” –  Stefan Stern, Financial Times columnist and Visiting Professor at Cass Business School, London

“This is a rare thing – a management book that is both entertaining and an easy read, full of the author’s humanity.” –  Dina Medland, Independent writer on corporate governance and business issues

“This forceful early warning of the importance of managing well gives the book a real moral impetus.” –  Andrew Hill, Management Editor, Financial Times

A History of Leadership

The evolution of leadership into a widely accepted concept occurred without any shared understanding and acceptance of its meaning and relevance in contemporary society.

Why do some people become leaders? What is the source and legitimacy of leadership power?

This book journeys into the heart of the relationship between leaders and followers, the social space and the arena where both contest and collaboration take place and leadership itself is played out. In the book, Morgen Witzel moves beyond traditional traits and skills framing, offering a fresh, historical analysis that involves many different actors with different motives and needs.

By analysing the evolution of power relationships, the book analyses the interactions around how power is used and control is bargained for to illuminate the centrepiece of leadership. A wide-ranging history of a slippery subject, this book provides students, scholars and reflective practitioners with an empirical, historical base on which to test their own ideas and experiences.

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Reviews

‘Do not read this if you are looking for tips on running “happy organisations”, nor simplistic models taught in executive away days. Witzel analyses the essence of leadership, and of “followership”. In Iraq during the “Surge” we tried to understand “the elastic” of our strategic leverage over competing power brokers: we might have done better had we read this book. A thought-provoking serious study for thoughtful, serious leaders.’ — Lieutenant General (Retd) Sir Paul Newton

‘This outstanding book is a must-read. Witzel draws on a huge range of historical examples to offer genuinely new insights into an issue of central and enduring relevance. He reveals the complexity of leadership as it actually practiced for good or ill in different contexts. This is a timely warning against the simplistic formulaic models of leadership that still abound.’ — John Child, Professor of Commerce, University of Birmingham, UK and author of ‘Hierarchy: A Key Idea for Business and Society’.

‘It is all here: the history, culture, psychology, philosophy, politics and practice of leadership, set out in clear detail, with rich learning worn very lightly. Morgen Witzel has done us a service by showing how deep the roots of leadership are, even if we are sometimes too easily distracted by the noise and posturing of today’s “leaders”.’ — Stefan Stern, Visiting Professor in Management Practice, Cass Business School, City, University of London, UK.

‘A History of Leadership offers a unique perspective on the study of leadership. By looking at how leadership has been practiced in the past, Morgen Witzel cuts through much of the vagueness of leadership theory and looks at leadership in practice, warts and all. Some of the book is uncomfortable reading; all of it is fascinating.’ — Dominic Barton, Global Managing Partner Emeritus, McKinsey & Company.

’Sometimes you come across a book that you wish you’d written: this is one of those – a critical, wide ranging and global survey of the history of leadership that I doubt will be bettered for many years to come’ — Keith Grint, Emeritus Professor, Warwick Business School

The Ethical Leader





























Why Doing the Right Thing Can Be the Key to Competitive Advantage

Ethical behaviour by businesses, or their staff, is often seen as the corporate and social responsibility icing on an organizational cake something that is nice to do but never really essential. But by turning this view around and making ethical behaviour a primary focus Witzel shows how businesses can create and maintain long-term competitive advantage.

Trust and respect among key stakeholder groups, particularly employees and customers, cannot be overstated in their importance to an organization s success: trust engenders loyalty and good reputation, which in turn builds brand value. However, while ethical behaviour is key to trust-building, in order for an organization to see lasting, positive outcomes it needs to go deeper than something managers do out of a sense of moral duty. 

The Ethical Leader shows why ethical practice has to be the platform on which a strong and enduring business can be built, and leaders and managers need to provide the necessary tools and insights to enable this to happen. Witzel offers a practical introduction to some of the key concepts in ethics, including how to deal with ethical paradoxes and making ethical decisions. The book explores the specifics of what makes an ethical leader, and how leaders can communicate values and standards across an organization in order to engage the trust of employees, consumers, shareholders and the wider community.

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Reviews

“Witzel […] breaks this hefty subject down into manageable chunks and examines not only what ethics is but how a leader can turn ethical principles into value.” –  FT, Business books of month,

“Scarcely a day passes without the news of some scandal in business, sport or charities breaking – demonstrating the real need to improve ethical leadership in today’s world. In this important book, Morgen Witzel brings his prodigious experience to bear on this complicated topic. He reviews what has been written and, with an enormous range of practical case study examples, shows how ethical leadership should lead to value creation. It is a must-read for leaders of any organization anywhere.” –  Gerry Brown, Chairman G Brown Associates Ltd; Chairman, NovaQuest Capital Management; author of The Independent Director

“Witzel invites the reader into a friendly conversation about leadership ethics in business that is both grounded in ethical theory and illustrated by real cases. His book helps students and practitioners tackle some of the ethical challenges of leadership.” –  Joanne B. Ciulla, Professor of Leadership Ethics, Department of Management and Global Business, and Director, Institute for Ethical Leadership, Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick

“In a sea of leadership books, Morgen Witzel has provided a stand-out insight into a reason for ethical leadership behaviour to be a major contributor to longterm business success. By placing value over profit as the performance indicator of business, he demonstrates that persistent consumer engagement with specific businesses is heavily influenced by ethical behaviours, which add value to products, services, internal management, the workforce and partner relationships. This is a highly enjoyable book to read, full of case studies that make the point that ‘ethics makes you money.’” –  Derek Mowbray, Organization Health Psychologist and Behavioural Scientist; Chairman, The Wellbeing and Performance Group; Director, The Management Advisory Service (MAS); Independent Technical Expert, European Commission; Formerly Visiting Professor of Psychology, Universities of Northumbria and Gloucestershire

“This is the book I have been looking for: a clear and unambiguous explanation of ethics in practice, yet never simplistic, and always sympathetic to the predicaments of people making tough choices. The philosophical underpinning is sound and also comprehensive. Morgen Witzel honours the worldly-wise, but doesn’t let anyone off the hook too lightly. A guidebook for leaders in all walks of life.” –  Jonathan Gosling, Emeritus Professor of Leadership Studies, University of Exeter Business School

Today sees the launch of my latest book, Management Consultancy, published by Routledge (http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9781138798847/ ). It was a very interesting project to work on. To be honest, I had never considered writing a book on management consultancy, and probably would not have done so had not my editor, Terry Clague, encouraged me to do it.

My first thought was there must be plenty of books on management consultancy out there already. In fact, there were fewer than you might think. Many of those that do exist are excellent, of course, and describe the consulting industry very well. I felt that for another book on the subject to work, it would have to do something a little different.

Rather than undertake detailed analysis of the industry and the structure of consulting firms, therefore, I tried to concentrate on the experience of what it is like to be a consultant. Especially for readers who have limited knowledge of the industry but are considering a career in consultancy, Management Consultancy should give you some of the flavour of what consulting work is like, the methods consultants use, the problems that can be encountered and the issues and dilemmas with which consultants wrestle.

I have focused heavily on things like problem identification and problem solving. The first is particularly tricky because, as experienced consultants will tell you, the problem the client has identified and for which he/she has asked for help is often not the real problem. This is one reason why consultants must have good analytical skills; they must be able to dig into a business and understand how and why it works as it does, if they are identify these deep-seated problems.

I also included an entire chapter on ethics, because management consultants face constant streams of ethical issues and dilemmas, and the ability to react to these and make the right decisions is essential to both the success of any consultancy engagement and the consultant’s own credibility and reputation. I also included a chapter on sustainability, which one reviewer grumbled was just a fad. Not so. Consultants are now routinely asked to build sustainability features into solutions they deliver to clients. ‘Sustainability consulting’ is moving out of its niche market and into the mainstream, and would-be consultants must be aware of this.

Management consultancy, like so many professions, is changing rapidly. How consultants do things today is very different from twenty years ago, and in ten years’ time will be different again. Consultancy is a fascinating world, and I hope this book offers some insights into the world that will be of benefit to readers.

A couple of years ago, the Financial Times ran an interesting story about the rising numbers of male senior executives – mostly in the USA, it should be said – who were embarking on courses of testosterone replacement therapy (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/68015bb2-51b8-11e1-a99d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3XOg2RkKw ). The thinking was that ramping up their testosterone levels would make men more confident and more aggressive, better able to take on the world and win; exactly the sort of attributes that it is believed senior managers require.

Yeah.

As I discuss in more detail in my new book Managing for Success (which comes out next week; end of shameless plug), a good many of the problems of the world of business, and by extension the world generally, are caused by too much testosterone, not too little. I think of Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers threatening to rip out the hearts of short-sellers and eat them, or the unrepeatable language quoted by Satyajit Das in Traders, Guns and Money, used by financial market traders to describe not just their rivals but their close colleagues in the same firm. But mostly I think about the ridiculous, prehistoric attitudes to women still exhibited by too many male senior executives.

Although few people – correction, few men – like to admit it, sexism is still rife in many workplaces. Whatever men may say, women are treated as inferior. They are paid less. They are not given the same chances to achieve responsible positions. And they are harassed sexually and sometimes threatened by male colleagues.

Why" Because men are naturally male chauvinist pigs" I don’t believe it. I think the real problem lies in the culture of our institutions which pushes men, as well as women, to conform to stereotypes. Think, for example, of the number of men who, on reaching a certain position of eminence, ditch their original spouse and marry a trophy wife instead. Why do they do this" Some of those second marriages are actually deeply unhappy. But men choose this course becuase they look around and see their colleagues and role models doing it, and feel they should conform.

I have lost count of the number of instances I have heard of where senior mangers divorced their wives and remarried ballerinas. Why ballerinas" I have a theory, unproven and probably unprovable, but I will stick to it anyway. When some men look at ballet dancers gliding across the stage they see their ideal woman: beautiful, graceful, sexually alluring; and silent.

A business culture where there is a high incidence of divorces and extra-marital affairs is a danger sign. Of course many marriages do break down, and that is sad, but it should not be the accepted norm. Look deeper and you will find very often that these are also cultures where women are treated as second-class employees and where sexual harassment lurks in the shadows.

And why is this dangerous" First, in these days of social media, nothing stays out of sight for long. The Internet loves sex, and details of the sexual peccadilloes of executives are likely to go viral rather quickly. And as some recent scandals have shown, investors don’t like this. Generally, if your executives are making headlines thanks to their exploits in the bedroom, not the boardroom, then you have a problem.

On a deeper level, Ho Chi Minh hit the nail on the head: women are half of humanity. Any business culture which denies half its potential talent pool the chance to thrive and create and contribute to the business is shooting itself in the foot. There aren’t so many talented managers out there that we can afford to ignore half of them. If you look at firms that succeed and do well over the long term, you will find that the great majority of them are not run by testosterone-fuelled white guys, but by diverse management teams where women are given, and take, responsibility alongside men.

Still don’t believe me" Let me refer you back to the FT article. A study at the University of California, Davis found that male financial traders are far more active than women, their volume of trading exceeding that of women by about 45 per cent. As a result they incur higher costs and have lower net profitability than female traders. Why" Because the men are overconfident. Male managers need to start thinking with their brains, not the parts where testosterone lurks.

 

Here’s an idea that will annoy a few people: the word ‘winning’ has no place in the world of business.

That doesn’t seem right, does it" People talk about ‘winning’ all the time. We hear of people ‘beating’ the competition, growing faster than the rest of the sector, securing a larger chunk of market share, being bigger than all the rest, as if ‘bigger’ was somehow automatically analogous with ‘better’. Comparisons of business with sport and warfare, two activities where beating the competition is very much one of the primary objectives, are commonplace. Best-selling books like Playing to Win by Procter and Gamble chairman A.J. Lafley reflect the popularity of this idea.

The idea that the purpose of business is winning is now so widespread that it is practically a part of popular culture. Look at the popularity of The Apprentice, a television show in which people succeed in business by beating their rivals, in effect clambering over their bodies in order to get to the top.

But as I describe in Managing for Success (out 23rd April) this idea is wrong, and dangerously wrong. When companies start to concentrate on winning, on beating their rivals, on becoming the biggest in their sector, they take their eye off the ball. Size, growth, market share all start becoming targets to beat. They become the end game, the purpose for which the business exists. What then develops is a culture of greed, in which companies see expansion and growth as their raison d’etre. Strategy is developed around the idea of growth, bonuses are awarded for achieving growth. These companies become like the Monty Python character Mr Creosote, devouring everything around them.

Royal Ahold, the Dutch supermarket group, wanted to become the largest food retailer in the world. Nortel, the Canadian telecoms company, cherished similar ambitions to dominate its sector. Swiss national airline Swissair dreamed of rising to compete with the global players. All three grew spectacularly, and all three collapsed, destroying hundreds of millions in shareholder value and thousands of jobs. These were Creosote companies, that grew until they exploded (or imploded). These examples are not the only ones, they are just the high-profile cases that made the news.

Every day, somewhere a business goes to the wall because its managers forgot the real reason why they are in business. As Peter Drucker said, the only valid purpose of a business is the creation and retention of customers. Customer service and customer satisfaction are the real end game. If we pursue those successfully, then profit and growth will follow automatically. If we fail to do so, then growth is an illusion that will soon shatter.

It’s not about growth. It’s about service.

In The Republic, Plato explains how people can become so frightened of the world around them that they turn away from the world and reject it. He describes a group of people living in a cave, who believe that the shadows they can see on the cave walls are the only reality. When they are taken into the outside world for the first time, they are shocked, startled, afraid. Rejecting what they see, they retreat into the cave and stay there, preferring the illusion of the shadows to the reality of daylight.

It was Gareth Morgan in Images of Organization that first got me thinking about the cave and its implications. Morgan uses the cave as the basis for one of his eight metaphors of organisation, the ‘psychic prison’. In psychic prisons, people are trapped in their current ways of thinking and cannot break out of them. Any new idea or new thought represents a threat to the established reality. Some people like these challenges and threats and advance eagerly to meet them. Others are not able to cope with uncertainty and back away, retreating into the cave.

In my forthcoming book, Managing for Success (http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/managing-for-success-9781472904966/ ) , I have tried to go a little further and look at the consequences that fear, especially fear of uncertainty, plays in modern business. One thing I have seen over and over again is the desire by managers and leaders to eliminate uncertainty, in the apparent belief that if they can do so, success will follow. Eliminate all the variables, the thinking seems to go, and then we can construct a clear roadmap to the future.

This has a number of consequences. One is what I call ‘obsessive-compulsive planning disorder’, where companies spend so much of their time planning for every eventuality that they become distracted from what they really should be doing, i.e. serving customers. Another is an absolute belief in metrics, clinging to the adage of ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’.

Well, you can, and very often you must. There are many things in business – relationships, culture, innovative capacity – that are absolutely vital and yet cannot be measured in any meaningful way; at least, not without so much effort and expense that the result destroys value rather than creating it. And yet these ‘soft’ things absolutely have to be managed. They are the social side of the socio-technical system that every organisation has.

We like measurement because measurement seems to promise exact knowledge, and from exact knowledge comes certainty. But there are many things in business about which it is not possible to have exact knowledge. The most important of these is the future. No one can predict the future with confidence, no matter how good their mathematical models; the future is always uncertain.

As managers, we have to come to terms with uncertainty about the future, about other people, about ourselves and our organisations, and learn to live with it. The ability to accept and tolerate risk is one of the distinguishing features of a good manager. Bad ones turn away from things they cannot measure or understand, and retreat into the cave.