A lot of tough decisions will need to be taken in 2012. In politics, in Washington, Brussels, and in business.

Are we ready?

I'm not sure we are. And that's because of the western hemisphere's obsession with 'strategy', and its concomitant eschewal of execution.

These days, everybody wants...

Earlier this week, many hundreds of thousands of British public sector workers went out on strike.

Across the UK children weren't educated, trash wasn't collected and hospital patients weren't treated (one of the angles of 'socialised medicine' that wasn't covered during the furious Obama-care debates...)

Naturally, opinion on the...

Britain and America need to reinvent their economies. That has been common ground since Lehman. As the nations who gained (and then lost) so much on the back of the supercharged financial centres of Wall Street and the City, the US and the UK have been forced to do a...

On Friday, millions of Britons, alongside a good deal of the rest of world, will put down their pens, put on their kettles (for tea, of course) and turn on their televisions.

As we begin the final countdown to Prince William and Kate Middleton's Friday wedding, there is no denying...

Last weekend we had a fire.

Not a fire in the house, thankfully, but a fire in the garden: a wrought iron brazier full of glowing red logs.

And what did we do?

We did just what you'd expect us to do; just what humans around fires have done for...

Magic Markers, Letraset, razor-sharp scalpels, studios thick with the fug of petrol, tobacco and various dangerous chemicals ... In some respects, to anyone who was around at the time, the 1980s don't actually seem like that long ago.

We remember The A-Team, black forest gateau, TV-AM and red braces. We...

Last week Twitter was awash with the latest bout of UK pre-election madness: work out your "Tory name."

Using this admitted rehash of the old "porn name" game, even the most humble amongst us can be instantly transformed into heavily-set, ruddy-cheeked, wobbly-jowled landed squires.

Your "Tory name" works as follows:

Fresh from watching yet another CEO stumble his way through a piece to camera on his company's website, I do wonder whether some corporations are giving sufficient thought to the YouTube generation.

Video is everywhere; it's inescapable.

We're all watching so much more of it than we used to: on...

In one respect, the answer might very well be "nothing." We've all grown up with the very clear notion that personality is 'free' -- that it's inherent, that it's innate.

In another respect of course, personality is absolutely priceless. It is what makes each of us unique, marks us...

"This is about a culture of management that seems to think in a democracy that the workforce have to do just what they're told."

This happens to have been said by Billy Hayes, the General Secretary of the UK's Communication Workers Union, currently at loggerheads with the management of Royal...

For a moment, let's put party politics and arguments about what government is, and is not, for to one side.

Because it seems to me that anyone who is interested in effective management should be exceptionally wary of public bail-outs for much more prosaic reasons.

Whether or not any of...

Much has been written over the years about the Kennedy family and leadership.

But the focus has tended to be on JFK and RFK, rather than their younger brother.

So in the wake of Senator Edward Kennedy's death, let us revisit this.

I have never been so naïve as to...

It's Tuesday Night.

Ryan Seacrest charms the crowd with his own brand of cheeky bonhomie and the scene is set for another emotional roller-coaster.

Because American Idol is back.

Pompously slated by some as sentimentalized 'bread and circuses for our times', the 'Idol' franchise and those of its...