Ft Listen To Lucy

Management accepting humiliation in order to satisfy customers seems like a good thing but Gap’s climbdown on its new logo is feeble, says Lucy Kellaway  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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, says Lucy Kellaway  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To make it, you simply have to fake it, according to Lucy Kellaway  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Like most Brits, I find success in others pretty hard to cope with. When that success is  combined with good looks, I can’t tolerate it at all. Apple’s continued glory eats away at me like a maggot at my core.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bob Diamond is full of energy and enthusiasm. He likes taking risks. He is determined: he knows what he wants and goes for it. He is fearless, cheerfully taking on a job he has little experience of. He speaks (relatively) simply. He has been known to throw tantrums. He is greedy and always wants more. I’ve never met him, but on the strength of what I’ve been reading about him I’m absolutely confident that he’s going to make an excellent new chief at Barclays. This is because he accords perfectly with a brand new theory of leadership that is surprising, radical, yet utterly compelling. This theory says that the best CEOs are just like toddlers.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On the bank holiday weekend, the political satirist Armando Iannucci was driving along the M40 to spend a couple of days in Snowdonia and stopped off at a Starbucks on the way. As he is a man who likes to record all his thoughts on Twitter, he dispatched this message to his 80,000 followers: “Still surprised that, despite their market dominance, Starbucks haven’t eliminated the slight smell of lavatory you get as you enter.”  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Over the past decade there has been a steady onward march of objects, activities and emotions from hearth to cubicle, so there is now almost nothing left that belongs entirely at home.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Last night I did what I always do when I am feeling jaded - I got out my boxed-set of Mad Men and immersed myself in the hedonistic, glamorous world of Maddison Avenue in the 1960s, when all women were a 38 triple-D cup, all men drank scotch from lunchtime till bedtime, everyone chain-smoked and fornicated whenever they got the chance.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The e-mail was waiting for me on my return from holiday, just as I knew it would be. Shortly before I went away, I had written a column in which I had borrowed not merely someone else’s idea but his very words. At the time I thought I’d get away with it, but in the middle of the night had woken in a sweat. In the age of the internet, plagiarists nearly always get punished.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Last Tuesday, during the final assembly of the year at my daughter’s school, pupils said  goodbye to a teacher who was being elbowed out. Miss T was famous for her feebleness at imparting knowledge; the new broom of a head had decided it would make more sense to give the job to someone who could teach instead.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Last week an e-mail went round the office touting for suggestions on ways to improve our performance appraisal system. My suggestion is dead easy and dirt cheap: get rid of the whole thing and replace it with nothing at all.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Britain they are cutting about a million jobs. In France, they have axed the Bastille Day garden party. 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.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The only difference between male and female managers, says Lucy, is that women are less confident and more hung up on approval.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's not just Americans or lefties or environmentalists who now hate BP. Everyone else seems to as well.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lucy's list of key "don'ts" for a retiring chief executive  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lucy on Bridgewater chief, Ray Dalio, and the list of his top 300 rules for life.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A summons to a 90-minute interview with the financial regulator sends Lucy reeling through the five stages of grief  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

One of the comedies of working life is pretending to care about the big things, says Lucy Kellaway.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.