There’s a line about time that has stuck in my memory from senior school English lessons: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” It’s from T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock , though I confess that I had to Google the phrase to discover that. And that in my memory it was sugar  spoons. But the point remains – it is a memorable image. The passing of time is such an intangible thing in so many ways – and the idea of measuring it in a concrete unit of daily...

What should we do? It’s an interesting question, and one I’ve been pondering during my first few months in post as the new Chief Executive of Living Leadership. The question comes from a poem by Roger McGough, whose work I loved as a child. His poem ‘The Leader’ (look it up) is written in the voice of a wannabe leader who, when finally appointed, asks the immortal question, ‘OK, what should we do?’ With typical insight and brevity, McGough is making a clever point about leadership, and the...

In sixth form, I used to run the school vending machine.