Roger Collis

Every executive looking for a short cut to the top pays attention to essential subjects, such as strategic wardrobe management; office politics and etiquette; resume expansion (as management guru Peter Drucker was fond of saying, ‘Don’t talk to me about the death of the novel as long as we have resumes’) and how to make buzzwords work for you.      

In the real world the only thing that counts is performance, recent performance; anything that happened before the close of the last quarter is ancient history.

But while cutting costs, increasing market share and reducing employee turnover are good measures of performance, they are not enough. When a company evaluates executive performance, perception is reality. Click here

I knew this was the big one when Madame dragged me along to the doctor to see about this ghastly bronchitis. After all, even a hypochondriac can get sick. I joke that a massive coronary would be a better way to go. And provided they don’t get to you in time, it doesn’t have to expensive.

Madame gives me one of her special looks. A hard, professional look from my practitioner, perhaps not altogether disinterested at the prospect of PPP coughing up (sorry about that). I should be able to buy a bit of time with the equivalent of one million francs on the International Plan. Click here

The dateline was Lakehurst, New Jersey, May 6, 1937. At 7:23 P.M., the German zeppelin Hindenburg, docking after its first ocean crossing of the season, burst into flames, killing 36 people. The disaster ended the reign of the great airships. No matter that the nine-year- old Graf Zeppelin had retired that year after 144 uneventful trans-Atlantic crossings, and in 1929 flew from Tokyo to Los Angeles nonstop. The British had dismantled their R- 100 after the crash of the ill-designed R-101 on its maiden voyage to India in 1930. The Hindenburg disaster was the coup de grace for public and government confidence in airship safety. Click here

BUSINESS travelers rate “punctuality” along with “convenient schedule” and “reputation for safety” as the three most important factors in choosing an airline, according to most surveys.

The Association of European Airlines, representing 26 carriers, reports that only 18 percent of all departures on scheduled flights in Europe in 1996 were delayed by more than 15 minutes — a marginal deterioration over 1995. Sixty-six percent of the delays were due to airport or air traffic congestion, or to planes missing their departure or landing slots. Click here

Try to phone anybody these days and the chances are (once you’ve gone around the houses with ‘dial one if you know the extension number…’) you’ll get an earful of the xylophone version of Greensleeves, or a low-fi rendering of The Four Seasons by the Muzak Symphony Orchestra. Then the doom-laden words: “He’s in a meeting.” Or the  pompous: “He’s in conference.” Yes, yes, our cheque is in the mail. Click here