The saying, “People are our greatest asset” has to be one of the commonest lies in management. When times are tough and your organization is in trouble, would your immediate reaction be to throw away a significant part of ‘your greatest asset’? Surely not.

Restraint, generosity, and mercy: only leaders who possess all three have the raw material to become great. The sooner everyone comes to realize that, the sooner we will have organizations we can be proud of.

It’s high time that we questioned many of the management myths and truisms that we bandy about so glibly. How much of our present mess is due to constant repetition of ideas about management that have not been explored or challenged as they should?

Short-term gains may be had only at the expense of long-term value. Though there may be times when such a decision makes sense, writes Nina Simosko, long-term viability is a far greater accomplishment than a short-term flash, however bright, followed by an inevitable fizzle into future darkness.

Trust and communication go together, explains Peter Vajda. Destroy trust and communication will cease. No one wants to give 100% to someone they can’t trust. Only when you show up in integrity, behave ethically and allow your vulnerability will those around you see you as trustworthy enough to share their thoughts and insights in full.

Nina Simosko looks at life’s endless series of negotiations. Are you someone who believes in winning at any cost? Maybe you should consider the benefits of knowing when to ‘fold ’em’ and let the other person have a victory.

Buddhists and Taoists have long claimed that a false belief in the ego is a principle cause of human suffering. Carmine Coyote traces the ‘mysterious’ sources of true leadership and exposes the perversions that egotism too often inflicts on us all. Let go of your ego. It’s a burden neither you nor those around you need.

For several decades, anything that produced wealth was approved, regardless of much else. The economy was ‘high’ on the addictive drug of executive stock options, double-digit growth in paper profits and deregulation. Now the ‘high’ has ended and we have to face the ‘cold turkey’. Conventional thinking won’t show us the way out of the mess it caused.

When the history of these times are written, people will once again marvel at human stupidity and the power of the herd instinct. They’ll ask the same question they always do: “How could anyone be so dumb?” The answer will also be the same: “Those who don’t think and allow fashion to rule their lives climb to the top in good times and take us all into the abyss a few years later.”

Nina Simosko reminds us all that it’s usually better to be respected and not liked than to be liked and not respected. Delivering criticism honestly can be hard, yet the alternative is worse: the creeping sense that a boss needs to be liked so much that he or she will sacrifice performance and integrity rather than risk being called a bad name.