Fast, turbulent, exciting and scary. It has never been more difficult to make sense of the world. Change rules. ‘Our sales are half what they were this time last year, which is a challenge. But, I think we’re in the same place that a lot of other people are in right now.’ One CEO told us. “The focus on performance is finer. When you are growing at 35 percent everybody benefits; when your growth goes down to 11 percent or 12 percent, the separation between the poor and the best performer’s increases. And, you then need to figure out how to handle it, because the environment you cannot let that rise. We have had to let some of those poor performers go.’

I liked the comment by Malcolm Gladwell in a podcast interview I listened to during my morning run at the height of the crisis. It was so good I played it back and wrote it down:

"Rather than joining the mobs seeking to hang evil CEOs from the nearest lamppost, we should all step back, take a deep breath and find the procedural flaws in the sytem that can be fixed," Malcolm said. "Tinker with the risk models, increase the regulatory oversight and the problem is solved ... "

I don't agree with Malcolm that it's about a simple fix to a model. But I do agree that sacking the CEO isn't the answer. My belief is that leadership is the issue, and my caution is that we're making some wrong assumptions about leadership.