Keith Power

Fred Goodwin, Dick Fuld, Elizabeth Holmes and four more. Seven CEOs undone by hubris — and the warning signs the ancient Greeks saw coming.

Over thirty years in corporate life, I sat in a lot of audiences. Sales conferences, leadership summits, regional kick-offs in hotel ballrooms that all smelled faintly of the same carpet. Every so often a speaker would take the stage and set the room alight. Music, a story about a mountain, a closing line that brought hundreds of us to our feet. I'd walk out buzzing. By the following Monday I'd be back in the same meetings, carrying the same tensions, making the same compromises I'd been...

The Quietest Man on the Door What eleven years as a doorman taught me about urgency, control and the truth: A Saturday in Catford, gone midnight and the second queue surge is in full flow now the pubs have closed. A man at the front of the queue has decided tonight is the night. He's shouting, squaring up and the youngest lad on the door is matching him decibel for decibel. That younger lad was me... The face I thought was strength Then Ricky, the oldest doorman on the team walks over. He...