Most of the time you take your office computers for granted. OK, there’s a niggle or two, but generally the IT folks can sort it out. Occasionally, though, it gets more serious. When the system crashes regularly or a virus hijacks the network there’s no easy alternative: you need to upgrade the whole system, maybe even rewrite the code from the bottom up.

That’s where we are with management.

When Vince Cable, the UK’s business secretary, suggested recently that capitalism wasn’t—ahem—actually functioning too well , he was roundly booed by the press and business leaders who seemed to think his job was cheerleading rather than criticizing.

Yet for anyone not living on some other planet – anyone, for instance, who has lost a home, a job or pension rights on had their salary frozen in the last couple of the years—Cable’s remark was only shocking as a statement of the blindingly obvious.

Here are three things to chew on: ...