The world’s leading specialists in the psychology of franchising

I arrived 15 minutes late due to an unrealistic back-to-back meeting schedule, ironic given the webinar was on solving work overload problems. But I was quickly in the groove, listening to Bob Pozen's wise words on improving productivity, delivered with the gentle cadence of a Leonard Cohen song.

If you run a business, a question you may be asking is “Where have all the people gone?” I’ve certainly been racking my brains as it doesn’t make sense that 20% of the workforce can simply vanish! Looking at the evidence, it seems there are three big drivers, separate from the often discussed reductions in immigration.

One book I have particularly enjoyed rereading is The Just Prince, a thought-provoking tome I stumbled across while visiting South East Asia several years ago. This amazing book is a kind of combination of the Arabian One Thousand and One Nights, and Sun Tsu’s Art of War, and is based on an 800-year-old handbook on leadership called the Sulwan al-Muta’ Fi’ Udwan al-Atba, written by a Sicilian Islamic scholar, Ibn Zafar.