If ever there was a need for verbal clarity it is now! A world in crisis needs language that can convey how serious the situation truly is. Sadly, powerful words have lost much of their impact.

When I'm asked how organisations can create devoted customers, I reply "just keep doing great things to them". It seesm obvious, but creating 'devoted' customers is about consistently doing things that make customers feel valued.

Worrying is a self-perpetuating process. Worrying only produces more worry, more fear. It solves nothing. But worrying and being fearful is a choice. Releasing fear and worry is also a choice – and action absorbs anxiety.

Seeking better, simpler, faster or cheaper ways to do something should be everyone's business all the time. That includes all the heads of departments and divisions, whatever their function.

We expect our leaders, be they politicians or business people, to be strong, confident and decisive, particularly when the going gets tough. Instead, they are dithering and dawdling, leaving us all to take our own decisive actions instead. And that's tough.

Almost 2,500 years ago, Plato argued that the endless quest for pleasure affects the kind of leaders that democracies produce. Those who do rise to the top are unlikely to be motivated by concern for the common good, but rather by self-interest. Sound familiar?

I'm just a lowly manager. The big things – like global economic melt-down - are out of my control. So I'm going to turn off the news for a while and focus on the little things that make a manager's life at work so complicated.

Models of effective leadership are still based on men and the types of talents that they bring to such positions. So to tap into the talents that women bring to the workplace, our ideas about leadership need to be reexamined.

Management is out of date. Managers are failing to take advantage of a unique moment in history where the gathering pace of change opens the door to revolution and new types of organisation.

The best way to deal with a recession is not to hide until the storm has passed, it's to innovate your way out of it. If you sit still, you'll get left behind. While your competitors are full of uncertainty and doubt, you can introduce innovations that others cannot easily imitate.

We're always told to think outside the box, but often we're not thinking far enough out of it. Here are some ideas to help you expanding the boundaries of what you will allow yourself to think.