Last week, a Goldman Sachs banker made a very public resignation with his letter to his employers, detailing his criticism of their leadership and his view on the state of their company, being published in the New York Times.

Whether he was right or wrong in the facts about Goldman Sachs and the senior staff he criticised, he did something that thousands of disgruntled employees have dreamed of doing but have never actually actioned. But was he right to announce his resignation in the manner he did?

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Michael Acton Smith – Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters)

When I was a kid, I read a book called Masquerade by Kit Williams, which was about an amazing treasure hunt, and the idea bubbled away in my head for years and years. I thought with the growth of the internet, it would be incredible to create an updated version for the digital age. We buried £100,000-worth of treasure somewhere in the world and then released clues across different media – there was a magazine, a website, a CD and live events with helicopters and actors. We created an entire story around the characters in the world of Perplex City.

Everyone was very excited: I raised about $10m, got a huge amount of press attention and won lots of awards. Creatively, it was amazing. The problem was, though, that commercially it was an utter disaster. It just didn’t take off the way I had hoped. The main reason is that it was just too complex. We made something that was too niche and appealed to too small an audience.

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Facebook is in the process of filing for a public stock offering which could value the company at anything between $75 and $100 billion. These amazing numbers show just how powerful social networking sites have become, with 800 million people signed up to Facebook alone.

The value is in personal information and data. Every time someone posts on a social networking site, a morsel of data is added to a vast library, which captures and processes every click and interaction. Likes, dislikes, buying trends and understanding the next generation of consumers is vital information for businesses worldwide. But it’s not just corporates who are monitoring.

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Charles Hunt – Duvet and Pillow Warehouse

In 1999, I set up Peacock Blue, a mail order bed linen and accessories shop with my former business partner. At its peak, it was a £7m turnover business. But then disaster struck when Royal Mail went on strike in December 2004. We were entirely dependent on mail order and the strike meant that none of our Christmas catalogue was delivered. We lost our entire trade for the festive period, around £500,000. There was no strength in the balance sheet, so it only took one big blow to knock us off track. My business partner pulled out so I was left at the helm, solo.

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There are dozens of management theories about what makes a great leader great.

If we can learn something from each of these, then surely that helps our own development towards becoming a better leader.

The concept of “social intelligence” has been around since the 1920s, but it wasn’t until 1995, when Daniel Goleman wrote “Emotional Intelligence”, that this theory was applied to leadership and organisational performance.

Emotional intelligence grabbed the headlines as the scientific evidence quoted by Goleman suggested that only 20% of a leader’s success is down to IQ with the rest down to EQ (as emotional intelligence is often called).

People high on emotional intelligence demonstrate a number of characteristics….

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A row has blown up after David Hencke at Exaronews broke the story last week about a few senior public sector executives and the departments who employ them, using ‘sole proprietor’ limited company legal frameworks to apparently avoid the taxes paid by and on behalf of full-time employees. On Friday both the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian waded in with reports centred on Paul Brown and John Seddon, COO and FD respectively, at the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR).

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Archer Mathieson and BIE Interim Executive, sister companies within The Cornhill Partnership, have announced plans to merge from April. The new, as yet un-named business will be led by current BIE chief executive Rob Walker. Archer Mathieson’s current chief executive Richard Wright will relinquish his role from April and will pursue another opportunity later in the year. Cornhill will make a separate announcement about this shortly.

The newly enlarged business will offer both specialised, senior-level search and interim services. The search practice will continue to follow Archer Mathieson’s ‘multi-specialist’ approach, covering finance, human resources and supply-chain/logistics. Rob Walker says the merger supports Cornhill’s long term strategy:

“This is in line with our Group strategy to operate in a ‘multi-specialist’ model, exploiting market synergies through cross-selling and the use of shared, central services. We think the time is right for this move and that clients will welcome the development. Markets are never static and, as two organisations that help clients achieve their own change and transformation agendas, we too must adapt and change.

“The merger decision was driven by numerous factors. We wanted to end the overlap from a client perspective. And as one combined company, clients gain access to more services under one roof and a wider, deeper, higher-quality talent pool than before. In a single organisation we can better concentrate our marketing and focus our consultants as one, mutually-supportive team. It also gives us greater scale; the critical mass to grow and to do that faster than we could separately.”

Two industry observers familiar with both companies and the market they operate in have welcomed the news. Richard Smelt, non-executive director at Hays Plc and former group HR director at Northern Rock Plc said:

“I don’t think this move will surprise anyone and I completely see the logic. The gap between search and interim has narrowed over recent years; organisations see interim increasingly as a very credible way of resourcing. It makes complete sense to bring these two offerings together within one brand.”

Leo McKee, chief executive officer of nationwide retail chain BrightHouse adds:

“BIE and Archer Mathieson are two excellent businesses. The combination makes complete sense as the single-stop option for hiring executives.”

Commenting on Richard Wright’s departure, Rob Walker said:

“Richard Wright has done a tremendous job over the last two years. His final task is to see us through this merger before he takes up his next role.”

Medical experts have been stressing for decades the health benefits that exercise provides. Recent studies have also been conducted into how exercise can play a part in employee performance in the workplace – particularly for those in leadership positions. As sceptical as we were at first, it seems there may be a strong case for the argument that people who exercise do make better leaders. Here are some of the reasons why:

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Improving staff performance and productivity is a complex subject that companies and experts all over the world have spent millions of pounds trying to figure out. Offering constructive feedback is one of the more straightforward motivational techniques commonly discussed and it seems opinion is still divided.

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