I hope to leave my children a sense of empathy and pity and a will to right social wrongs

Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking

One of the most intriguing things in management and in business is the role of storytelling - people need the anecdotes to do the work that they do.

Advertising beauty products is easy. All you have to do is revile your customers by creating a disease called getting older, and then provide a remedy which does not work.

It's about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it. Now 30 years on The Body Shop is a multi local business with over 2.045 stores serving over 77 million customers in 51 different markets in 25 different languages and across 12 time zones. And I haven't a clue how we got here!

All through history, there have always been movements where business was not just about the accumulation of proceeds but also for the public good.

I think the leadership of a company should encourage the next generation not just to follow, but to overtake. The duty of leadership is to put forward ideas, symbols, metaphors of the way it should be done, so that the next generation can work out new and better ways of doing the job. The complaint Gordon and I have is that we are not being overtaken by our staff. We would like to be able to say, "We can't keep up with you guys", but, it is not happening.