The yearning for strong leadership is more about strength of purpose - clarity of vision - than about merely 'getting tough'.

Although we love the idea of choice - our culture almost worships it - we seek refuge in the familiar and the comfortable.

Yet in our enthusiasm for the idea that everyone should be able to read and write fluently, we may be missing a crucial point: in today's culture, finely honed literacy skills are simply not as important as they once were.

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters.

The yearning for strong leadership is more about strength of purpose - clarity of vision - than about merely 'getting tough'.

One of the most important responsibilities of leaders in any setting - including business organisations - is to tell us our own story; to explain us to ourselves; to help us weave some meaning and purpose into the fabric of our lives; to illuminate our understanding of where we have come from; to paint word pictures of our future onto which we can project our aspirations.