Ancient & Modern | 01 December 2007

Mission statements and codes of practice are all the rage today among business communities. Everyone has to have one. The trouble is, they are all the same, and consist mostly of strings of platitudes about ‘best practice’ and ‘personal integrity’. ‘Investors in People’ is a favourite example, invented (probably) by the CEOs of the 17th-century slave trade. Had Aristotle been asked to do better, he might well have come up with the following approach.

Discussing what the good man needs to do to produce good results, Aristotle says that of any action we undertake we need to ensure that we have got it right in relation to:

1. The time at which we are acting;

2. The issues on which we are acting;

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3. The people with whom we are engaging;

4.