Denver says goodbye to its oldest working CEO

The next time you're thinking of calling for early retirements you might think about this man. Retirement is a state of mind that we should all try to avoid.

Ghost of a job

Talking to Kevin Kelly, chief executive of Heidrick & Struggles, the headhunters, before writing my column last week, I was wondering how he found the time to write within the busy daily schedule he had outlined in his new book, CEO, The Low-down on the Top Job.

"I didn't," he said very matter of factly, "He did," pointing across the room towards Stuart Crainer, one half of the management writing business Crainerdearlove. Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove have been working together in a successful journalists' partnership for some years now.

Ghost writers are not given enough credit in writing management books. Yes, they are well paid, but I think that there should be a publishing convention of mentioning their name on the cover, not merely in the acknowledgements where typically they are thanked for their "help" often when they have written the whole book.

Writers like Crainer and Dearlove who have accumulated a good working knowledge of management theory are thin on the ground. It's much easier to find a chief executive.