Lessons from the court of Henry VIII for America’s CEOs

Every era of business history brings an appropriate big book. In the 2000s, it was Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat (2005). In the 1980s, it was Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy (1980). Today it is not a business book but a novel – Hilary Mantel’s great trilogy about English statesman and lawyer Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall.

Since

US President Donald Trump’s re-election,

America’s chief executives have, to all intents and purposes, put a crown on Mr Trump’s head and turned themselves into courtiers. He’s Henry VIII in a golf buggy, and they are so many slavish bag carriers.