A sensational piece in today’s New York Times by Dick Brass, former vice president at Microsoft between 1997 and 2004, on the continuing struggles at the software giant. Mr Brass worked on the company’s unsuccessful attempts to develop popular tablet PCs and e-books. You might think he is writing out of bitterness and disappointment. But he offers a measured (and fascinating) commentary on the difficulty big, successful companies have in changing to adapt to new times.

This is one of the reasons why the mighty fall. We are currently seeing another example of this at Toyota. I shall write at greater length about this topic in my next Tuesday column.

But here is an initial thought to be getting on with. The management writer Charles Handy urges us to think about our own lives in terms of an S or “sigmoid” curve, which represents the struggle, growth and decline life-cycle which most of us, and most companies, are on. The trick is to start something new while you are still at the height of your powers, and before inevitable decline sets in. That way you can remain a high performer in some activity, even as you start to tail off in another.

Toyota’s problems are rather different, I think, and have to do with complacency and cutting corners. But Microsoft is a classic example of a business that still lives off its killer product, Windows, without ever quite coming up with anything even half as lucrative.

Whether at the personal or the corporate level, we have to become as adaptable “as change itself”, as Gary Hamel says.

Now that the Kraft takeover of Cadbury is going through, the inevitable has happened. Chairman Roger Carr, chief executive Todd Stitzer and chief financial officer Andrew Bonfield have all announced today that they will be leaving the company.

We should not be too sentimental about this development. This is usually what happens after takeover battles. But it is a reminder that there is always a cost to these transactions that is not always factored into the much haggled-over price. A lot of experience, know-how and expertise is about to leave the building. And this may well not be the last of the departures.

It is one of the reasons why I remain a bit sceptical over the long-term prospects for and value of these mega takeovers.

It is almost impossible for me to get to the end of a conversation with a manager these days without the concept of doing “more with less” coming up. It is the new battle cry in business, and in the public sector too.

There is an obvious logic to it. Customers (or users) want more, and businesses and service providers have to try and offer it. But how to do it, without driving the organisation into the ground?

There are obviously no easy answers. But there are some obvious pitfalls. I have looked at this subject in my regular Tuesday column today.

Just a short P.S. to my column from last week on negotiating. On Sunday night the TV film “Mo” was shown on Channel 4, the UK network. It told a pretty remarkable story of the popular British politician who played a key role in establishing the devolved Northern Irish assembly, formed after the ceasefires called by the IRA and other paramilitary groups, and the formal acceptance by the Irish state that the consitutional status of Northern Ireland could only be changed with the consent of the majority of the Northern Irish population.

The film told a dramatic story well. Mowlam was an unconventional, spontaneous and uninhibited figure. What she knew, but had not told anyone outside her inner circle, was that she was suffering from a malignant brain tumour. (The public story was that her tumour was non-malignant and treatable.)

Mowlam’s doctor, who was interviewed as part of the research for the film, has made the following fascinating point. Perhaps Mowlam was such an effective (if unconventional) negotiator because she knew her time was short. There was an urgency to her work.

Not only that, but the side-effects of her illness and drug treatment may have made her more outgoing, less inhibited, and more likely to take risks.

It is a curious thought: the on-again, off-again, fraught peace process in Northern Ireland was given a big boost by a negotiator who may not have been completely in her “right mind”.