It’s so unfair. You make one mistake in a high profile leadership role and the media are all over you in an instant.

At the end of last week, the new mayor of London Boris Johnson lost his deputy, Ray Lewis, after murky allegations about Mr Lewis’s past suddenly surfaced. Under pressure, Mr Lewis held an emergency press conference, which only seemed to make matters worse. He resigned the next day.

And – ping! – into my email in-box this morning flies a press release from an HR software company, touting its “PeopleChecking” (sic) capabilities, which allow you to make background checks on potential new recruits. The press release is headlined: “ ‘Boris’ bosses could cost UK £2bn”.

It seems that, these days, one strike and you are out. Overnight the mayor has become a “Boris boss” – and this phrase is not intended as a compliment

Will the best people continue to aim for prominent leadership roles when our unforgiving “gotcha” media culture looks only to drag people down?

I only ask.

Some talk of the Rumble in the Jungle.

Others recall the Thriller in Manilla.

But last week I was lucky enough to witness Dialectic in the Park.

Let me explain. London Business School was hosting a half-day seminar entitled “Humanising Work”, held under the auspices of the Lehman Brothers centre for women in business.

Two great names from the world of sociology, (Lord) Anthony Giddens and Richard Sennett, both gave fascinating talks. Giddens discussed the addictive nature of work, while Professor Sennett, who is based at the London School of Economics, spoke about managers’ loss of control over the organisations they are supposed to be managing.

I referred to Lord Giddens’ talk in my column on Tuesday, and will be discussing Prof Sennett’s thoughts next Tuesday. Speaking purely for myself, it was a very efficient afternoon out.

But why am I bothering to tell you this, apart from the obvious attraction, to me, of naked self-promotion?

Just this: we instinctively look to so-called management gurus and business school academics for ideas and enlightenment. But some of the biggest ideas that might help us understand contemporary business life could come from other, perhaps unexpected sources.

You might not have thought that a sociologist could help you run your company better. But, at least as far as these two distinguished gentlemen are concerned, you would be wrong.

Tom Peters – a genuine, honest-to-goodness management guru – says that when he is at an airport he makes a point of picking up magazines he wouldn’t normally have read, to make sure he is regularly being confronted with new material. Worth a try.

Europe, old and new, has played host to George W Bush this last week. It was billed as a “farewell tour” – not au revoir, you notice. Farewell.

Europe and Dubya have never really hit it off, with the exception of Britain’s Tony Blair, of course. The suspicion, and lack of affection, was mutual.

Bush, a self-styled “war President”, had his plans for office completely destroyed by the events of September 11 2001. He had barely been in power for nine months on that bright September morning.

We will never know what his Presidency would have been like, given calmer times. As a candidate, he had talked of “compassionate conservatism”, of building an education system where “no child is left behind”. It is fair to say that events, and economic downturn, distracted him from these attractive-sounding goals.

Bush was also the first US President to hold an MBA (from Harvard). He was a believer in Peter Drucker’s “management by objectives” (MBO) approach. I am not sure that his record in office has done a great deal for the reputation of either management education or management gurus.

The US electorate may opt for a dramatic change come November, if the polls giving Senator Obama a healthy lead can be believed. The country could soon be under new and very different management.

And former President Bush may be looked on as one of those CEOs who grabbed the top job full of hope, but then failed to live up to the high expectations he himself had created.

“To every thing there is a season,” says Ecclesiastes, “and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die…a time to kill, and a time to heal…a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…”

What would that gloomy old soul have to say about the life of the modern manager? “A time to work, and, er, that’s it.”

Many would see nothing wrong in this approach. Sir Alex Ferguson, the highly successful manager of Manchester United football club, is a good example. Asked last month how he felt about his latest triumph of winning the European champions league, he admitted that, of course, he would be celebrating that evening.

But: “The thing about me is that I won’t get carried away with it, and tomorrow morning I will be thinking about next season,” Sir Alex went on: “It drains away very quickly – that drug, that final moment. I will be thinking about the future and looking into the players’ eyes to make sure their hunger is still there.”

Drive, hunger, ambition: today’s workplace seems to demand more and more of such stuff.

If you are serious about getting on in your career or leading your organisation on to greater success, a strong sense of urgency is required.

Continue reading Column: The addictive drug of success