In your day-to-day dealings with clients and colleagues, fight for the kings, queens and bishops, but throw away the pawns. A habit of graceful surrender on trivial issues will make you difficult to resist when you stand and fight on a major issue. Don’t discuss your clients’ business in public places. Keep their secrets under lock and key. A reputation for leaking can ruin you. Learn to write lucid memoranda. The senior people to whom they are addressed have more homework than you do. The longer and more turgid your memos, the less likely they are to be read by executives who have the power to act on them. In 1941, Winston Churchill sent the following memo to the First Lord of the Admiralty: ‘Pray state this day, on one side of a sheet of paper, how the Royal Navy is being adapted to meet the conditions of modern warfare.’ Researchers To get a job in the Research Department of a good agency, you probably need a degree in statistics or psychology. You also need an analytical mind, and the ability to write readable reports. You must also be able to work sympathetically with creative people, most of whom are stubbornly allergic to research. Above all you must be intellectually honest. A researcher who injects bias into his reports does awful damage.