A recent Oxford University sociological study found reading to be the only activity for 16-year-olds that correlates with a managerial or professional job later in life.

The big difference between him and Germany’s new managerial class, says Mr Gerke, was not that he took risks and they did not, but that when he got it wrong, “he paid with his life.”

As in real life, these two managerial stereotypes, although potentially successful short-term, are likely to fail in the long run as they are too one-dimensional in approach.