What’s your memory like? Mine is far from perfect, especially for names and faces: let me take the opportunity to apologise in advance to anybody I haven’t seen during the long lockdown, and who I fail to recognise when we meet again. If you see me with a polite smile and a confused look, I am probably trying to jolt my memory into action.

In his book Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer attempted to answer the question of how to improve his memory, and ended up competing in the U.S. Memory Championships. To do this he had to train hard to master various events, such as memorising random lists of binary digits, long poems word for word, and the order of multiple packs of playing cards. I found many interesting ideas in Foer’s book about the history of memory, the techniques used to improve memory, and about talent and expertise. There is one particular idea, though, that made me think about how we develop throughout our careers, and the conditions that leaders must create to support that development.