There are things we know in the playground that the system, the world of 'business', helps us forget. Like profit.

Most kids know that if they are going to sell sweets in the playground they need to sell them for more than they bought them. So why is it that when I spoke to a senior sales director at a business last week, he said that sales had been going really well - but that the Board had been upset because they had not been selling for a profit. That interfering Board, it appeared, was getting in the way of some very big contracts.

Why is it that so many businesses and sales people have no sense and visibility of profit? Bureaucratic structures? The ego attached to sales and volumes?

When I was at P&G, I attended a meeting of the sales directors. I was a young, annoying, graduate not yet schooled in the ways of 'business'. Well, not in 'big' business, where common sense gives way to the institutional imperative. The Sales Directors agreed a promotional deal using up some of their unused budgets to provide a discount.

Because I was annoying, I worked out the finances of the deal and tentatively (well, maybe not tentatively - I can't really remember) pointed out we would be making a loss on the promotion. The chief of all Sales Directors looked a little disconcerted; he looked around at the eyes on him from his fellow directors and, after a pause, said confidently: ‘Yes, but we are doing it to shore up the base’. At which point, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and nodded approvingly, acknowledging it was indeed to ‘shore up the base’. And even I nodded, convinced by the group's conviction that we were quite rightly and properly shoring up the base.

It was only later that I realised I didn't know what 'shoring up the base' actually meant. And only later still that I realised it didn't mean anything at all.