Socrates, one of the first philosophers, insisted on our right to think for ourselves. Too often, he warned, humans sleepwalk through life, simply going along with the crowd.

Socrates was like being prepared to die rather than go against his conscience.

This is dangerous in questions of morality, and particularly in corporate governance. For example, When corruption is uncovered, too often people say "everyone else was doing it".

Aristotle was a great biologist as well as a great philosopher. He based his ethics on a psychological theory of human nature, insisting that we are naturally virtuous, rational, social and happiness-seeking.

For example, employees will be more motivated if you give them the opportunity to feed their natural curiosity through learning opportunities. It could be vocational training, but it could also simply be learning about the world, ideas, culture.

Musonius Rufus was known as the Socrates of Rome. He was another Stoic, who taught that philosophy cannot just be theoretical.

You also need to keep track of your progress, to see how you're doing. You can't just rely on your intuitions, because they're often wrong. So the ancient Greeks learned to keep accounts of themselves. They would track their daily behaviour in journals, keeping account of how many times they lost their temper, for example, or got too drunk. Then they could see if they were really improving their behaviour, or just going round in circles.

In organisational terms, keeping track of ourselves means trying to take an evidence-based assessment of our performance.