Among the most inventive minds at work today are our management consultants, those busy-brained men and women forever thinking up exciting new ideas for the world of work. We are all, I hope, familiar by now with “Hot Desking”, a revolutionary approach which allows a business to sell off half of its office furniture for the greater good. Now I learn, somewhat belatedly, that the BBC has launched a “Hot Shoes” initiative. First the furniture, now the clothes. What will be the next hot thing?

Here at Hooting Yard we always try to keep one step ahead of the latest management thinking, so we tasked Mrs Gubbins to come up with a list of hot thing initiatives. Being an octogenarian crone, La Gubbins baulked at the use of “tasked” as a verb, but we fed her a bowl of gravy pudding and offered to help find that knitting needle she mislaid, and she soon came on board.

She initially decided to set up a working party to originate and assess various hot ideas, but this was felt to be crass, until it dropped the “working party” title and renamed itself as an “ideas silo”. The silo has a hub with radii, each radius has a directional pointing device, and at the end point of each is a “brain crate”. Responsibility for sifting through the crates rests with Mrs Gubbins herself, in between her core activities of knitting tea cosies and taking naps.

As a result of her first such sift, Hooting Yard will shortly be launching a series of hot initiatives entitled “Hot Pencil Sharpeners”, “Hot Carpets”, “Hot Puddings” and “Hot Peter Wyngarde Monogrammed Cravats”. I think readers will be able to appreciate the tremendous benefits these hot things will have on the ongoing Hooting Yard project. And remember, you are important to us. Please let us know what we can do to make further 360° improvements.