I had lunch today with Peter Hunter, founder of the "Breaking the Mould" movement. We met up at the Royal Society of Arts just off the Strand and spent an animated couple of hours sharing our views on management. Peter's website is the hub of his project, which is very much centred on the concept that change can only happen when the people who are at the base of an organisation take ownership of the opportunities and the initiative to do things differently. These are the people who will "break the mould," and without their wholehearted commitment nothing lasting will ever happen.

This thinking is also at the heart of the third book in the Tork & Grunt series, which deals with Change Management. Tork and Grunt rapidly come to the conclusion that Change is one thing which cannot be "managed" in the conventional sense of being autocratically controlled. They realise that once they brought their tribes to live together, everyone had to accept a common vision, with common values and a clear identity. You can see how easily that metaphor translates into mergers and acquisitions in modern commercial organisation.

The more I write the Tork & Grunt series, the more I am coming to realise that so much of all this management literature is essentially a blend of common sense and courage. It takes courage to discard the jargon and get back to basics: it's much easier to hide behind the rhetoric of management-speak with theory X, theory Y and a dozen truisms that masquerade as cutting-edge thinking. In reality, most of these new ideas are common sense in party clothes.

I'm about to head off for a week's vacation at a villa on the island of Crete . Many of you know I create all the photography for my publicity materials, and I'm hoping the Orthodox Easter celebrations on 25th - 27th will prove to be a rich source of visual material.

But - of course - it's essentially a holiday and an opportunity to recharge the batteries and take time out to reflect and do some free-form thinking. And that's something many of us don't do enough of...

I'm reminded of a TV programme about a senior professor of philosophy at Oxford or Cambridge who described part of her day as being thinking time - feet up on the desk, sitting back and thinking. That can be a challenge for a freelancer, when you charge by the hour or the day and need to allow "thinking time." And when you're a writer, there's not much scope for thinking time if the contract pays by the number of words.

One of the themes in Tork & Grunt's next book, on Change Management, is the importance of taking a pause, of assessing the situation before you complicate everything by rash, hurried decisions. It's sometimes difficult in our busy world to think about slowing down and spending time on evaluating all the options. Especially when a change in corporate structure demands realignments and new processes. But it's essential.

"Pause!" should be the motto for the decade, while we get used to our instant society. You can formalise it into meditation if you like, or you can just let your thoughts race in that strange silence that exists even in a crowd. Switch off the aural wallpaper and listen to what's going on in your head. Call it day-dreaming if you wish, but I assure you it's a worthwhile investment of your time.

Cretans are fiercely proud of their country and maintain a powerful regional identity. As in so many places, the tourists seem to huddle around the centre of the resort with its pseudo-sophisticated bars and clubs, while a few hundred metres up a side road will take you to a timeless village.

The simplicity of Crete - the gleaming white walls and the dominant sky-blue paint of the chairs, tables and woodwork in many of the little tavernas are in stark contrast to the neon and clutter of the tourist centres.

The waiter in the village taverna was almost at his wits' end. One evening he pleaded with us: "What has happened to my country? Where can I find the Crete of my childhood?"

And there's the rub! We can no longer expect things to stay the same, even for a few short years between youth and adulthood. Change happens regardless and change is accelerating.

My next book in the Tork & Grunt series, on the subject of Change Management, is proving to be a fascinating challenge and I needed the break and the perspective of my isolation in Crete to work out the detail of my approach to the subject.

What I'm finding difficult is not the theory, but the fact that the more I research the subject, the more I come face to face with the realisation that in essence - it's communication, and while some traditional management communication has been about maintaining status and authority, what I am talking about is genuine exploratory communication that gets to the core of the matter and establishes the reality of the situation, not the gloss behind which people - managers, operatives, directors or senior executives, can hide....

It's really so frighteningly simple....