Last week I read in the Financial Times that Korean managers have been climbing into coffins and pretending to be dead as part of a training course. In many years spent studying these things, I have often come across courses so dismal they leave managers wishing they were dead. But actually to pretend to be dead breaks new ground in what business people are made to do in the name of self-improvement.

However, in South Korea 50,000 managers have been through this course, and each has had to write a will, read it out, put on a hemp death robe, get into a coffin and have the lid banged shut. So popular has the death course proved that the organisers are expanding into other countries too.