Thomas Middelhoff, mover and shaker

As soon as a new football season begins the bookies start taking money on which manager will be the first to get the sack, how many will make it to the new year, and so on.

Perhaps we should have looked at our annual Agenda Setters poll the same way, especially this year.

This morning many of us awoke to a typical football headline - BOSS QUITS AFTER BOARDROOM BUST UP. The trouble is the story was about another of our top 50 Agenda Setter personalities, Thomas Middelhoff, now ex of Bertelsmann.

He has left the German media giant after 'differences about strategy', and joins a growing list of senior types now reacquainting themselves with their gardens.

Last week saw AOL Time Warner's Bob Pittman (COO and CEO of the AOL unit) make a break and it wasn't that long ago that Jean-Marie Messier exited the top spot at Vivendi Universal and Ron Sommer departed Deutsche Telekom.

The simple point to make is that when times are hard someone has to take the blame, or at least some part of it. We wouldn't for a moment claim to have jinxed any of these men with our prediction for this year's high-flyers.

But why would a Messier or Sommer even make our Agenda Setters list if their positions were fragile - as they were - during the time of selection in April? The slightly more meaningful conclusion is that while we and others love to talk up the individual, in very few cases are they more important than the collective talent, influence and combined history of those who also work at the company he or she heads. The cult of personality is alive and kicking.

Next year, expect to see a new head of Bertelsmann, Deutsche Telekom or Vivendi in our list - as per IBM's Sam Palmisano making it in this year - and expect to see a few other powerful individuals knocked off their perches in the meantime.

Is it unfair to ask the bookies about the job life expectancy of a Chris Gent at Vodafone or Michel Bon at France Telecom?

To view the Agenda Setters 2002 site, click on: http://www.silicon.com/as2002 .