Cast your mind back to Mieza in 330 BC...Mieza, the palatial school where Aristotle gave Alexander the Great a view of the world, that centred on a broad and integrated understanding of leadership and strategy.

The students at Mieza were the pool from which to draw future generations of leaders. As future leaders, Alexander and his Companions needed to

• be prepared for solving complex, intricate and unforeseen problems whose solutions might not lie in any well-defined subject area or speciality
• think on their feet
• make tough choices
• recognise patterns among different types of problems
• work collaboratively with one another in imagining and then shaping the future of their empire.

Mieza was where Alexander’s mind was trained to look for facts and patterns, and to look for them in a variety of sources, places and people so as to formulate a solution.

Alexander and his colleagues learned to feed off one another’s perspectives, gauge one another’s emotional and moral standards, realise how one or another might view or solve a certain problem, integrate their various perspectives, triangulate information, and behave like true colleagues who grew with and on one another.

The collaborative interactions would build mutual respect and trust - bedrocks of professionalism.

No doubt, experiential learning,the environment, and horses - the use of the cavalry was revolutionised under Alexander, and his best friend is said to have been Bucephalus (the legendary black stallion whom Alexander tamed at the age of 10) - played a key role in the development of these young minds. . .