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Productivity and economic growth matter more than ever at the moment. Is poor leadership the key to Scotland's relatively weak performance on productivity?
EDAS Chair and Director of Glasgow University Training & Employment Research Unit, Alan McGregor leads our breakfast session with guest speakers, Professor Ewart Keep, expert on the linkages between skills and economic performance and Crawford Gillies, Chair of Scottish Enterprise and former adviser on corporate strategy, acquisitions, performance improvement and organisation. We question what it is that's lacking in Scotland's leaders that sees their international counterparts giving gold medal performances, with higher levels of productivity and economic growth to match.
Mr Gillies, also Chair of Control Risks Group Holdings Ltd and a Non-Executive Director of Standard Life plc, said, "There are still too many companies in Scotland who are simply happy with the status quo of their leadership and ambition. They may actually be doing quite well, but they could be doing even better." Echoing the Scottish Enterprise Chair, Professor Keep, commented, "General Custer was a quite charismatic leader, but the Battle of Little Big Horn was not a great strategic success!
It isn't at all clear what the category 'manager' means in the UK, but it plainly means something slightly different elsewhere in Europe, because we have more managers proportionally than almost anyone else. In some organisations the term leadership came to be applied to the work of middle and junior managers just at the time when their actual power, decision-making capacity and discretion was being taken away from them by more senior managers. Scottish managers may be making perfectly rational choices, given the incentive structure they face. Those choices may maximise short-term profitability and share performance, while failing to maximise productivity. If we are not careful, we may end up helping managers to do bad things better."
This will be a lively one!
Join us for a bit of breakfast networking and an open discussion with panel guests
- Linda Hanna, Director of Enterprise Services, Scottish Enterprise, Board Member, Scottish Business in the Community, advisory board member for Co-operatives Development Scotland and Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Board and a Board member for IIP Scotland
- Stuart Patrick, Chief Executive, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
- John Anderson, Chief Executive, The Entreprenurial Exchange
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