Tag Archives: economics

Doughnut Thinking

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It’s time for Doughnut Thinking. The old mindset of economics has run its course and needs refreshing. The planet demands it and our very survival as a species depends on it.

Continuing to believe that we will simply return to the old way of doing things when the latest crisis is over is deluded thinking. In just the last six months we have seen the planet rocked by extreme weather events from devastating fires in Australia to Atlantic storms and unprecedented flooding across parts of Europe. The melting of ice at our polar regions is increasing at an alarming rate, with the hottest ever temperature on record for Antarctica having been recorded in February 2020. As I write, the world economy has been brought to its knees by a virus that has spread around the world at lightening speed, a consequence of our economic globalization. Meanwhile, refugees, across all parts of the planet, continue to gravitate toward areas where they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the prospect of survival for their families will be vastly improved. They are moving away from famine and drought, from war and terrorism, from dictatorships and oppression. And, who could blame them?

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Leadership without accountability. Let’s hope it’s just a ‘glitch’?

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Following the Enron and Worldcom scandals of a decade or so ago, we might have been excused of thinking that a new era of more authentic, honest and open leadership would beckon.  Unfortunately, the last few years have demonstrated that no industry, or walk of life, is immune from deep-rooted dubious leadership.  One simply has to mention politics (expenses scandals), journalism (the Levenson inquiry), banking (sub-prime lending) and pharmaceuticals (drug use fraud) to reinforce the breadth and depth of the malaise.

There is clearly no single, or simple, answer to what is a serious global leadership problem, but one particular story in recent weeks highlighted to me an area where leaders could at least make a start on recovering some of the confidence and trust that will take a long time to regain.  I am talking about those two pillars of leadership – responsibility and accountability.

I was dismayed to hear the statements coming out from Stephen Hester, the chief executive of RBS, last week, following the serious systems outage that caused so much concern, inconvenience and, in some cases, hardship to so many customers. After several days of uncertainty as to when the problem would be resolved, during which various spokes-people provided updates and assurances that everything was being done to bring the systems back, Mr. Hester appeared in front of the cameras, and described the problem as a software ‘glitch’. Oh dear!  This was, in my view, a complete abrogation of responsibility and accountabilty, and an insult to so many people’s intelligence.  (see attached for the anger that such simplistic responses can stir up).

One does not need to be fully aware of the precise details of the software or technology issues that RBS faced to know that dismissing the issue as a ‘glitch’ is to miss so many points about the important role of leadership.

From my experience of the IT industry, all technology & software problems can be tracked back to a failure of leadership at one level or other.

  • Who took the final decisions on how the software upgrade was to be implemented?
  • Who looked at the risk analysis and made decisions about back-ups, back-out plans, the operational window for the upgrade, the resources to be put into testing before going live?
  • Going back further in the timeline, where did the buck stop on decisions made about which technology to run with? Were compromises made, and technical advice dismissed on the basis of cost?
  • Were any other (more costly perhaps) recommendations by the front-line operational teams overruled by the executive team?
  • Is the culture within the organisation one where technicians and software engineering team leaders are encouraged and empowered to speak up and warn that things may go wrong?
  • Or are they living in a climate of fear for their jobs, resulting in them keeping their heads down, even if they are worried about some aspect of deployment procedure?
  • Was the upgrade managed by outsourced staff or contractors, perhaps with less intimate knowledge of the complexities of legacy system interfaces? Who made the decision to outsource and lay off in-house IT people to save costs?

Whatever, the answers to these, and many more questions that could be asked in a post-implementation review, the issue is that Continue reading →

Leading Small Countries to Big Futures. Reflections from the edges of Europe.

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I have recently returned from visiting two European countries in quick succession. The first, Scotland, is in the far North West of Europe, and has much in common with Norway and Iceland, while the other, Albania, is in the South East of the continent, and has more in common with Greece and Serbia. Two countries in stark contrast to one another in so many ways, but also with many intriguing parallels. Both are proud countries with long and rich histories, of similar relative size and population, both with rich energy reserves not yet fully explored and exploited, and both at a cross-roads in their respective journeys. The contrasts, on the other hand, are stark.

Albania is a country which has remained fiercely independent through turbulent times. When former Yugoslavia tried to annex the country, it formed alliances first with Russia and later with China, but gave up on both of these super-powers to create an isolationist state. Scotland on the other hand gave up its independence in the early 1700s, joining a Union with England, Wales & Northern Ireland to form today’s United Kingdom.

Albania is currently seeking to come in from the cold with a long term plan to join the EU. It has a long way to go to satisfy the many conditions required, even to become a ‘candidate state’. There are massive improvements required on the economy, human rights, open & transparent democratic elections, infrastructure, and more.  Scotland, meanwhile, has a proud and reputable tradition in its standards of education and democracy, as well as in its finance and legal systems. It is currently engaged in a national and UK-wide debate on whether its future is best served as an independent state once again, or to continue as part of a union within the United Kingdom.

What particularly fascinates me about these countries, and the significance of their respective moments in history, is how their Leadership will choose to navigate the challenges that will be thrown at them, and how they will communicate the key messages that they believe will bring people with them.

Albania, since being free of the stranglehold of communism and isolationism, has rapidly become a country of massive contrasts and disparity. Top of the range German and Japanese cars share the (under-developed) roads with donkeys and hand-pulled carts. The gap between rich and poor is enormous and appears to be widening. The ‘ruling class’ is accused of corruption, and that includes the current Leader, Sali Berisha. Trust in leadership is in short supply and yet the people remain optimistic, perhaps still buoyed by the recency of their freedom from the oppressive chains of communism that led to their world isolation. The challenge for the leadership in Albania will be to harness and nurture that optimism, and not exploit it, and to work relentlessly to gain trust and credibility.

Scotland is very different, and its Leadership faces a different type of battle. Scotland has been part of a union for over 300 years. The Scots people have a reputation for being cautious, pragmatic and, some say, dour. Scots do not heap praise on its famous and successful sons and daughters. They like to keep people in their place and ensure they do not get ideas above their station. This is a national characteristic. Alex Salmond, the current leader in the Scottish Parliament, who is keen to persuade the nation of the benefits independence will bring, will need to find ways to energise and mobilise the people, and overcome the culturally entrenched tendency to accept the status quo After all, it’s easier to stay where one is; our brains are wired to resist change. No matter how unsatisfied we may be (short of a life-threatening situation), our brains will do their best to convince us that what got us here is working, so “why change anything”?

What Scotland does have in its favour is its history of egalitarianism. It is a country with a heritage of social justice and fairness, and is coming from a better starting point in terms of the gap between the richest and poorest being relatively narrow, when compared with Albania.

So, why do I stress this particular point? Continue reading →