PROF. DONALD MACLEAN: Let Highland businesses play to their strengths
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The founder of StrategyStory explains why Highland businesses have something unique to offer the world, and why he is championing that.
Let me set the scene. It’s the late 1980’s. I’m in my late twenties in the south-east of England, when the director of operations beckoned to me through the glass wall in a new multi-national telecoms joint-venture.
“It’s HQ on the line, they want a word,” he called in his east-coast of America tones.
Perplexed, I took the handset.
“Hey Don,” said the drawl, “OK if we archive your tapes?”
“Sure, eh, what tapes?! And can I ask why?”
“Yip, you said something weird in your interview, and we just wanna keep an eye on you!!”, he chuckled.
“You said you’re gonna be on the Scottish west coast in your early forties.”
Shocked, I’d no idea I’d been taped.
“Why’s that weird?”, I asked.
“Cos that’s a long way off, and we don’t have a plant there buddy!”
This was my first wobble. I didn’t want to look weird. It didn’t sit well with my ambitions. The first line in my CV said: “Destination: director of a multinational corporation.”
I was getting there. I was ambitious. I was on a mission. I had a strategy: to become a strategist. Strategy was power, status and success. Being a weirdo probably wouldn’t help.
Something else stirred though.
Like many of my generation growing up on the west coast, I couldn’t wait to get out into the big world. It offered so many things that small communities couldn’t: adventure, success - and the trappings.
The world seemed exciting, alluring. But home was home. Would I have left it if I’d thought I couldn’t go back?
Well my strategic intent prevailed, as some years later and after a career where I saw the world and cut my commercial teeth, the longing for home won out and I moved back to the west coast in my early forties – to Connel near Oban with my young family.
I had a post at what is now University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School. My research focussed on what works (and doesn’t) in strategic management – and why.
And, a new theme was emerging. Broadly, it was the link between culture and strategy. Best summed up in this next story...
I was having a coffee with a senior politician responsible for trade and industry.
I began: “I’ve got a question: Scandinavian, network; American, multi-divisional; Japanese, kaizen. But, Scottish what?” (I had to repeat it a couple of times, slowly).
He looked intrigued, but no answer came.
My point was: if Scotland is a distinctive cultural entity, it must have its own form of economic engine.And if no-one seemed to know (or even have questioned) what it is, how could they possibly be claiming to support and develop it?
So off I went on a new mission – to find our own form of organisation.
Not an easy task given that organisation is a soft, taken for-granted and barely visible technology.
I got closest to the answer in the Highlands and Islands. Particularly in our rural areas, there was a format (often borne of necessity) that appeared to revolve around place, people, community, collaboration, creativity and a long-term view.
At one point I was struggling to test this with a historian (he was actually nodding off) when I heard myself saying: “Look – think about squirrels; there are grey ones – bigger, territorially expansive, more aggressive, successful. Then there are red ones – our own native type – smaller, more furtive, under threat, but a vital part of our ecology and identity.”
“Ah”, he said, “OK, I get it, yip, that’s right”.
And that’s where StrategyStory’s Red Squirrel programme comes from. This mattered because in most business schools - and development bodies - at that time, the grey squirrel version was the only game in town, and frankly the only one deemed worthy of support.
Thankfully this seems to be changing.
A third and final story sees me out on the west coast of Lewis doing some work with a fantastic community group. Uppermost in my mind at the time was something else about Highland business and culture: the historical role (and power) of the bard. In other words, the role of storytelling in keeping people on-board and moving forward together (often literally!).
(As a quick aside, you might have gleaned from this piece that I’m a bit of an explorer. True.)
I’m also a person who primarily learns by doing. The only learning I really trust is the stuff I know directly from experience. Action-research.
Throughout my working life I’ve been blessed by partnerships with kindred spirits all over the world keen to try out new things, or sometimes revive forgotten things.
Just so, on the Lewis project, when I met Kate Hooper, an ex-senior producer at the BBC with island roots. We decided to approach our joint work in a way that drew on our own traditional combination of strategy and storytelling. Learning by doing again.
A year or two later, StrategyStory was born. And that’s where I am now.
But what do I think I’ve learned so far? The biggest issue in bringing strategies to life isn’t logic, it’s engagement. It isn’t purely intellectual, it’s emotional too. It isn’t obvious – it’s ingenious and often surprising. It’s about really striving for something compelling; it’s not just the how, it’s the why.
Strategic storytelling is the time-honoured key to all of these.
More on that another time folks ..thanks for reading.
