Читать книгу What Works: Success in Stressful Times - Hamish McRae - Страница 6

Picking examples from the UK and Ireland was easy, for this is territory I know well. There are three, one each from England, Scotland and Ireland-apologies to Wales, though the country is host to administrative offices of another example, the International Baccalaureate. The English example, the financial services industry of the City of London, was almost too obvious because not only is commenting on it part of my day job, but I co-authored a book about it. Writing about the Irish economy, too, was easy: I know the story as I was brought up there and, as I acknowledge, I greatly admire the achievement. The question in both cases was whether-in the light of the economic downturn and the errors, individual and collective-they should stay in. Actually it was an easy decision, for the achievements have been far greater than the setbacks.

The reverses to the City are small in the context of the difficulties it has faced over the past century: after each of the two world wars its business was destroyed, and during the 1970s it was savaged by political and industrial strife in Britain as well as the greatest outbreak of global inflation the world has ever known.

As for Ireland, the clinching argument was put to me by one of its most senior bankers at a Trinity College Dublin meeting. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We will go down 10 per cent, maybe a bit more, and that is dreadful. But in the previous fifteen or so years, we added 100 per cent to our GDP. And we will recover.’

One of the first examples I chose, though, was Scottish-and in particular what is by far the world’s largest collection of arts events, the Edinburgh Festival. Indeed its combination of a sense of collective mission over several generations and its status as a supreme marketplace for talent actually helped define the nature of the book. Is it particularly Scottish? Well, yes, in the sense that it could not happen without the support of Edinburgh’s citizens, who belie their reputation for being strait-laced in the way they relish the edgy stuff that is set out before them. But no in the sense that I am not trying to illustrate or praise national characteristics as such-simply to show what others can learn from undoubted success stories.

For continental Europe, the choices were harder. There are only four examples in this book and I wish I had more. A couple are stories I have wanted to tell for a long time. I have been an admirer of the German Mittelstand, the country’s collection of medium-sized companies, since my childhood, for reasons I explain in the text. And ever since I first went there, I have wanted to tell the story of how Copenhagen’s taming of the motor car has come to offer a lesson to the world. The other two were harder choices.

The only commercial company in the book is Sweden’s Ikea, chosen not because I am handy bolting together its flatpacked furniture or because it is particularly customer-friendly; quite the reverse-it is one of those companies that people love to hate. No, it was because its success goes beyond commerce in that it illustrates the sense of mission very well and also has something essentially Scandinavian about its ethos-a mix of style and equality-that was worth trying to bring to a wider audience.

The fourth European example is the drug-rehabilitation programme introduced in Zurich, and more specifically the rehabilitation of heroin users. I have to acknowledge that this scheme is not perfect; it just seems to have been more effective than any other. This study came about because Frances Cairncross, my spouse, visited its clinics when writing about drugs for The Economist magazine, and while the scheme has been imitated elsewhere and there have been some success stories, these have not been as numerous as I would have hoped. I think that is mostly because politics have got in the way, so if telling this tale helps push politics aside then it will have been a worthwhile exercise.

I am just as concerned, though, about the other stories that I would love to have included but have not. One huge success has been Finland’s primary and secondary education. According to an OECD study, the performance of Finnish students is quite outstanding. Would the Finnish ideas travel? Well, among the former Eastern bloc countries, Estonia has the best education outcomes. Why so? Officials there explained to me that they had adopted the Finnish model. Estonia is culturally very close to Finland so it is hard to gauge the potential reach of the ideas, but evidently they do have a bit of mileage in them.

There is nothing from France or Italy and, of course, there should be, for each has areas of outstanding excellence. The problem with France was finding examples capable of being replicated elsewhere. For example, the country leads the world in the proportion of its electricity generated by nuclear power stations. Those plants are reliable, efficient and, as far as one can judge, cost-effective. But it would not be easy to transplant a policy and a technology. In any case, a new plant in Finland, being built by a French company, has run into serious difficulties and is behind schedule and over budget.

Another example would be French healthcare, one of my original choices. It is still on balance one of the best systems in the world, if an expensive one, but it failed in the heatwave of August 2003. France had up to 20,000 more deaths than normal as a result of the soaring temperatures. Why? One reason seems to have been that August is the month-long holiday season there and most French doctors and other medical staff were off-duty.

One obvious Italian quality is its design talent, but that is hard to transfer to other countries. An example of excellence that has been imitated elsewhere is Italy’s ‘slow food’ movement-the emphasis on quality rather than quantity in food-which is a philosophy that encompasses other aspects of the Italian way. It would have been good to have included that as a means of examining how the country has managed to sustain one of the most-admired quality-of-life environments anywhere in the world. However, while other parts of the world have tried to copy some of these qualities, I felt the movement is so rooted in the history and culture of Italy that the lessons are limited.

One other European gap is Russia, where a candidate was the country’s technical education. This was clearly exceptional, though maybe less so now than a decade or more ago. Another potential case study was the vibrancy of Russian writing, also exceptional. But it was hard to bolt down excellence that could be transferred and so sadly the gap remains.

In North America the choices were extremely tough. I know and like America and have sought to understand it over many years, but choosing key messages for the world was difficult. An obvious area of excellence is in the business community and one of the original examples was General Electric, though I was more interested in it as a school for executives who then worked in other companies, rather than as a business itself. But this is a very well-travelled route and I was not sure I could add much value. I wanted to write about excellence in US healthcare, which at its best delivers a wonderful service. There have been many social initiatives, for example Milwaukee’s welfare reforms, which deserve a wider audience. I spent many hours researching, discussing and rejecting.

In the end I went back to a place that I knew and loved. Small towns in America have long fascinated me and having family in Montana has given me what I hope is a special insight into one medium-sized and successful town there, Billings.

Philanthropic New York was another choice, brought about by my affection for the city ever since my first visit in 1964, but also by a growing respect for the generosity of American people. The third US example, Harvard, was originally included not so much as a university but as a fund-management group. That was a bit too quirky and I had gone back to thinking about Harvard’s basic message of educational excellence even before the financial meltdown of late 2007 rather destroyed any idea about its special insights into fund management. My perspective has been one of a rival as my spouse is head of one of the oldest of the colleges at Oxford University, which has encouraged me to think a lot about what makes universities truly and lastingly great.

And then there is Whistler. There are many things about Canada to be admired but authors are allowed to be a bit self-indulgent: as a keen if not particularly skilled skier, and a correspondent on the sport, I did not see why I should not write about a ski-resort if I wanted to. More important, there is something especially and wonderfully Canadian about this tale, which I hope I have brought out.

The USA and Canada are covered but Latin America, I am afraid, is not. The only excuse, aside from the obvious one of a lack of space, is that I am not as familiar with the region as I am with most other parts of the world. I did, however, want very much to include a Brazilian tale and looked at several possibilities, an obvious one being the successful municipal government in the southern city of Curitiba. This is a great example of urban planning-a really well-run city. Another, somewhat more controversial example would have been Protestant churches, which have shot up from tiny beginnings a generation ago to become the fastest-growing Christian organizations in the world.

But the example that I most regret not examining is happiness in São Paulo. It is not that Brazil’s largest city is also its happiest but rather that, insofar as such an intangible can be measured, Brazilian people are among the happiest on earth. To some extent a sunny disposition goes with wealth; people in richer countries generally have more to smile about than those in poorer ones. But Brazil is an outlier. Its people are much happier than one might expect from the statistics, and where better to delve deeper into that than the country’s economic powerhouse, with all its energy and chaos? Maybe another book …

China and India both had to be included for obvious reasons. I have made several visits to both countries but, of course, I have only scratched the surface; no outsider from the West can ever feel they will understand countries with more than a billion citizens. In the case of China, however, one choice was easy: the Shanghai municipality. It is impossible not to be astounded, and at one level alarmed, by what has been achieved. The other choice, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, came about because some friends who live there suggested it. I had known Hong Kong ought to feature in the book somehow, but it was not until I researched the story that I realized this was an ideal way not just into gambling (though I enjoyed my day at the races) but also into a remarkable record in governance.

In India I had to write about the hi-tech industries of Bangalore; no one who goes there escapes unchanged by the experience. There are many other examples of hi-tech complexes in India-I could just as well have gone to Pune or Hyderabad-but Bangalore was where the dream first took root. The other choice, Dharavi in Mumbai, was more quirky, or at least it was until Slumdog Millionaire introduced Dharavi to millions of cinema-goers around the world. I hate the word ‘slum’ just as I hate the glamorizing of poverty. So the surprise there is not just that this community works but that it is an important economic powerhouse, generating a billion dollars of GDP each year.

There should, of course, have been other Asian examples, aside from the single Japanese tale-that of public safety in Tokyo. The great Japanese boom that lasted until 1990 brought the world such consumer triumphs as the Walkman and cars that did not break down. The world has certainly learnt from that, just as we have also learnt, less comfortably, about the threat of stagnation from what happened after 1990. (I co-authored a book, published only in Japanese, about the dangers of such stagnation to Japanese society and its influence in the world.) The example here, however, is not economic but social. It concerns how Tokyo, the largest agglomeration of humankind on the planet, is also the safest large city in the world, giving its citizens a greater degree of freedom to go about their daily lives than the people of any other city. Young women can return home on public transport late at night without any concern they might be attacked or hassled. Salarymen the worse for wear after an evening in the bars can do likewise.

I regret not including Singapore, for it is a fascinating experiment and a hugely successful one. Its attributes, however, are well known. There should be success stories from South-East Asia, for example from South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia; my only defence is that you cannot cover everything.

The Middle East and Africa have each fielded a tale. I first visited Dubai at the height of the boom and decided there and then that this was a story demanding to be told. I next visited when it was rolling over towards the downturn and the question was whether to keep it in for by then it was clear that it would hit the buffers. Should the example be broadened more generally to the Gulf states, including Abu Dhabi, which has moved to rescue its fellow United Arab Emirates member, and also neighbouring Oman, which has been extraordinarily successful in creating a harmonious mix of ancient and modern? In the end I kept Dubai, partly because it is such an extreme example of property development but more because, for all its shortcomings, I believe it will maintain its role as a trading hub in the years ahead and succeed at it. Meanwhile, the lessons are obvious.

Africa was difficult because the continent is so diverse and its problems so challenging. Primary education in Ghana was one possibility, an example of public sector success under difficult circumstances. I would have liked to highlight the vibrancy of commerce in Nigeria, a success story against an even more difficult background. But in the end the obvious choice was surely the right one: mobile telephony. That is a great story in its own right but also illustrates some of the most remarkable features of the continent, including the ability of its people to adapt technologies to suit the special circumstances of Africa and the sheer commercial creativity of many societies there.

Australia provided an outstanding example, sports education, and even if it is an obvious one, I am happy with that. The message that it does this better than any place on earth has already transformed sports training in Britain, among other places, and in any case I think the story really should go beyond sport: governments can achieve in education if they are determined, set up and fund the project, and are clear about their objectives.

Finally, there is one non-geographical example, the International Baccalaureate. This is an education movement that is genuinely multinational: its legal headquarters are in Switzerland, it has an administrative base in Wales, its largest market is the USA and its fastest-growing areas of activity are in Asia. Schools all over the world are turning to the IB as a way not just to give their students a global academic credential, but much more to equip them to be good citizens of the world in their own individual way. I gave a talk about the changing world economy to a group of IB people and came away thrilled by what I learnt. Visiting schools in the UK, the USA and, by chance, Estonia totally confirmed this view. It is wonderful to know that the next generation of people who will be running the show is so good.

That brings me to the final point: the sense of a global community that came through strongly when I was researching and writing this book. Some general themes of What Works, together with the more specific takeaway lessons, are set out in the concluding chapter. Here are some thoughts about the global context of this book: how these stories exemplify a world where power is shifting and good ideas come from every quarter.