Media Spotlight: What Works By Hamish McRae
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Having crawled our way out of recession, perhaps now is the time to set aside those miserable retrospectives picking over the financial crisis and look forward.
As Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, noted last week, regulators, central banks, governments and lenders the world over still have a lot of work of to do in designing a better financial system, and undoubtedly there are lessons to be learnt.
But let’s leave them to deal with that. For the rest of us it makes sense to focus on what has gone right and build from there.
This is where What Works by Hamish McRae comes in. McRae has a long list of credentials to back up his claim that he has managed to track down “the secrets of the world’s best organisations and communities”.
He is associate editor at the Independent, is that newspaper’s principal economic commentator and penned the acclaimed work The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity.
But more illustrious than any of these in my view is his biography which is included in Celebrity Speakers, a directory for the after-dinner speaking circuit.
The first line of his entry reads simply “Hamish McRae - prominent economist and futurist”. Anyone who calls themselves a futurist should surely be equipped to steer us in the right direction.
What Works collates a range of success stories from around the world and then dissects and investigates the secret of that success.
Case studies include how the International Baccalaureate became prominent as a global standard for education, how good manners helped to secure Whistler’s position as North America’s top ski resort and the community-driven “economic powerhouse” McRae says can be found in the slums of Mumbai.
Of course, given his business background some economic triumphs have also made the cut - the City of London as an international financial centre, the property boom in Dubai, and Ireland’s so-called Celtic Tiger economy. No you haven’t read that wrong - those are success stories.
McRae acknowledges that his selection may cause a few raised eyebrows but he justifies their inclusion despite the battering they took as the credit crunch morphed into financial crisis and then recession.
Take the City, for example. Yes, bankers’ egos are bruised and battered, and massive failings in the regulatory system caused carnage in the financial services sector. But McRae encourages us to look again.
London has carved out a niche as the financial capital of the world, overtaking New York and Tokyo on levels of international business. Inner London is the richest place in Europe in terms of GDP per head. Although education and communications have boosted the UK economy, McRae points out that “the City has been the engine driving it all along”.
The common thread with the success stories is that the booms of London, Ireland and Dubai all needed correcting. But they were also driven by a desire to be the best and they provided the incentives to attract business.
This is a balanced and informed take on what lies behind some of the world’s greatest successes. Although the examples are by no means flawless there are definitely lessons to be learnt. And that’s something we can all get on board with.
Bbook review by NATALIE HOLT
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