Sir Anton Muscatelli on Leading Public Institutions Through Complexity, Slow Growth, and the AI Age

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [05:32]I think we also have to be careful in explaining the complexities of, of, of where knowledge takes us. I think, again, perhaps in the past, and maybe this is, again, a, a, a tendency in more hierarchical societies, there's a sense to say, well, here is some expertise, some information about a particular issue. But I'm also going to tell you how drift from knowledge, from imparting knowledge and expertise to actually making judgments. And I think that's where we need to be much more careful these days, because, we've seen that in a number of debates, whether economic debates, for instance, around Brexit in the UK, Brexit referendum, or indeed, other debates that we're having at the moment around tariffs in, in North America, in the US, climate change, that the interface between that knowledge and expertise and political decision-making can get quite fractious. And some of that is around experts being seen not only to impart expertise and knowledge, but also drift into advocacy, which is, was perhaps forgiven in a hierarchical society, it's less forgiven today, I think.

Daniel Atlin, host · [06:43]No, and I think you really saw that during, during Brexit, where all of a sudden sort of experts, I think, were, were seen as, not a good thing. And actually, I think, people sort of rebelled about that. And I think that's a anti-establishment sort of feeling that you first probably saw in England, and now we've seen through Brexit, and now we've seen in, in, the US as well.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [07:02]I think, I think that's right. And perhaps let me be more precise and let me, I think there are around roughly three things that we need to do as institutions if we want to provide expertise. One is not just provide the conclusion of our expertise, but also be careful in outlining our reasoning that takes us to that conclusion. And second, we need to be very honest about where that expertise ends and when, as I said, advocacy or judgment begins, because sometimes, especially in disciplines like economics, there is no right answer. There is a, you know, judgment to be made. And finally, I think there has to be some accountability and, you know, so if you, if you say certain things and they turn out not to be right, there has to be a recognition of that. So I think this is what we need to do as institutions, whether it's universities or, or national academies or other sources of expertise.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [10:42]Yeah, at the University of Glasgow, we certainly have used some of our physical spaces to try and encourage more interdisciplinarity. So one of the key developments was our Advanced Research Centre, which didn't belong to a single school or a single faculty or college, but essentially was organized in thematic lines. But even then, again, just to be very careful, even then we needed to make sure we understood the trade-offs so that we needed to have sufficiently discipline, sufficient disciplinary strength in the elements of each theme so that it wouldn't just become an amorphous group of people who wouldn't collaborate with each other. You needed to test. How that collaboration would work. And, and some of that is absolutely bottom-up. It can't be top-down. And I think the success of something like the Advanced Research Centre, and we've seen similar example in other institutions, has been that top-down, you can begin to imagine what those themes might be and what those priorities might be. But ultimately, it's that self-organization and a complex organization that happens bottom-up that is key to making it work. It depends, again, on the nature of what you're trying to create. If you're trying to create fundamental research knowledge, that's not necessarily the structure you, you start with. That building that I just described in Glasgow was designed to create more basic research, but also accelerate innovation. I was actually very, pleased to visit the University of Cambridge a couple of weeks ago, and I saw some of their innovation space around, you know, the West Cambridge side. And some of the spaces there are very similar to the ones I described in, in, in Glasgow. It's an attempt to basically either start with a facility or Start with certain levels of expertise in different areas and then to combine them together. And I think that's what we're getting good at in universities. I think we're getting good at experimenting with these either physical spaces or other types of nexus type structures to try and bring people together. Sometimes it's physical spaces, sometimes it's other types of linkages.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [14:39]In a sense, things haven't changed. I mean, economic variables, if you like, play out over long-term horizons, as you say, medium and long-run horizons, when in reality, any government can only impinge on that in a short period, unless they are elected and, you know, re-elected and re-elected. So, to some extent, that's not changed, and, and, and it's not different now than it was fifty, eighty years ago. I think, as you say, what's happening now is certainly some of the choices that our modern advanced economies face tend to emphasize some of the, if you like, and this has been commented on quite a lot, tend to emphasize the zero-sum nature of some of the decision-making that happens in policy. So that can lead to really problematic debates, because economics often is about trying to find solutions which are better than others, and that generally works on the premise that the problem is not a zero-sum one. So trade, for instance, international trade is seen to be positive between two countries, and therefore no country wants rational would want to impose tariffs on the other country. Now, the reason why instead that happens is because, of course, not everybody gains from trade. Some gain, some lose, depending on which sector you operate in, or whether, you know, sometimes labor gains, sometimes capital gains. And that, you know, those tensions where politics tends to emphasize who loses As opposed to the overall gain means that politics and economics can get, if you like, into a situation where politics can say, well, let's not take what might seem the economically rational solution, let's go for another one, which might be suboptimal for society as a whole, but actually it means that certain sectors of society end up doing better or think they might do better. So, so this is what we're seeing more, I think now. We're, we're seeing more zero-sum thinking. Well, we may not overall be better off, but I'm going to be better off in this scenario, so I'm going to vote for this political party that will take me down this particular route. And I think that's, I think we're seeing that more. And, and zero-sum scenarios are more common when growth slows down, because issues become more distributional rather than gaining, growing the size of the pie. It's about how that pie is distributed. So I think this is what we're seeing, I think, more. It's not that economic, economics is becoming more short-term. I think it's because slower growth, certainly in the last 20 years, is, is, is creating more political debate around how that, that economic gain should

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [24:11]If I remember our conversation as well, and, and actually your, your sensemaking approach is, is actually quite a good description, I suppose, of, I didn't really think about it this way, but it's actually quite congruent with what I do when, whenever I deal with complex problems or I face complex problems. And then part of it, part of it is about the self, you know, making, making sense of yourself and how you rationalize the problem. What, what are the key things that, that drive you in, in approaching a particular problem? But the other is, I mean, certainly for me and my leadership, it's always been important for it to be seen as a team leadership. I mean, I've, I've never led organizations which haven't had a reasonably large team at the helm, and I've generally always seen it as a team sport. And again, that's, for me, that has been one of the things I've genuinely enjoyed about dealing with complex issues, because different people will respond to like a, a complex problem in different ways. And so I think you described it as making sense with others, I think, in your framework. But essentially, that's for me is really important, because different people will approach it, a problem differently, will understand elements of it differently. And for me, a, a big part of how you deal with that complex issue is not only how you learn yourself about it, But also how others are learning about it and comparing that, you know, the elements, with others. Some of that is around storytelling, some of it is around how people map out the problem. So for me, it's, it's the curiosity that really drives you in the very beginning in analyzing the problem. So, so that's been for me a, a big element of the attraction of working with a team on complex problems, and that's been a, I suppose, a big element, I would say, of my leadership approach.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [33:01]I would start with, again, one of the points I made earlier, which is, I, I do think there's a huge advantage in Deploying your curiosity. And frankly, if you're not curious about the institution or the world around you, you probably shouldn't be in a leadership position because it's all about exploring what might be possible. So I, I would like to think that that's one of my, my, one of my bits of advice would be enjoy, give yourself time at the beginning at least to Be curious about the institution that you lead and the different dimensions, because especially with large or complex institutions, that takes a little bit of time. It will take quite a lot of your time to learn about your environment. And it's back to your, sense-making point. You can't just kind of come in and say, well, I know everything. You don't, you don't know anything when you start in a new institution and a, and a leadership position. And actually for me, you know, if I think, reflect back in my leadership at Glasgow, having been in the institution for most of my academic life, you'd think I would know it, but actually you might think you know it from working in one part of it, but you don't really know it when you first head an institution like that. So I think give yourself time, be curious, understand it, understand the lie of the land, I think is really important. And the second, again, I'm sorry, I'm going to come back to the team point, but that's because it works for me, but, but I, I really think You cannot run organizations like that either single-handedly, which is generally a bad idea. You need, you need a very capable team. But also, I think you cannot, I think the player coach point you made is really important. I think you need to be part, an active part of that team. You can't just stand back and say, well, look, you know what, I've given you individual jobs and you're, you're all going to go out and do these things, and I'm just going to stand back here and, and watch you, watch you play to the best of your ability. I think leadership is active leadership. I don't think it's about standing back. I think it does involve occasionally getting onto the pitch and, and, and working with the others. So what I think the player coach description that you, you had is a really important one. Certainly, for me, that's the advice I would give, but then that, because it suits my style of leadership, I suppose.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [35:25]I think ultimately because knowledge and wisdom are very, very different things, actually. You say knowledge is information, it's about facts, it's about, you know, it can be a technique or an explanation or, you know, something which ultimately can be assimilated. And one of the things about, as I said, from the internet to AI, it's certainly making it easier to, to access knowledge, even if you're a relative non-expert. And wisdom is different. Now, wisdom is about how you use that knowledge well. It's about judgment and how, what, about what matters in particular situations. If How you might act in a particular situation given that knowledge. So they're, they're different things. And there's a bit of a paradox here, given that information and, and knowledge has become more abundant and it's easily, easier to access it given the technology that we have. Why isn't there more wisdom? As a human race, as a set of academics, as a set of experts, what we need to do is make sure we don't just accumulate knowledge all the time, but we need to give ourselves the time to turn that knowledge into wisdom. And I think that is a, because wisdom is specific to a particular situation, that means also not just accumulating knowledge, but also saying how are we going to apply it to particular issues and problems. And for that, it requires human judgment, and it requires time to give that human judgment.

Daniel Atlin, host · [36:42]And that sounds like it's actually the perfect, sort of, role for universities, actually, to impart with their students, right? So, yeah.

Sir Anton Muscatelli, guest · [36:50]Indeed. Indeed. And that's, and that's what I think we can do. And people keep saying, what, what are universities about in the AI age? Well, it's exactly about that. That is about how AI mends our capacities to exercise wisdom, decision-making, judgment. I think it could be a fantastic tool, but only if it's not used simply on one element of that process. So that's, that's for me is the, is the key point.