Interview: Ian McKay, chairman of Institute of Directors (IoD) in Scotland

RED is a colour that has played a big role in Ian McKay’s life. At Stirling University in the late 1970s, he was president of the students’ union when future Labour home secretary John Reid was rector.

It was a time when fellow student politicians Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and a young Jack McConnell were active on the Scottish scene.

McKay’s working life is also dominated by the colour of post boxes and delivery vans as he fulfils his role as Royal Mail’s Scottish affairs director, making him the most senior postie north of the Border.

Now, with his appointment as chairman of the Institute of Directors (IoD) in Scotland, McKay’s attention will also be turning to “red” tape and other colourful political issues as he stands up for businesses.

Why has a director from taxpayer-owned Royal Mail – and before that the assistant general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country’s largest teaching union – been chosen to lead a trade body that essentially represents private sector executives? “I think I’m probably unique in that I’ve been both a senior trade unionist and have held management positions in the public and private sectors,” says McKay.

“That’s given me experience of what others would regard as polar opposites, but I think that knowledge has actually helped me to understand that the needs of each sector are shared.

“People in both the public and private sectors need people to be brought together. You can get amazing results if you bring together two companies that might otherwise be competitors to break into a new market together. Or bringing together the public and private sectors to deliver services.”

His experience lobbying the Scottish Government was no doubt also a major reason for the IoD selecting him as its next Scottish chairman.

Bringing people together has been a key focus for McKay, a miner’s son from West Lothian. He trained as a further education lecturer at Stirling University and then taught at Stevenson College in Edinburgh during the early 1980s, when youth unemployment was at its height.

He was in charge of a specialist unit that helped unemployed people and adults with learning difficulties back into work. After his spell with the EIS, he joined Royal Mail in 2003 during the early days of Bute-born Adam Crozier’s reign as chief executive.

“My whole career has been about trying to build alliances and bringing together people to go in the same direction,” explains McKay. “I think Scotland is small enough to enable us to build relationships like that.”

He’ll now be putting those skills to good use at the IoD, listening to members’ views from throughout the country and then feeding them back to the body’s management committee and to policymakers in the Scottish Government.

“I want to take the discussions about improving leadership in Scotland from being just words to actually putting it into action,” McKay said.

“I think the IoD is ideally placed to do that because it is made up of individual directors rather than people acting as corporate representatives and because it already offers training courses to its members.”

McKay wants to feed back experience from businesses to the Scottish Government, so that companies can have a bigger say in the strategies that are set for economic development agencies such as Scottish Enterprise and Business Gateway.

He is also looking to encourage Scottish businesses to look abroad for opportunities.

“Two of the best messages I’ve heard in recent weeks is First Minister Alex Salmond going out to China on a trade mission and Scottish secretary Michael Moore leading a trip to Brazil.

“Scotland’s economy may be stuck in a downturn but these countries aren’t, and so we should be looking at exports.”

McKay highlighted the success of Edinburgh-based hospital billing software firm Craneware and eye scanner maker Optos in Dunfermline, both of which carry out much of their business in the United States.

“It’s long been said but it’s still true – we’re very good at coming up with ideas in Scotland but not so good at building businesses of scale that benefit our economy,” he observes. “Here are two businesses that are enjoying success through exporting but are still bringing the economic benefits back to Scotland.”

Though economic growth is one of McKay’s favourite topics, he does not think that growing the private sector needs to come at the expense of public services.

“We’ve got hung up in Scotland in the past about the relative sizes of the public and private sectors. While it’s undoubtedly true we need to build up the size of the private sector – its small size is the major failing of our economy – we still have to recognise that the public sector has an incredibly important role to play.

“We can’t start throwing babies out with the bathwater, because a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises rely on the public sector for their work.

“What I want to see is the private sector growing in Scotland to give more strings to our economic bow.”

McKay clearly wants to dispel the myth that the public and private sectors are polar opposites. He also thinks another common opinion – that the postal service is dying – should be labelled as fantasy.

“People say emails and texts are killing the Royal Mail,” he says. “But spreading high-speed broadband throughout Scotland will allow more people to sell products from home or buy more items from the internet. But who’s going to collect and deliver those items? Royal Mail will.”

As well as his new role at the IoD – which comes after two years of sitting on the body’s Scottish committee – McKay is a member of the executive committee of the Scottish Council for Development & Industry and sits on CBI’s Scottish council.

With so many hats to wear, does he think there are too many bodies competing for the same members?

“We’re not short of business organisation in Scotland,” McKay says. “But it’s about horses for courses. I think all the business organisations have a role to play, but I think the IoD is particularly well placed to develop leadership skills within the business community.”

McKay aims to demonstrate that being a member of a body such as the IoD is not just about wine and nibbles.

“Networking has to be about more than just going along to an event and having a glass of wine and shaking hands with people,” he says.

“It’s got to be about building relationships and seeing how you can do business together.”