If you’ve got a productivity problem, it’s probably because you aren’t spending enough on technology

An expert in supply chains, operations and global business practices, Bath University’s Michael Lewis is in a strong place to help UK SMEs as a Be the Business fellow.

It was all a combination of luck and timing: as a young mechanical engineering graduate, Michael Lewis found himself working in the steel industry just at the point when the world seemed to be giving up on steel.

He next thought about moving into aerospace – but the cold war was ending and opportunities within that sector also seemed a little thin on the ground. “I went back to university, was offered some money to do my PhD and I found that it really fitted me,” he said.

“Sometimes you just you fall into something with no great planning, and academia suited me in that I was able to be master of my own destiny in a way that no corporate life was ever going to let me be.”

It also suited his inquisitive nature and love of trying new things (“ants in his pants” is how his mother describes it), and in the career that has followed, his research, teaching and advisory work has taken him all over the world looking at factories, supply chains, tech innovations and business practices. Since 2004, he has been with the University of Bath’s School of Management.

“It’s a privileged position, really,” he said, “and one of the advantages I have in the way I work is that people take me into their confidence. Because I don’t have a commercial axe to grind and I’m not looking to sell products or services, they’ll open up to me because I’m interested.”

No greater example of this in action was evidenced the day Michael bumped into an Arthur Andersen auditor back in the 1990s who gave him the inside scoop on an up-and-coming Spanish firm named Zara. “At that time they didn’t have any stores in the UK,” remembered Michael, “and this auditor told me I had to go and see them, because they were extraordinary.”

Within 18 months, due to a series of fortuitous coincidences – including a teaching spell in the US at Georgetown University – he was able to witness Zara’s inner workings in action and discovered, he recalled, an “amazing engine of growth that has transformed the fashion world”.

Decades of experience working with and observing game-changing business practices like this all over the  world – and then articulating his findings to his students – makes Michael an easy choice to be a fellow.

He taught on Bath’s Productivity through People programme (an early programme spearheaded by Be the Business), and, he said, met some great people and organisations “who we have subsequently re-engaged with through MBA projects and other bits of work that really helped them”.

As for the key issues that UK businesses need help with, technology, added Michael, is right up there at the top. “In a recent IMD World Digital Competitiveness ranking, the UK ranked only 15th, and that’s absolutely crippling,” he said.

“If you’ve got a productivity problem, it’s probably because you’re not spending enough money on technology to do things more efficiently.”

Michael is professor of operations & supply management at the University of Bath School of Management. He is the author of numerous journal articles as well as several books, and was a long-standing member of the Advisory Council to the Chartered Management Institute. He was recently a member of a government expert group reporting on the measurement of UK industrial activity and is currently a theme leader for the Cabinet Office/IPA Project Excellence Initiative.

Quick-fire questions

What would be your rallying call to the business ecosystem?

To recognise that we are an ecosystem. Although individual firms may succeed, it’s normally about collective performance. If you look at Germany, there is a kind of community of economic actors and that is something we just don’t have in the UK. It’s about understanding that you can compete and collaborate at the same time.

Who is your business inspiration?

I like people who stand against prevailing logic. I love that Timpson employ ex-offenders. I love Buurtzorg and their CEO Jos de Blok whose rallying cry of humanity not bureaucracy is pretty hard to argue against.

What is your personal productivity tip?

If you’ve ever been to my classes you’ll have heard me say this a million times: don’t confuse motion with progress, or you become a busy fool.

What should UK businesses be on the lookout for?

We are seeing consumer behaviour and social structures shifted because of the pandemic, but my sense is that when we are clear of the worst of this, people will want to cluster together even more. For retail, I can definitely see the sector surviving – but in a fundamentally different way.

What was the best piece of business advice that you’ve ever been given?

Back in the days of British Steel, one of my line managers said to me: “You’ve got to remember that most organisations are like five-year-olds playing football: head down, chasing a ball – huge fun, but futile and no one scores a goal.” The idea of heads up, having a plan, seeing where you are and acting accordingly is hugely powerful.

If you’d gone down a completely different career path, what might you like to have been?

I love art and music but I have very limited talents in both areas, so I keep my trumpet playing and my painting very much to myself. But it would be lovely to have that deep skill.