What is one of the key elements relatively underexplored in European competitiveness? The quality of management. In this episode of […]
What is one of the key elements relatively underexplored in European competitiveness? The quality of management.
In this episode of the Liberal Europe Podcast, Ricardo Silvestre (Movimento Liberal Social), welcomes Radu Mihail, independent consultant and former Senator in Romania, who co-authored, with former MEP Vlad Botos and Vice-President of the NGO The Liberal Community Maria Ionescu, the ELF policy paper 41 “The Art of Execution – Management as a Hidden Driver of Europe’s Competitiveness”.
This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with Movimento Liberal Social and Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.
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The Policy Paper 41 can be found here.
Ricardo: Welcome to the Liberal Europe podcast. I’m your host, Ricardo Silvestre, and thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. For this conversation, I’m very pleased to bring you Radu Mihail. He is an independent consultant and a former senator in the Romanian parliament. He is the author, along with Vlad Botoș, a former MEP, and Maria Ionescu, VP of the NGO The Liberal Community, of ELF Policy Paper number 41, called The Art of Execution: Management as a Hidden Driver of European Competitiveness. This paper aims to complement the Draghi report on competitiveness, particularly in the quality of management. We go into the challenges and opportunities for management in the European setting, and the European Management Capability Initiative, which aims to elevate management as a strategic priority. After our main conversation, please stay to hear a little more about the path Radu chose before I got him on the podcast. But now, without further ado, I bring you Radu Mihail.
Ricardo: I’m here with Radu Mihail. Radu, thank you so much for coming to the podcast.
Radu: Thank you for having me.
Ricardo: It’s so great to have you and to talk about the ELF policy paper you co-authored: The Art of Execution: Management as a Hidden Driver of European Competitiveness. Before I throw it to you, Radu, the abstract alone is really eye-catching. It says: this policy paper aims to complement the Draghi report on competitiveness — a key element, the quality of management. This is why we have you here. You wrote this policy paper with Vlad Botoș and Maria Ionescu. Let’s start by comparing Europe to other hegemons, like the United States or China. You argue in the policy paper that there is an asymmetry regarding management practices, organisational culture, and public sector leadership. Tell us a little about these differences.
Radu: First, I would rephrase the question a little, because I don’t think Europe is behaving like a hegemon today. I think it has every reason to become one, but on its own terms — not through domination or pressure, but through the quality of what it produces, the way it partners, and the way it leads. Right now, both Chinese and American competitiveness rely on specific management cultures. The Chinese model has a lot of speed and pressure, but combined with practices that, frankly, I don’t think would be attractive as a global standard. The Americans have their tradition of efficiency and, critically, they are better than anyone, I think, at engaging their people. Our European workers — blue-collar, white-collar, knowledge workers — are significantly more disenchanted with how their work is structured and how their organisations are led. I’ve seen research from Professors Bloom, Sadun, and Van Reenen — and not only them — but the research shows that management practices can account for 10% to 30% of productivity variation between firms and between countries. Unfortunately, Europe is not at the top of that scale. But there is an important nuance. When you look at Europe’s best organisations, they match or even surpass the Americans. The gap is not at the top. The gap is in the long tail.
Ricardo: A typical Gaussian distribution.
Radu: Yes. If you draw a Gaussian distribution curve, you look at the tails, and they are much too long for us Europeans, with numerous poorly managed organisations that drag the average down. This inconsistency is something that can change, and needs to change, and I think that’s our opportunity.
Ricardo: Let’s get into that. How can we change it? On page 9, you mention that management must be recognised as a professional capability rather than merely a hierarchical position — so, a change of paradigm. And you present three solutions. Please get into those.
Radu: There is a paradox in Europe. We have world-class firms. We have top business schools. We have diverse management traditions. And we have even started to formalise what quality management means and produced a methodology to have quality of management. This is EFQM, the European Foundation for Quality Management. It’s very interesting because it was founded in 1988 or 1989 by companies like Bosch, Nestlé, and Philips — their CEOs, with the support of Jacques Delors, a socialist, in the Commission. That was a great start. But today, EFQM is just an NGO whose main clients are now not in Europe, but in Asia or South America. And the EU institutions have largely lost interest in it, because management quality is unfortunately not a sexy political topic.
Ricardo: Unfortunately, yes.
Radu: So the gap is not in knowledge or tools. The connection between layers is what’s missing — between the academics who have studied the problem, the business schools and training facilities who propose solutions, and the organisational leaders on the other side, many of whom don’t see this as a priority. And of course the politicians, who have it nowhere on the radar.
Ricardo: Let me interrupt you, Radu — because managers should see an interest in this. They are managers. Theoretically, they should be trying to have better decision-making, better enterprise culture. So what is missing? Do you think it’s a training gap, or are they just too worried about day-to-day operations?
Radu: I think it’s a combination that applies to certain types of organisations. We have very good managers in many organisations. But unfortunately, there are also many organisations where, as you said, because of lack of training and lack of time to get interested in what actual performance management means, we don’t have that level of productivity from our managers. And I’m talking about the public sector as well as the private sector. I’ve worked a lot with SMEs. Usually, the CEO of an SME has so many things on their plate that they seldom look at their own performance in terms of simple, basic management — having clarity on the goals, clarity on the methods, and, of course, managing, building, and developing a team. These are unavoidable things in any organisation, but they can be addressed with a set of actions. First of all, we need to let these managers know: there is a better world, where you would be better off as a manager if you do simple things. That’s the starting point.
Ricardo: Where does that impulse come from? And how do we make sure that the promotion of new tools — combined with the facilities to encourage people to adopt them — actually happens? Please tell us more about these ways to change the paradigm. On page 9 of the policy paper, you write: engagement is measurable and improvable; culture is strategy; and management is a performance lever. Tell us why you and your co-authors chose these three.
Radu: If you look at the Draghi report — and I did, and I hope most politicians did, but not only them — it’s a very clearly done piece of work that identifies what Europe needs to do to be more competitive. In terms of broad macroeconomic items: where should we invest, how should we sustain innovation, and so on. But all these things can only be achieved if you have organisations — whether governmental agencies or companies — that are able to do that quickly and well. And for that to happen, you need those organisations to be well-managed. That’s where we have a gap between the micro level, where things actually happen, and the macro level, where people look at high-level indicators and wait for things to change. That’s the gap we need to bridge. I’ve seen this, unfortunately, myself. I had a colleague in the Romanian parliament who was proposing measures for SMEs. I asked him: with which CEOs of SMEs or teams in small companies did you discuss what you’re proposing? And his answer was: no, no, no, I don’t discuss with those guys. He said an economist cannot get biased by the specifics of particular cases. This is not an isolated anecdote. I once spoke with a distinguished management professor who said that in today’s world, economists are systematically put at the front of the scene — and it’s high time to have management involved too.
Ricardo: You mention on page 10 that there is a European framework — a management approach that balances performance with long-term responsibility and social legitimacy. That’s something we Europeans are very proud of, and rightfully so. You just mentioned the difference between the US and China on that. So how can we have a ground-level approach to make this happen — this transition between performance and long-term social legitimacy and responsibility?
Radu: I see the European framework not as a constraint, but as an actual asset we have not used sufficiently. In the European Union, we are building a civilisation with a long-term horizon. We have a skilled but ageing workforce. We have a demanding younger generation. We have very complex, multi-layered governance and an economic model oriented towards a broad base of stakeholders. These are constraints, because they force you to deliver for many, many beneficiaries. But they also push us towards better management, because it has been proven that management that is more inclusive, more sustainable, and more resilient is more performant. And in Europe, we have another extremely important pillar: values. You can translate the EU’s stated values into respect, cooperation, diversity, responsibility, solidarity, but also discipline and ethics. All these things are ingrained in what we are trying to do as a European project. We also have a rich tradition of European management. You have the Nordics with their trust-based model, the Germanic quality and co-determination approach, the French tradition with its strategic view and strategic state capacity. Each brings something valuable. If you combine those with what the academic institutions in Europe are doing — like INSEAD, HEC, Bocconi, and many others, which are effectively top-notch in world rankings — and alongside them the existing frameworks like EFQM, and CAF, the Common Assessment Framework for Public Administration, you have a foundation for a coherent and distinctly European approach to management excellence. I think we can build something simple, clear, and useful — from the Balkans up to the North Sea — throughout organisations, large and small, that would be distinctive from anything the Americans, the Chinese, or others are doing, but performant enough and European enough to push us forward and make us more competitive.
Ricardo: Absolutely — such a great point. To our listeners, I’m going to throw a curveball at Radu here, because he was not expecting this question, but I really have to ask. Do you think the insertion of AI now — in SMEs, in governance, in all the work being done to manage and create — is too non-European in the way AI functions in the background? Or do you think the human factor will continue to overcome whatever the connection is — this hybrid model between humans and AI in management?
Radu: I think the fact that Europe lags behind in AI development and usage can actually be turned into an advantage, because we’ve had the chance to sit and watch and understand a little more calmly what can be done with AI. The impact on management itself is enormous, because AI addresses a clear issue we see today. There is a lack of interest in management as a profession. I’ve seen many articles and studies over the past 12 months showing that whether it’s in the United States, France, or Germany, professionals are no longer interested, as they used to be, in climbing the managerial ladder — in growing in responsibility and salary at the same time. Most of that is linked to the type of managerial culture in their organisation and the type of work they’re expected to do. Because there are too many organisations where responsibility and decision-making are concentrated at the top, and managers have become just administrators, dealing with systems where they input data and do reporting most of the time. Now, with AI coming, all that nitty-gritty, boring stuff can be taken away, given to AI — let the machine do what it does best. Then people can deal with the people stuff. Managers will have time to focus on how they select people, how they develop them, how to make sure they are engaged and working in an environment where they create value quickly and efficiently, with all the energy that comes with a team that works well.
Ricardo: In this last minute, I really want to go into the European Management Capability Initiative — EMCI. You have three objectives, so please tell us a little more about EMCI’s ambition.
Radu: My colleagues Vlad Botoș, Maria Ionescu, and I all come from private business — we all held managerial positions at different levels. After that real-life experience, we went into politics and working with public administration and public institutions. From that background, we were reluctant to launch another acronym into the Brussels alphabet soup. But we needed a name for what we want to build. That’s why we said: let’s call it EMCI, the European Management Capability Initiative. We see it as a coalition of the willing — political institutions, employer and employee representatives, and the management education and research communities, all aligned with a shared ambition. And that coalition, in my view, needs to do three things. First, make leadership development and management quality an explicit economic priority — not a niche issue, not a small internal item for one company or another, but a real competitiveness issue, at both national and European Union level. Second, establish a coherent, voluntary reference that defines what good management looks like. This reference should be applicable both to enterprises and to public administrations. It needs to integrate all the factors that make things successful in Europe — sustainability, digitalisation, social responsibility. We gave it a provisional name: the European Management Capability Framework. It should encompass what exists — EFQM, CAF, everything the business schools in Europe are doing. These things exist; they just need to be synthesised and highlighted so they can be applied more broadly and efficiently. And the third thing I would expect from this coalition of the willing is to create a system that allows measurement of performance in this field — systematically tracking the relationship between management quality and productivity, innovation, talent retention, and the resilience of European organisations. Because without measuring what we’re doing, everything remains just an empty aspiration. These three things can be done if there is a will from all parties. But one thing is really non-negotiable, because I’ve spoken with dozens of managers in various organisations over the last three or four months to ask about our initiative. All of them said what should be non-negotiable is: no new institutions, no new paperwork, no new burden for the organisations, especially SMEs and small administrations. The current EU policy architecture can carry this initiative. It simply needs to give management quality the attention it deserves in each of its pillars, not invent new structures, documents, or requirements, which would be unrealistic.
Ricardo: Absolutely. We do know from the European Commission and the European Parliament how much importance the EU gives to SMEs. So as you said: just make their lives easier, but at the same time give them the tools to succeed. Wonderful. Radu, we have a couple more seconds. Where can people follow your work online?
Radu: The starting point is the policy paper. It has been published by the European Liberal Forum and is available at liberalforum.eu. I co-authored it with Vlad Botoș and Maria Ionescu, and it’s written as an open debate — so feedback would be excellent. For my own work and thinking, I have a site: radumihail.eu. And I have a Substack publication called The European Way. For curious people, I’m trying to put on paper what I believe is worthwhile for Europe. Frankly, I hope more professionals will get interested and adhere to the broader ambition we have. Right now, we have “Made in Europe,” which signals the quality of products. We have “Made with Europe,” the collaboration and partnerships that make things better. What I dream of is a third marker that can take place alongside these two: “Managed as in Europe.” A standard that would signal reliability, ethical governance, long-term thinking, and genuine care for people. That’s what I think Europe is bringing, and that’s why I think it’s a brand worth building.
Ricardo: Very cool. I’m going to put all the links in the podcast show notes for the policy paper, the website, and Radu’s Substack. I’ve been talking with Radu Mihail. He wrote The Art of Execution: Management as a Hidden Driver of European Competitiveness with Vlad Botoș and Maria Ionescu — an ELF policy paper. Radu, it was such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Radu: Thank you for the opportunity.
Ricardo: So, Radu, tell us a little about yourself. What was the path you chose before I got you here on the podcast?
Radu: I was born and raised in Romania, on the seaside, and I started my professional life as an electronics engineer, who rather quickly went into project management and then management roles of all types. For about 20 years, I led teams in Romania, the US, France, the UK, and Italy. I was involved in many domains — product development, innovation, HR, strategy. I had a chance to work with multinationals that were, in their time, leaders in their fields — Motorola in telecommunications, CGG Veritas in geophysical services. They were leaders not just economically, but also in applying advanced management practices. That was a real opportunity. Then I spent a couple of years working with SMEs, helping their leaders grow their companies. Afterwards — somehow unexpectedly, and certainly unplanned — I went into the political arena. I was elected twice in Romania, in the Romanian Senate, where I was president of the USR political group. Most of all, I was part of the National Bureau of the party, where we built an organisation from fewer than a thousand members to several tens of thousands, and brought a new party to government in about four years. Now I’m back in the private world. I work again with SMEs and public actors, and I want to help them make sure they execute what they plan — and that they handle well the periods of growth, transformation, and crisis. Simply put, I help people manage their organisations well.
Ricardo: Very good. Let me follow up on what you just said. It was unexpected — your entrance into the political world. For our listeners who might be thinking, “Oh wow, that’s interesting, maybe someone like me with a degree in engineering can get into politics” — tell us about that transition. How hard was it, or did you transition smoothly?
Radu: I was living in France and working with SMEs. Someone told me: why don’t you look for customers in Romania? So I went to Romania and got some customers there. I spent time with them, travelling between Romania and France. And I was very, very affected by Romanian politics — things were going in the wrong direction, and I felt I needed to do something. The only thing I knew how to do that I thought would help politics was to help a party organise itself. So I offered my services to a new party, thinking I could help them develop the way I help SMEs develop. They ignored my proposal — which was: I can teach you guys, because I’m this manager who can do lots of things to organise your activity. But instead, someone contacted me and said: are you interested in becoming a Member of Parliament? Running in elections? And I said: no, that’s not my plan. I have my business, I have things to do. But they insisted and said: your profile matches what we’re looking for, you should think about it. And then I realised, and I told them, they didn’t have enough people to put on the list. So in the end, I said: okay, I will help you. I’ll put my name on the list. I’ll do what needs to be done. But then they put me first on the list. So even though the party didn’t seem to have any chance of getting in, it did get into parliament, and I found myself in the Romanian Senate. That was really unplanned. But once I was there, I was able to do what I planned to do in the beginning — getting in contact with the leadership of the party, getting elected to the leadership, and helping the party organise, structure itself, and become well-managed.
Ricardo: Very good. To our listeners: if you have something to give, you never know. You can always offer good help at the right moment.
Radu: Absolutely.