By Mike Thatcher
The new CIPFA president talks to Public Finance editor Mike Thatcher about tackling the recession and climate change – and why Eastern thinking could bring enlightenment to our own public sector
** Roger Latham will become CIPFA president following the institute's annual general meeting on June 23. He will make the welcome speech to the CIPFA conference in Manchester on June 24 **
Sitting in Roger Latham’s living room in his Loughborough home, it’s possible to get a quick insight into what makes him tick. Nestling next to his favourite chair is some well-thumbed reading matter. There are books on tai chi, Shanghai bronzes, the Wall Street crash and TS Eliot’s poetry. ‘That’s me in a nutshell,’ he says.
CIPFA’s incoming president is nothing if not eclectic. He has a fascination with all things Eastern and starts every day with 50 minutes of tai chi using an oriental sword. He’s a poetry lover but also interested in natural history – don’t get him started on dinosaurs.
And then there’s his interest in the current economic crisis and how we can learn from previous downturns. Latham might know his numbers – having studied economics, statistics and accountancy – but he’s also an ideas man. ‘I want to know why a thing has happened, how something came to be and what we might expect the future to look like,’ he says.
This approach has informed his working life through a career that began in the City and then moved on to local government. A late entrant to CIPFA – he qualified under local government’s senior officer scheme at Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council – Latham eventually became treasurer and then chief executive at Nottinghamshire County Council.
He stepped down from the chief exec role last year and is now a visiting fellow at Nottingham Trent University’s business school.
CIPFA’s incoming president has always been critical of the ‘command and control’ structures in many Western organisations, including those in the public sector. He believes that we could learn a lot from the East. ‘I’m interested in a Taoist approach, which looks at change as a continual exercise similar to the natural world,’ he says.
Latham intends to develop this theme in his presidential year and will be pushing for an end to old-fashioned ‘bureaucratic’ models. Instead, there should be a ‘culture of trust’ and a leadership style based on inspiration rather than perspiration.
‘Leadership is not all about some testosterone-fuelled, going-for-it approach,’ he says. ‘It’s more about how you build relationships, networks and a team.’
Good leaders, he suggests, find time for themselves and ensure they look after both body and soul. In his case, this has been through tai chi – something he adopted to help combat the high stress levels of running a busy county council. ‘If you want to be a leader, then looking after yourself is not self-indulgent; not looking after yourself is self-indulgent.’
More will be said on this philosophy in his presidential speech next week when he will launch CIPFA’s election ‘manifesto’, Better ideas, better public services. This will offer the political parties some proposals for how to restore trust in politics by improving governance and financial management. It will examine issues such as MPs’ expenses, partnership working and pre-legislative scrutiny.
The manifesto will argue that the expenses problem should not be addressed simply by implementing tighter rules. ‘Rules-based systems don’t work. In accounting terms we would say it’s substance over form. American accounting systems are compliant with rules and we’ve had Enron and WorldCom,’ he says.
The economic downturn, of course, will dominate the next 12 months and will affect the public services for many years to come. Budgets will be cut, there will be pressure to do more for less and redundancies will inevitably follow. Latham is well placed to offer advice – he has studied the history of previous slumps and written about not making the same mistakes twice.
‘The recession is going to force people in the public sector to look very seriously about what they are going to deliver. You can’t just drift through the presidential year as though this had never happened. It has happened and therefore it has to be addressed,’ he suggests.
Latham has always been prepared to speak his mind and will continue to do so as president. Arthur Deakin, who was deputy to Latham in both his finance and chief executive roles at Nottinghamshire, remembers him as someone who ‘brought a public sector ethos into the department’ and believes strongly in principles.
‘Roger was prepared to say difficult things to elected politicians about the way the organisation should be run. It didn’t always make him popular, but he wanted to make a difference,’ he says. ‘He was brilliant to work for – the best boss I’ve ever had.’
One area where he clearly made a difference was the use of ethical investments. In the 1990s, Nottinghamshire led the way in investing a proportion of its pension fund in a socially and environmentally responsible fund.
‘Roger was talking about this sort of thing years before anybody else,’ says Deakin. ‘He was ahead of his time.’
Environmental issues are still a concern for Latham and this will be another theme for the presidential year. He has huge concerns over climate change and suggests that ‘the lights could go out in 2012/2013’ if we do not reconsider our energy consumption. ‘An economic downturn is a good time to think about these things,’ he says. ‘The recession is not just a body blow to the way we live, it’s also gives the opportunity to do something very different. If we don’t think about these things, the environment is going to bite back.’
It’s not just the environment where Latham leads the way. He’s also a big fan of new technology and is always keen to show off the latest gadget. His home has eight computers and he owns numerous watches, GPS satellite navigation devices and other electronic gizmos.
This is not a new phenomenon. Former CIPFA president Mike Weaver, who worked with him at Dudley in the late 1970s, remembers being in ‘awe’ of Latham’s Commodore Pet personal computer, which occupied a large chunk of his desk. ‘In those days you were lucky if you got a calculator, but Roger made sure he had the first personal computer in the council,’ says Weaver, who is now director of financial services at Worcestershire County Council.
But just because Latham's a technophile, doesn’t mean you can always get hold of him on his state-of-the-art mobile phone. 'I often have it switched off, he says. ‘There has to be some me-time.’
Roger Latham will become CIPFA president following the institute's annual general meeting on June 23. He will make the welcome speech to the CIPFA conference in Manchester on June 24
