My Thanks To The Industrial Relations Research Association For The Lifetime Achievement Award

Abstract

Whatever your formal discipline—mine was economics—you learn in top posts to think in broad terms about problems or opportunities as they exist and what to do about them. So you can use many lessons from the industrial relations arena. You learn to negotiate and you learn something about timing. You learn about the importance of the attitudes people bring, about the role of a leader, of a mediator, of an arbitrator. All these industrial relations skills have their counterparts in other fields. Here are a couple of examples taken from my time as Secretary of State.