Delivering. Making a difference. Getting things done. Whatever way you describe it, the elusive ability to cut through all the noise and produce results is one of the hardest qualities to find in our working lives. That’s true in all walks of life, but especially so in government.

Juggling competing interests and priorities, directing a vast and complex organisation, and – as Rab Butler put it to Harold Macmillan – “events, dear boy, events” can all conspire against you.

When, the other Friday, we went to hear John Swinney make one of his first speeches as First Minister, he called for a “can-do attitude” from his ministers to remove obstacles in the economy. His message was clear: the Scottish Government has become too good at producing strategy documents and needs to get better at taking “concrete actions”.

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“A strategic approach is clearly essential,” he said, “but I want the first question we ask ourselves to be: what can we do, rather than what can we write down.”

Amen to that. You cannot fault the sentiment. The hard bit, of course, will be making it happen. Can the business world offer any guidance when it comes to delivering meaningful change?

The great disruptor of our working and business lives right now is, of course, artificial intelligence. Now, I’m not suggesting we simply ask ChatGPT for the answer (not yet anyway). But Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, does offer some insight from his experience launching ChatGPT and sparking the AI boom.

“The hard part of running a business is that there are a hundred things that you could be doing, and only five of these actually matter, and only one of them matters more than all of the rest of them combined,” he said. “So, figuring out there is a critical path thing to focus on and ignoring everything else is really important.”

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That’s an approach which could be directly applied to economic policy in Scotland to great effect, particularly to the New Deal for Business.

It’s fair to say opinions vary on the progress of the New Deal to date, but its aim at the outset of a complete reset in the working relationship between business and the Scottish Government was ambitious and wide-ranging. And it may now be that the scope of those aspirations have themselves become an obstacle to delivering the most meaningful parts of the programme.

A great deal of good and important work has been carried out as part of the New Deal – to which business has contributed – and there are key planks which could be pulled out and implemented without requiring the delivery of the entire programme, if need be.

Among the most important of these is the clear commitment to understand and address the cumulative impact of government interventions on small businesses. It may often be the case that new regulations seem sensible and proportionate when considered in isolation, but the businesses who apply them do not operate in an isolated world.

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We know the overall regulatory burden, coupled with challenging trading conditions, has a real impact on our smaller operators. Over one-tenth of Scottish small businesses currently spend more than eight hours a week on regulatory compliance, time they could otherwise spend running or growing their business.

So, the prospect of a specific Small Business Impact Test in a new Business Regulatory Impact Assessment process – to assess how any proposed new regulation would actually impact on businesses’ daily operations – has the potential to hardwire the needs of our smallest traders into policymaking.

Equally important is the commitment within the New Deal to a full, in-depth review of how the Scottish Government develops policies that impact on business. Getting the right people involved at the right time, throughout the process, can not only avoid problems such as those which beset the deposit return scheme (DRS), but also ensure legislation considers the specific needs of the small and micro businesses that make up 98% of Scottish firms.

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Focusing on the few key actions which could make a genuine difference to businesses and their ability to trade might just offer the new First Minister a route to avoid the delivery quagmire that has bogged down so many before him.

Colin Borland is director of devolved nations for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)