Shop talk

II was born in Bellshill near Glasgow – a mining town that became a steel town before breathing its last. One teacher – who came from industry – found and nurtured my love of science. I was in the school team which came third in BBC Young Scientist of the Year. Third? An abject failure! I was a lost cause even then: a perfectionist and a workaholic at 16. When I was eight and my sister was only five, our dad died. My mother had to totally rethink her life. She picked herself up and worked tirelessly to give us the life she could never have herself – and she showed us that education was the only way out. Like a typical Scottish man, I don't tell her enough how much I appreciate her and what she did for us. Frankly, I don't have any business role models – it's people like my mother that inspire me. I give my own children mixed messages. When my eldest has no money for petrol, I'll tell him to walk – but two days later I'll be buying him music. I enjoy wasting money on them – but I can also be a real tight Scot. I drive for optimum fuel consumption. My wife used to get home to Glasgow from Yorkshire two hours before me. I got my PhD through a polymer research programme between Strathclyde and the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble. Despite that, and 14 years with a French company, my French is still dreadful. I don't do languages well – not even English, according to my colleagues. My career started at ICI, later DuPont. My girlfriend June and I had tried to live in the same place since university. Finally, we got together near York, bought a house, married – and I promptly got seconded to the US. Our first son was born in Virginia. I joined Saint-Gobain in 1998 as part of a team starting a new float glass plant at Eggborough. We saw a chance to create a factory better than anything we'd known before. If it went wrong, it would be our fault because we were setting the values and standards. Seven years later we won the Best Factory Award. In my entire working life I have never felt as good as I did on that journey home alongside my team and with the award in our collective bag. Soon after, I added a global role to my job as general manager of Eggborough to replicate its achievements. But it was a killer. I was in two different countries every week and while we juggled two careers, my kids ended up taking taxis to school. It just wasn't me – other people do it well but fleeting contacts aren't my style. Years ago I saw a manager throwing people under the bus to protect his own backside. It was my transformative moment. My philosophy is simple: good managers don't prove themselves through telling others what to do. I have high expectations of people and my frustration comes when they won't use their abilities. If your team is talented and works hard, your job as plant manager is to keep things on track. And if they don't deliver, it's also your fault because you probably overloaded them. I've had three great years in the US now, firstly with our containers group in Indiana and now as VP operations with Sage where we are taking an innovative development in glass into volume production. The excitement of a new factory again is irresistible. My timing, however, is lousy. It took 18 months to get the whole family to the US, including Monty the dog. And now they're in Indiana, I'm in Minnesota, home every other weekend. We all love it here but I still miss thick-crusted Scottish bread, Heinz tomato soup and Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Dr Alan McLenaghan of Saint-Gobain's Sage Glass on a perfectionist's journey from Glasgow to Minnesota – and Scottish bread!

• Switch off? I don't – it's my biggest problem. When I mentor people, I tell them what I'm doing wrong on work/life balance hoping they don't do the same. Music helps but drink wouldn't. I don't like the taste. And I work for a French company that makes wine bottles!
• Best joke? Promising to drink wine on my birthday if my team drank pineapple juice with me first. It makes alcohol tastes vile. Ever seen 20 men spitting in unison?
• Best advice? Never take yourself too seriously.
• Dislikes? Unfairness at any level. Greed. I can't admire anyone earning millions but negotiating a few cents off his/her employees' wages. And I'm not great at early mornings.