Nicola Sturgeon needs to improve her "poor" relationship with businesses, according to one of her former advisers.
Banking veteran Benny Higgins - who says he is a 'big fan' of the first minister - said the government has had an excess of focus social justice and covid restrictions.
However, the Scottish Government has defended its record, and said that it was working with business and industry to "transform" Scotland's economy.
Mr Higgins, who was commissioned by the SNP leader to advise on Scotland's economic recovery at the start of the pandemic, said that little has changed since he called on the government to take "urgent action" to improve ties with companies in 2020.
"The relationship with business remains poor," Mr Higgins said in an interview with the Telegraph.
"If someone wants to tell me the relationship with business in Scotland is good then I'm sorry but in any relationship, when one side doesn't think it's good then I'm afraid it's just definitively not good.
"The fact the other side thinks it's good cannot overwhelm the fact that one side is not happy about it."
Mr Higgins put forward 25 recommendations in June 2020 aimed at addressing the challenges which he felt Scotland's economy would face as it recovered from the pandemic, including a call for "urgent action to develop a stronger relationship between business and government".
One of the outputs from that was a new charter, published in December, which sought to reset the relationship between business and government. Just weeks later, the Omicron wave hit and Scotland's businesses were hit with longer and stricture measures than neighbouring England.
Mr Higgins - the former chief executive of Tesco Bank and current chairman of the Edinburgh Fringe - said that the overall response has been "pedestrian".
He added: “I'm not saying nobody cares, but there are areas where we need to make more progress.
"There is an excess of focus on social justice and more recently on public health. These are important things but I do believe a vibrant, resilient economy is what we should be aiming for and business has an essential part to play."
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "We are committed to supporting Scottish businesses recovery and have provided more than £4.6billion in support since the beginning of the pandemic, including around £1.6billion in rates relief."
He added that in December the government published an agreement with Scotland’s main business organisations committing to "driving forward a change" in how it works with businesses.
The spokesman said: “We have also just published an ambitious plan that sets out how we can transform Scotland’s economy – and joint working with business and industry to implement these changes is central to the delivery of this plan."