Aptitude for finding potential of African companies

BRITAIN'S influence in Africa has been double-edged in recent decades. It has brought aid, investment and peacekeepers but major companies operating there have been accused of dubious working practices.

So you might not expect the continent to turn to Britain for help in corporate development. Yet it is in this benign field that one Yorkshire organisation is helping African businesses bolster their bottom line.

Primeast has worked with South Africa's largest bank, Standard Bank, in Malawi, as well as British Council offices in Zambia and Botswana.

Now Clive Wilson, the deputy chairman, has outlined plans for the Harrogate firm to double in size. Mr Wilson, a cerebral businessman who was previously managing director of Primeast, told the Yorkshire Post it wants to do more work in India and China, on top of its contracts and franchises in Africa, Britain and Eastern Europe.

"Our aim is that we would double over the next three years but we are watching very carefully.

"Most of our growth is with the big corporates but there will also be growth in much more medium-sized businesses."

Primeast, which has 14 staff, does 60 per cent of its work overseas. It cannot name all of its clients but it has worked with one of the Yorkshire-based building societies, the Metropolitan Police, Powergen, MeterPlus, as well as Yorkshire Forward, the North West Development Agency and the Welsh Assembly.

Turnover managed through the UK office peaked at just short of 1.5m in 2008. Since then, UK-managed turnover has fallen slightly, but remains profitable, and has been more than compensated for by work delivered by the emerging offices in Prague, Budapest and Lilongwe, in Malawi.

The combined turnover predicted for 2010 remains under the pre-recession prediction of about 2m and although the firm expects post-recession growth to be modest in Western Europe, it should be "reasonable" in Eastern Europe and highest in projects associated with Africa, India and China.

Primeast, set up in 1987, wants to change the way businesses work but this is not just about the feelgood factor; it wants to create a measurable cost saving. Mr Wilson said it worked with a Yorkshire building society as it developed a change management programme.

Cynics might say this sounds rather vague but Primeast's intervention meant a new debt-collection system was introduced three months earlier than planned. When the system brings in an extra 10m a year, starting in an earlier quarter meant receiving 2.5m of revenue that would not otherwise have been claimed.

The core message of Mr Wilson, who is in charge of talent liberation, is that companies wanting to be more efficient should get staff to concentrate on what they are good at rather than spend a long time improving them in the areas where they are naturally less able.

"A lot of what we do is encouraging people to be themselves because that is where they are best and where they make the money. We think a bit deeper, which helps us in the current climate. It appeals to the directors and to the people coming on our courses."

Mr Wilson rails against standardised working practices, which have produced role profiling. A company defines a job, hires a tranche of people it thinks come closest to matching its specfications, and then gets them to perform a series of tasks on which they are all measured. It's a system that is used in factories and call centres around the world but doesn't allow workers to act as individuals.

Instead, Primeast wants to play to employees' strengths. It uses diagnostic and psychometric tests to show workers' aptitudes and then gives them the chance to concentrate on these areas.

"There is potential in everything in life and you can go with the flow or against it.

"We (as a society) spend a lot of money fixing people's weaknesses, which is crazy because research has shown we make money out of playing to people's strengths."

Ideas from off the beaten track

The claim that someone is "not your typical businessman" is heard all too often, but Clive Wilson actually lives up to the billing.

His work, first as managing director of Primeast – he has since handed over to Russell Evans – and then as deputy chairman, has taken him around Africa.

In Malawi, he found himself sitting beneath a giant nkuyu tree in a game park with the managers of Standard Bank as part of a change programme which helped the head of legal speed up the processes in her department.

He is also a contributor to two Open Arms Infant Homes in Malawi and regularly waives fees for speaking engagements in favour of donations to the charity.