I mentioned in the first part of this article that the course Organizational Behaviour in my MBA programme has actually activated some keenness in me about management styles of people and organizations. I also mentioned how some chaps I admire happened to be cultivated by Atedo Peterside, founder of the Investment Banking & Trust Company (now part of enlarged StanbicIBTC). In this article, I explain what I think made Atedo Peterside a success, and more importantly, how he was able to cultivate such a generation of fine investment bankers.



Here we go:

1, Recruit the brightest: Atedo recruited the brightest brains. If you want to nurture a great organization, go for the best brains. You don't need to go far, there are many in the Unilags and Ifes of this country.

2, Catch them young: Most of them were caught young, some as young as 20 years. If you want to grow a successful organization built on brilliant human resource, go for young guys that you will be able to train well. Needless to mention that those young boys of yesterday are now DGMs, GMs and Directors. Perhaps it is only in StanbicIBTC that you will see a GM that is less than 35 years old, with 15 years experience!

3, Pay well: I don't think IBTC was the highest paying bank then, but I know the pay wasn't so bad. Like Atedo did, make your employees comfortable.

4, Give responsibility: Only Atedo can hand over a multi-billion naira enterprise to a 27-year-old. And I am not talking about a billionaire given his business to a son. No, I'm talking about employees recruited through the regular GMAT test. After training for sometime, give responsibility to your employees. Open subsidiaries, let them manage it. Try that and thank me later for revealing this Atedo management style to you.



5, Lead by example: I mentioned in my first article that all Atedo boys I know rank very high on integrity in business and private dealing. They must have learnt that from Atedo, it cannot be a co-incidence. Let me tell you a story. I know someone who was employed as an accountant in one company in Lagos. The first week, there was some knotty account to reconcile and advise management of some figures. His boss just did some 'wuruwuru to the answer', fancifully called 'juggling'. The guy spent his remaining years in that company juggling accounts. You are what your boss taught you.

http://www.jarushub.com/9-things-to-learn-from-atedo-peterside-management-philosophy/

6, Develop sense of ownership in your employees: Let me narrate my personal experience. I got employment offer (after passing their test and interviews) from IBTC in November 2006, just two weeks after finishing university, even before my convocation. For some personal reasons I turned it down for Vetiva Capital Management Limited (another offer I got at the same time). Akeem wasn't happy with me for that decision. Akeem, who was hardly a very senior management staff then, saw IBTC as his company. Till today, one of my interviewers, now the CEO of StanbicIBTC, used to ask of me from him. You just have to respect these people. Everyone sees the company as collectively owned, not Atedo's business. They were so passionate about the company. If you want to build a great business empire, like Atedo, let your employees see the business as their own too. And, just to add, you don't achieve this by word of mouth, but by series of actions.

7. Build a loyal staff: I don't know how Atedo did this, but I have observed that all his employees (from the IBTC days) are so loyal to the company. More than half of them are still there, 15 years after. I guess all the earlier mentioned managerial kill account for this loyalty, because it takes such to retain such brilliant gentlemen for 15 years!

8, Rotate challenges: At his lecture in my career conference, Lloyd Onaghinon, an Atedo-trained investment banker, mentioned that he had had many careers in same institution (IBTC). From being financial controller to project finance to corporate banking to business banking. Similarly, when I asked Akeem why he had, like Messi in Barcelona (lol), had all his career in one organization for 15 years, he said the same thing: the IBTC culture is such that you are given new challenges, new career, every two or three years; from being in project finance to asset management to stockbroking to global markets to investor services etc, rhetorically asking what he needs to learn elsewhere when same institution offers fresh challenge every few years. This is one thing you must learn from Atedo. I know organizations where same person did one role for a 10 years!

9, Quit honourably: Atedo Peterside quit StanbicIBTC when the ovation was loudest. Perhaps only Fola Adeola of GTB had done that before. Don't sit tight forever. Don't soil your good records. After building a business and managing it for reasonable number of years, quit.

Atedo's management style is really one I am interested in studying in-depth, and perhaps write book on. Although my study of organizational psychology in recent time kindled my interest in executives' managerial skills, I have actually held this opinion about Atedo Peterside for long as a distant observer and fan, and actually debated this on some online discussion forums far back 2009.

It should also be noted that, Atedo Peterside may be the face of IBTC and perhaps the personification of this management style, there are other people whose contribution to growing IBTC from a small investment institution in a small office in Marina in 1990, to a multi-billion dollar venture today, are also key. They are Sola David Borha and Yinka Sanni.

The political analyst in me with opposition bend may share different perspectives with Atedo on political issues (after his retirement from active banking, he's been vocal on political economic issues in recent times, like the subsidy debate), but you have to give it to this man as an excellent manager of people and resources. In other climes, by now, Business School faculties would have been filled with case studies on Atedo Peterside Management philosophy.

http://www.jarushub.com/9-things-to-learn-from-atedo-peterside-management-philosophy/

Okay.

I have heard. Thank you

Nice management stuff

How many businesses will yield to dis, instead they will be looking for graduates with 6, 5,4 years experience to fill the least professional position in the company.

Stu.pid Nigerian companies

Nice one.
But giv responsibility to only responsible workers irrespective of their age. Whether 27 or 60 years.

nice one

incredibly true and practicable

Nice one on Atedo Peterside though there is also one man that has done better in all these areas you have mentioned and that is Deji Alli (founder and Group Managing Director, ARM)

Thanks, Jarus.

I really like dis it's inspiring, his style of management is definitely different and outstanding. I have taken something really important from dis as a future entrepreneur.

Wow! We that have crossed the threshold of being that 'young' should go and hug transformation abi . Have you thought about the bundle of intelligence these new age orgz are passing off because they didn't want the old containers that house them? Now that ASUU Has started behaving well(compared to then ) most graduates are even still hitting the market in their late twenties. It will be well.

I experienced this while I was in the banking sector. I worked with the best boss ever in my life. He practical handed me a CR7 role while working with him. All he did was supervise, educate me on the places I needed upgrades. To be candid I never messed up. No wonder he is an Arsenal fan.....giving the young opportunities to excel.

I wonder why we can't implement this in oil and gas companies. May be, most of the oil and gas companies are established already, thus they don't require dreamers anymore. From another view, most home-grown oil and gas companies are interested in making money only and not building the organisation.

A great son of the biger delta in whom we are well pleased. The niger delta sent the wrong guy to aso rock!!!

saintneo: I experienced this
I wonder why we can't implement this in oil and gas companies. May be, most of the oil and gas companies are established already, thus they don't require dreamers anymore. From another view, most home-grown oil and gas companies are interested in making money only and not building the organisation.

1000 likes

I cnt read that long story.

saintneo: I experienced this while I was in the banking sector. I worked with the best boss ever in my life. He practical handed me a CR7 role while working with him. All he did was supervise, educate me on the places I needed upgrades. To be candid I never messed up. No wonder he is an Arsenal fan.....giving the young opportunities to excel.

I wonder why we can't implement this in oil and gas companies. May be, most of the oil and gas companies are established already, thus they don't require dreamers anymore. From another view, most home-grown oil and gas companies are interested in making money only and not building the organisation.

I think the O&G industry is a little different. Theories you read in Business Schools (for MBA) are easily practicable in the banking (investment banking) sector, with little real life experience. But this is hardly the case in the O&G industry, especially upstream. You need many years of hands-on technical experience before you can successfully lead an O&G project. That is why most independents in the industry poach well experienced guys, with 10-30 years experience from IOCs to come run their projects for them. O&G projects are too major - and risky - to be left in the hands of someone with 2-5 years experience, even if he has MBA from Harvard. I however admit that the industry is over-structured, where there appears to be too strict hierachy. Some of the layers in the O&G industry career ladder can actually be removed.

Nice.

If atedo's philosophy is catch dem young,it means he aint consider nigerian graduates.how many graduates will end up coming out of the system at age 24 talkless age 20.u are all causing high level of unemployment due to age differences. Now assu is on strike,tell me who graduates at age 20. Its federal uni graduates I pity. I guez atedo or who so ever brought dis ideology sld have a rethink and not tarnish hopes of nigerian graduates

Nice and practical steps!

Nice concept
I consider them okay for budding entrepreneur as a standard.
But I clearly unsupported the below 22 year graduate work-force.

Wished our politicians had any form of management model.
Just enter politic switch positions, minister for works today, tomorrow minister for culture. Praise them today, tomorrow they visit efcc. They join a party today tomorrow they lambast the party as if they had a gun in their head while joining the party. I wanted to be a politician career wise, but I can't see how honourably I can do that.

You definitely like your man almost to the point of idolatry. One observation though: is the guy's management style sexist? I ask because you kept referring to his 'boys' and only mentioned Sola David-Borha almost as an aside.

Funny I was recently thinking about this Peterside guy and how I should pay more attention to companies in which he sits on the board only for me to come here (Nairaland) and there's this nice article on his leadership style. Nice one Op.

Osogagba: You definitely like your man almost to the point of idolatry. One observation though: is the guy's management style sexist? I ask because you kept referring to his 'boys' and only mentioned Sola David-Borha almost as an aside.

Sola is his partner, not his boy/girl. He and Sola raised the company. By his 'boys', I meant those he trained.

thisisayus: I cnt read that long story.

no wonder lil wayne fans are the dumbest

Nice write up and performance. But d guy Bleep up when he blindly supported GEJ on subsidy removal which till today we are yet to see one of those promised Buses they said this money will be used for.

Tel me ur gp and I'll tell u mine.

Jeezyy: no wonder lil wayne fans are the dumbest

Oh sorry, u ddnt av a uni edu. Not sure tho.