9 Things To Learn From Atedo Peterside’s Management Philosophy

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 giving 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.

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 skills 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 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.