Primeast

Primeast’s deputy chairman and Business Personality of the Year 2008 Clive Wilson gave an interview to the Yorkshire Post (“Yorkshire’s National Newspaper”) recently, in which he discussed helping African businesses bolster their bottom line by releasing the potential of their people.

Whilst the interview touches upon Primeast’s plans to do more work in India and China, on top of its contracts and franchises in Africa, Britain and Eastern Europe, Clive also talks about how Primeast’s approach to organisational development can help all businesses during this period of economic difficulty.

“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.”

To read Clive’s interview in more detail, please follow this link to the Yorkshire Post’s website.

Lawrence Edwards had a thirteenth birthday he’ll never forget thanks to the generosity of celebrity chef Paul Heathcote and an obsession with talent on behalf of leadership and teamwork consultancy Primeast. Following three years of making soup once a week for the Primeast team in Harrogate where his dad Gary is a director, Paul “fixed it” for Lawrence to make the soup of the day at one of his flagship restaurants, the Olive Press in Leeds.

According to Gary, his son has had a passion for the kitchen since he discovered this was the only way to make sure a “full English” breakfast was on the menu at home when he was just five years old. Since then, his culinary skills have progressed including specialities in good curries and tasty soups. He began making soup for the Primeast team as a one-off to celebrate Primeast’s new office space in 2007 (see this news item for details). This proved popular with the team at Primeast so Lawrence responded to demand with a new soup each week except when he repeated recipes “by popular demand”.

Primeast’s deputy chairman, Clive Wilson, met Paul Heathcote when they were both speaking at a leadership conference in Manchester. He was immediately impressed by Paul’s philosophy on business and told Paul about Primeast’s own “celebrity chef” Lawrence. Paul, who regularly promotes culinary skills to young people generously offered to give Lawrence the opportunity to taste life in the Olive Press kitchen. The experience was organised by Olive Press manager Kassime Colley and head chef Eddy Nuttal took Lawrence under his wing for the day. Following a thorough induction that included plating a range of starters and cooking a range of Italian main courses, Lawrence set to work on his special soup of the day, a tasty potato and roast garlic soup. Lawrence thoroughly enjoyed the experience and was a big hit with the kitchen team at the Olive Press. According to Eddy, Lawrence didn’t stop grinning “from ear to ear” the whole day.

As well as enjoying a fantastic experience, Lawrence has done his career no harm at all. He’s been invited by the Olive Press to return for paid employment when he’s old enough. And Paul Heathcote has added his personal testimony:

“Lawrence is a fantastic example of a young person who knows what his career might hold and is reaching out to make it happen. He is part of our future of great food and places to enjoy life. I wish him every success and hope I get to eat in his restaurant one day in the not too distant future.”

Primeast are rightly very proud of our ISO 9001:2000 QAIC/UK/511 accreditation for ‘the design and delivery of learning interventions’ - not least because we were one of the first businesses in the world to earn such accreditation. Not that this stops us from feeling a little nervous when the time comes around for our QA audit, because we would hate to think that we weren’t providing a quality assured service to all of our clients.

But once again, we are happy to announce that we have passed our latest audit with flying colours, having received our certificate in the mail this very morning. Indeed, this year the auditor was quoted as saying Primeast are a “fresh, well organised business that still demonstrates creativity”, which we think is high praise indeed. Whether or not this will stop us feeling quite so much trepidation this time next year remains to be seen, but for now we are very proud to have received ISO accreditation for 2010.

Primeast Malawi’s Christophe Horvath and Sam Matemba were proud to be lead trainer/facilitator and co-facilitator for the “Transformational Leadership from the Inside Out” training convened for district commissioners and chief executives drawn from all assemblies in Malawi this April. The training was designed to help district commissioners play an important role in Malawi’s enhancement of children rights by including their issues in District Development Plans.

Christophe tells us:

“On the last day, which focused on putting children at the centre of development in Malawi, I was co-facilitator doing group exercises on children’s rights and the rights-based approach to development in conjunction to the presentations given by both Edge Kanyongolo (Dean of the faculty of Law of Chancellor’s College, Zomba) and Mayke Huijbregts, UNICEF Chief of Social Policy in Malawi”.

The event received extensive exposure in Malawi’s media (follow this link for coverage in Malawi’s The Times Group newspapers), and Primeast are pleased to be associated with such an important and worthwhile undertaking.

Following another successful tour to Southern Africa under the auspices of the British Council, Primeast deputy chairman Clive Wilson and Christophe Horvath, who heads up Primeast (Southern Africa), have made the papers in Mauritius.

NewsNow, the first English-language daily internet newspaper in Mauritius, starts its report “Double act with an eye for talent” as follows:

“Two unique men with an extraordinarily distinctive approach to corporate success made rounds of the island recently as part of the British Council Management Express Programme in collaboration with the Mauritius Employers’ Federation (MEF).”

To read more about their exploits, follow this link and look at pages 8 - 9.

ILM Approved CentreYou will remember back in July 2009 that Primeast were registered with ILM (Institute of Leadership and Management), Europe’s largest management and leadership awarding body, as an ILM Provider (see this news item for details). Well we are now proud to announce that Primeast has successfully achieved ILM Approved Centre status, joining the largest awarding body for leadership and management qualifications in the UK and a global network of over 2,000 accredited centres.

Having completed a rigorous approval process to achieve ILM status, Primeast can now offer accredited qualifications in leadership and coaching. Primeast MD Russell Evans says:

“We would strongly encourage anyone in a position of leadership or management to consider taking an ILM qualification. By investing in management development, organisations can ensure that their leaders are confident in their abilities and able to lead employees through the challenging times ahead. Nurturing effective leaders through management development is the single most cost-effective investment.”

For more information on the Institute of Leadership and Management, please see their website.

To find out how Primeast, as an Institute of Leadership and Management Approved Centre, can help your organisation, please contact us.

Five members of the Primeast team recently met new colleagues from Vantage Partners, Boston, as part of a new business partnership. The new relationship was spawned when Vantage won a prestigious global contract to provide negotiation skills workshops for an oil and gas client – Primeast was recommended to them to provide experienced facilitators across Europe. Vantage Partners is the world’s premier provider of executive education in the fields of negotiation skills and conflict resolution and originally grew out of the world renowned Harvard Negotiation Project.

The photo shows Primeast with Gabriella Salvatore and Bruce Patton from Boston; and other Vantage colleagues from Nigeria, Uruguay and New Zealand.

Every year the money that Primeast save by sending an email Christmas message, rather than cards, is donated to charity, the charity being chosen by one of the Primeast team whose name is picked out of a hat. This year it was our Finance Manager Bev Logan’s turn, and she chose to support Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research.

Their life-saving research is focussed on finding causes, improving diagnosis and treatments, and running groundbreaking clinical trials for all blood cancer patients. Since blood cancers affect people of all ages, from newborns to grandparents, Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research need to be sure they reach all those touched by leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma and give them the best possible chance of survival.

Click here to visit their website and find out more about their valuable work.

Primeast is proud to be listed amongst training providers who have engaged with the “A Business Case for Diversity” project being led by York College, which is designed to demonstrate the importance of equality and diversity in the world of Business Management. It has the overall aim of incorporating equality and diversity into everyday leadership and management, and is taking an entirely new approach to disseminating diversity into education and training. The project ethos is to be inclusive and consultative, in order to place equality and diversity in the foundation of education and teaching in West Yorkshire.

The project has produced several resources of use for Diversity training, all of which are available on their website - for more details, click here.

In February’s issue of Training Journal, the publication for learning and development, Primeast’s Head of Teamwork Simon Tarver discusses what to do if your team, or a team within your organisation, is struggling. The pace of change in today’s business world means that more pressures than ever are put on teams and their leaders, and in examining just what being a team means and how to manage turbulent periods, Simon provides invaluable advice for mending a broken team.

February’s issue of Training Journal can be found online here, whilst Simon’s article can be downloaded for a small fee (free to Training Journal subscribers) here. Of course, should you want to discuss turning a dysfunctional team into a high-performing one in your organisation, feel free to contact our UK office directly.