‘Businesses without good governance structure would have unsustainable short term quick wins’

As challenging as the Nigerian economy and the business environment are, many companies operating in the country have remained not only successful, but also profitable. One of such companies is Alpha Mead Facilities Management and Services Limited, Nigeria’s leading light in the facilities management industry, which has been around since the past 10 years with high flying subsidiaries and strong presence in some African countries.  FEMI AKINTUNDE, the GMD/CEO, in this interview with CHUKA UROKO, BusinessDay’s Property Editor, offers insights on the economy and tells the company’s success story  amid challenges and competition. He also reveals a bit of his personality and career. Excerpts

The economy and business environment are a huge challenge in Nigeria, yet you have been quite successful. Tell us your story; how have you been able to wade through the storm 10 years on?

The Nigerian economy is a reflection of a moving train. If you see a train moving from Lagos to Kano, for instance, sometimes it will pass through cities and towns. Sometimes again, it passes through bushes and forests. It cannot move from Lagos to Kano and pass through only cities or only bushes.  As a passenger, you have no control over the rail track the train has to pass through. What you can control is how  you respond to the areas it passes through.

Similarly, no company or individual, not even the president, has control over what the economy is doing or saying, especially with the circumstance we are in. But we can commit to two things. One is that within our area of influence, we have to do good, add value and do not contribute to the problem but solution. Two is that no matter what the economy throws at us, we have to respond positively; we  shouldn’t see it as a reason not  to make progress. Our response must be positive.

We know how this economy got to where it is now from the political transition that happened. From where we are coming, things were really bad. But perception was well managed. We were not told the whole truth. It appeared that everything was okay and we lived under that illusion for a very long time until we got to where we are now and realized that we really had a problem. There is serious liquidity problem which has affected government and everybody. Because of this, businesses are no longer well funded and clients can no longer pay for services.

As a company, at the beginning of every year, we have our strategy. We put in perspective what we see of the present; what we see that will happen in the general economy between January and December. We therefore position ourselves within the context of what we see and so, we remain hopeful and positive. That is why we are not relenting in our efforts. It is not as if we are not affected; we are, but we continue to make efforts because we are in this business for the long run.

Apha Mead was born 10 years ago. I want to believe that something triggered it. How did it happen?

The idea of Alpha Mead came by accident. It was a child of necessity. It was a convergence of intent of purpose and opportunity. I worked for Shell for 12 years and Nestling for five years, making it 17 years. By the time I had done 10 years in Shell, I was already thinking of leaving the company and the corporate environment  to set up something of my own. There were two driving factors. Number one was that I believed that what was deposited in me would find more expression outside the single role  in a corporate environment.  I felt that I had so much in me from my professional background to be able to do more and also make more impact.

A lot of people believed that to work for Shell, you have to go through somebody. Everybody wanted to work there. I used to wonder whether it was the organization that would make you or you make yourself. It is not what you offer that matters, but where you make the offer. So, your success is not about the company, but about you because you can transfer to another environment and become a star.

My nature became very restless in that environment. When you get to that point in any career, the greatest disservice you can do to yourself is not to disrupt things. It was at point that I resigned. But before this resignation, it was a big war because not even one person that I consulted supported my proposition. My family members were all opposed to the idea. It took me two whole years to finally quit.

I left Shell at the time banks were consolidating. I was contacted by UBA to help them handle their real estate portfolio which at the time was huge. I had only one year to do the job I was called to do and I made sure I added value to the bank. In that one year, I achieved much beyond what the bank expected. Within this period, I implemented an integrated facilities management system for the entire bank and also did the rebranding.

I left UBA after the assignment and it was after leaving the bank that I changed my mind on going abroad. My experience in UBA opened my eyes to the need for a standard facilities management company that will mirror the standard that I saw in Shell and make same available to those who can afford it because it was not going to come cheap. This was how Alpha Mead was born.

It must have been quite challenging starting out , but here you are. Looking back to the last 10 years of your operation, what milestones can you point to?

We have every reason to thank God and that is why we have decided to celebrate our 10th anniversary. We came into an industry that was generally unknown. But since we came in, the face of facilities management has changed—the visibility is now higher, the recognition is stronger and we have been able to recognize a few success factors of what we needed to do to raise the standard and define the space. We have identified a few strategic points that would define our success. First was the recognition of the need to have a strong corporate governance structure. We believe that any business without a good governance structure would appear to have some short term quick wins that are not sustainable. For that reason, we set up a good board of directors comprising reputable people because I did not want to run a one-man company.  By the second year of our operation, we started paying dividends and we have maintained that ever since.

We also went for the ISO certification to showcase to the multi-national organizations we work for that we can operate to international standard. We also set out for automation and technology. So, we invested in systems and processes that would help our operations. We also defined the value of the company and, in this, integrity is key because if people don’t trust us, they won’t give us money and if the employees don’t trust us, they won’t work for us. Professionalism is also key to us. We make sure that anybody that joins the company is properly inducted on good customer orientation and dependability.

How would you rate your performance so far viz-a-viz the demands of your industry?

We are not perfect, but within the limit of business environment constraints, we always give any challenge the best of our efforts. If we cannot do it, hardly will you find any other company in our industry that can do it. We have invested in resources that define our operations. We believe that to do well, you must have people because if you don’t have people, you don’t have business to run. We also believe in processes and systems because we have to document what we do and do what we document. We believe in our customers and also the financials. All these have helped us to remain profitable year in, year out. We have a policy that defines what profit that is distributed and what should be invested in improving our operations. We invest in our people in terms of training and take them along in the operations of the company. So, everybody has a sense of belonging.

Let us talk about competition. Looking at the industry where you play, what nature of competition do you see and how have been able to stay ahead of all that?

The industry, like any other, has its problems and challenges. One of those problems is that it has not grown at the pace it is supposed to grow. A lot of companies that started at the time we started have fizzled out. Every year we track the top three companies closest to us and we have discovered that in the last 10 years, every year they keep changing. So, it is difficult to mention the top three in the last three years because they keep changing.

We have also discovered that some of the players in the industry do not know how to compete. They think the only way their own value can be appreciated by the customer is by running other companies down. They look at what is a challenge, capitalise on it and blow it out of proportion. This means that such companies are investing in negative and not positive energy. We don’t involve ourselves in such things. We will rather deploy such energies to growing our company. We don’t run anybody down in the name of competition, but we are very strong on strategy and giving values that we believe in.  There is so much pull-him-down syndrome and that is affecting the industry a lot. There are selfish interests and negative vibes among people and companies. This is unfortunate because we already have a lot of challenges in the business environment to contend with. So, let us not create more but work together as partners to move the industry forward and bake a bigger pie for everybody to share.

Diversification is government’s sing-song today and everybody is catching the bug. What is Alpha Mead’s story in this direction?

In spite of the challenges in the economy, we are setting up offices outside Nigeria because we need to diversify the income base of the company. Our new businesses are evolving and are taking positions in the different sectors of the economy they are playing in. Our real estate subsidiary started with the middle income level people because that is where the economy is adjusting to. People in this income bracket are being empowered because this is where the value of any economy is being driven. We are therefore building to meet the housing requirements of that class.

Besides real estate, what other areas of the economy have you seen a need you can serve?

We have just entered the healthcare space. We are there because we realize that government hospitals and even some private hospitals are not short of good professionals or medical specialists. We have the best of them who excel when they leave the shores of this country. But three other things are missing. The hospital environment and the physical structures where patients are treated are not well maintained and managed. Also, the quality of the equipment they work with are not adequate nor well maintained. Another thing is that the service management is also faulty. These differentiate our brand of hospital management from what obtains in the advanced countries of the world.

So, what we have brought into this space is standard management, good corporate structure, and good hospital management that are appealing to patients to stay. To achieve this, we are putting in place, good resources. One of such resources is Professor Green who has done health management in the state of Connecticut in the US for 39 years. He is a professor of healthcare management. He is the CEO of our  healthcare subsidiary. Just recently, our operations manager, a medical doctor with Masters in Business Administration, was recruited. We are already sourcing for the equipment they are going to use. We are not running a hospital because that is not our business. Our business is creating enabling hospital environment for doctors to be their best and we want to do this from primary, through secondary to tertiary healthcare levels.

We are also into security because we believe that good facilities management must have good security. We are looking at fire and automated control systems. What we have is an electronic security and safety management company and we train our people on emergency response. We are ever ready for emergencies. We have been able to contain fire incident in a high-rise building.  We fought the fire and it was off 15 minutes before the fire service men arrived at the scene. In everything we do, we bring the highest standard into it.

We have put in place some departments that are making sure that all our operations are seamless and these include organizational effectiveness and change management which looks into how changes in the business environment are impacting us. Another is the quality and ISO-certification department. We also have a training department which oversees training and development of our manpower. Others are benchmarking and procurement which compares cost to value, systems and compliance which monitors the sites; customer relationship department which goes out to get the tempo and feelings of our customers. We also have a corporate communication department because we feel we must communicate our operations very well.

Now, let’s look at the figure behind the facts or the man behind the masque. Beyond the tall, dark and handsome man that everybody sees, what else could the public know about you?

As a person, I would not say there is anything much that I would like the public to know about me that has not been known. I think the public would look at every figure in an industry and form an opinion. One thing I know about myself is that whatever I want to do or wherever I find myself, I always give it my best because I believe that if it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well.

I want to do things in such a way that if my efforts are required, they will translate to real value and result. Because of that, the role we have played in the real estate and facilities management industry space is that of defining what we want to see as standard for our own company. But we realize that the standard we have established for our own industry, when we superimpose it on the industry where we are playing, we discover that it is far above the industry that we met on ground when we came on.

That, by default, has become the standard for the industry as a whole. That confers some level of responsibility on us to see ourselves as blazing the trail and, to realize that, whatever we do is going to be a template for that space. The success will be a function of two things—the quality of what we deliver and the speed at which we deliver it. We set the pitch very high from the onset.

Given the background that I come from, I worked for two major multi-nationals—Shell Petroleum and Nestling. The way we were taught to do things was to see how best it would align with global standard. So, when I came into this industry, it was the same standard I aimed for and everything was defined along that line. I believe in standard, processes and compliance.

You trained as an engineer. Was there any influence or somebody you looked up to as a model; how did you arrive at the decision to be an engineer?

Growing up, I didn’t  have anybody I was looking up to for the choice of what I wanted to be. The decision to read engineering was  my own cautious decision. My parents actually wanted me to become a medical doctor. I finished secondary school with Grade 1 in sciences. I had more interest in Mathematics and the natural me cannot stand the sight of blood. I cannot face somebody whose life is at stake. It is difficult for me to handle. So, I knew I was not going to be a good medical doctor, but by our culture, you cannot stand up to your father and say ‘no’ as an answer.

Through the intervention of an uncle who explained to me the advantages of Engineering over Mathematics, I settled for the former. My father agreed to that.  We were the first set of industrial engineering graduates in Nigeria, because University of Ibadan where I studied was the only university offering that course.

Apart from saying you are a calculating man, some people observe too that you are shy. How correct is that assessment?

In terms my parental background, I did not grow up in an environment where I was exposed to affluence.  I grew up with very limited exposure and that helped my focus because I had little distraction.  My parents are such that insist you must be hardworking, face your studies and take God serious. So, for me, it was about church, school and sports. I was not a party person right from the beginning. Since the last 22 years after my wedding, I have never held any party or celebrated. I have very limited relationship circle. I keep friends and it is difficult for people close to my heart to know.  It is the way I relate with people that they know I like them. Even family members feel that I am not accessible. I don’t know how to pretend and if I am not happy with anything, I don’t keep it for long.

As to whether I am shy or not is a matter of perception because I don’t come out to say or do things just for the sake of it. If I must come out, it must be for a specific purpose. There must be a reason why I must say something and I feel uncomfortable with people who say things just for the sake of saying it. If I have to speak on something, it has to be because I have a point of view. If I don’t have, I just leave it.