Mont richard
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THE managing director and the office boy have always seemed to me to have much in common. In a big organization each must be ready and willing, not to say able, to do a great variety of jobs. Often the men in between are specialists. The man at the top and the tousle-top at the bottom must be Jacks-of-all-trades. Perhaps that is why so many office boys become managing directors.
Monty Prichard, managing director of the Perkins Group, the world's largest suppliers of diesel engine units, is a Jack-of-all-trades. He freely admits it. But in this case he has not sprung from the office ink-wells; .nor is it feasible that he could have sprung so youthfully into this high and mighty job on the basis of readiness and willingness alone. Ableness, specialized engineering ableness, was essential. Only since he became a managing director, at the age of 42, has he become a factotum. Before that he was nearly always an engineer—engaged on specialized work.
Today he still wears the engineer's "working suit." It is a light brown Prince of Wales check, free from oil stains, but on the man one can see the marks of vast experience with engines and plant and tools and other engineers.
Montague Illtyd Prichard, M.C., was born in Calcutta, India, on September 26, 1915, the son of a mining engineer whose career he thought originally, without persuasion, of following. He was educated at Felsted School, Essex, and went to a practical university as a student apprentice with R. A. Lister and Co., Ltd., at Dursley, for four years. At night he went to technical school.
In 1936 he returned to India to work for Listers. He was there when war broke out. During the war he served with the Royal Engineers in India, Malaya, Burma and
farther East. He won the Military Cross and was three times mentioned in dispatches. In January, 1946, he was demobilized with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel as C.R.E. of a division. He spent a year reorientating after the war, and then went back to work with Lister-Blackstone. The group gave him the job of establishing a new company covering Ceylon, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Borneo and other Far Eastern territories, for the exploitation of Lister-Blackstone products and those of other British concerns who had appointed the new company as agent. In 1950 he was recalled to take charge of Blackstone and Co., Ltd., of Stamford. Three years later he joined the board of the parent company, R. A. Lister and Co., Ltd., running the main factory at Dursley, amongst other duties in the group as a whole.
From apprentice to senior executive. The wheel had turned once full circle. Firmly attached to its wide-orbiting rim, Monty Prichard had gathered impressive experience. He had been involved in every side of the industrial diesel engine game. He had worked in sales, in service, on big engines and small ones, iti power-houses, in factories. " I had, in fact, had executive experience in every aspect of the business other than accounting,"
Jack-of-au-Trade;
He was ready to become what he describes himself as today—" a five-eighths-inch engineer and a Jack-of-alldiesel-trades."
The Perkins story of development and growth, and the tang of massive potential pervading the company, had fascinated him for more than the year during which he ran Dursley for Listers. The opportunity to join in at the end of 1953, as personal assistant to chairman and managing director Frank Perkins, was welcome. In less than a year it was obvious that the man from Listers was destined to add to the Perkins story. Appointed then director of engineering, late in 1954, he became in 1956 deputy managing director and in 1957 joint managing director with Frank Perkins. When Massey-Ferguson took over Perkins in February, 1959, Monty Prichard became sole managing director. He speaks with respect and affection of Frank Perkins, whose vision and purpose made Perkins what it is. today.
As a man he is a youthful mid-forties, fast-moving, fluent, pleasantly incisive. One imagines he has an "observant ear." He knows where he and Perkins are going. ..He certainly has a sense of humour, which is not restrained at Peterborough.
Forward-looking Company
"Perkins is fun. Fun and humour assist in the sharing of problems and the build-up of the team. Perkins is a forward-looking company. While we concern ourselves with next year's profits, we think much more about not making a loss in five years' time."
Relaxation on the job necessitates little strenuous effort to relax away from it. Monty Prichard is a family man (boys of 18 and 16 and a girl of nine), living 12 miles from his plant, but only for eight months of the year. For the other four he is travelling, generally by air, to wherever Perkins interests pull him. He likes meeting people, he likes being with his family. Hence the company and the family can genuinely be his hobbies.
Until he was 40 he played hockey, now he plays a little tennis. On holiday, boats appeal, and he enjoys driving his 3.8 Jaguar.
-But more than anything, one guesses, he enjoys the prospect of driving Perkins into its limitless future—slightly
militarily, but wearing his engineer's 'suit. K.H.B