Finding the Right Man for the Right Job

How one man uses his sharp eyes and passion for people to find the right consultants for the right jobs

CUHK MBA graduate Foster Yiu is former head of the Enterprise Learning Department at Dun & Bradstreet Hong Kong and former director of the UK-based Henley Business School’s operation in Hong Kong. With more than a dozen years’ experience in developing management training and coaching programs as well as providing management consulting services for clients, he has spent two years working full-time in China.

In 2010, he founded Macro+Micro Consulting which provides HR and management consulting services to help companies in Asia to improve their performance and gain a competitive edge.

“When I founded the company, I was making a transition from being a corporate executive to being a father. Starting a business would afford me more time for family while making a profit by doing what I do best: Identifying companies’ needs and finding the right people for the right solutions,” says Yiu.

Noticing that companies do not necessarily know how to find the right consultants to solve their business problems, he decided to set up a company and leverage his wide network of consultants to develop new businesses. His clients can thus reduce the risk of finding the wrong consultants and wasting substantial sums on solutions that don’t work. Acting as a ‘headhunter’ for consultants, Yiu helps companies to fill specific gaps they may have in their management practices or operations.

Macro+Micro Consulting engages in four areas of consulting activities:

• Making recommendations to companies on how to become a learning organization, improve their efficiency, enhance their brand quality and capability in order to continuously win in the market
• Offering training workshops: Imparting expertise and acting as facilitators to bring out solutions that may already exist within a company but have not been communicated effectively from employees to management
• Offering coaching sessions: Encouraging employees and bringing out their fullest potential so they are more willing to contribute to the company’s performance
• Conducting customized research: helping clients to solve operational or management problems through observations, data-gathering and analysis, followed by training for the relevant staff, such as teaching how frontline employees should interact with customers

Being a third-party consulting company gives Macro+Micro an edge over in-house managers when it comes to motivating staff and stimulating positive energy for solving problems.

“After a client company’s employees talk to our coaches, they often become more motivated to try and work at problem-solving,” says Yiu. “We always give them positive encouragements. We believe that people can do it, but oftentimes bosses cannot achieve the same results because they are more prone to punishments.”

The main challenge, according to him, is to find the right positioning so that future marketing efforts will be precise and effective. Currently, Macro+Micro takes clients regardless of their size and industry.

But Yiu ponders whether he should delve deeper into a particular industry or a niche area of expertise. “If I go niche, I might have to give up some of the consultants I have been working with. But a single-solution approach would allow my company to have a clearer positioning.”

A secondary challenge is how to expand the client base in China. Currently, mainland clients make up 10 percent of Macro+Micro’s client base. In recent years, these clients increasingly ask for ‘kick-backs’ to the person who refers a job to Yiu. But he Yiu stands by his principle and does not comply.

“This has led to a loss of clients. However, I’m less concerned about losing clients this way. My main focus is on expanding the business across Asia in the next few years, so having the right marketing strategy remains his biggest challenge.”

To do so, he believes the way forward is to determine the company’s positioning, create a website and invest in above-the-line advertising or marketing.