Clive Wilson

Early career in the electricity industry

Clive worked for twenty-seven years (1972–1999) in the UK electricity supply industry. He trained and served as a mains engineer with the Yorkshire Electricity Board until 1985, when he joined the Safety Branch of the Electricity Council. When the industry was privatised in 1990 he moved to the new Yorkshire Electricity plc, first in safety (gaining an MSc in Safety and Reliability and Fellowship of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health), then as a manager in the metering business.

His next move proved career-changing. He managed a number of change programmes, and learned and became accredited to measure and manage corporate culture and leadership style. His final role with Yorkshire Electricity was in Human Resources, as management development adviser, when he became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

A career in Purposeful Leadership

In 2000 Clive started his own business, specialising in Purposeful Leadership. In 2001 he spoke at a Confederation of British Industry conference, where he met John Campbell, then managing director of Primeast, specialists in leadership and team development since 1987. After leading client assignments for Primeast, Clive joined the company in 2002 as managing director. With his fellow directors he agreed a 2008 vision for Primeast, which they delivered in full by September 2007; he then moved towards thought leadership, while still serving as a practitioner and board member.

In 2015 his first published book, Designing the Purposeful Organization, came out with Kogan Page. It describes, chapter by chapter, the conditions for successful enterprises, as shown in the PrimeFocus framework Clive first drew in the 1990s, which became a core method for Primeast.

In the final chapter of that book Clive speculated that its principles could apply to global governance. That Christmas, a colleague put a draft of the UN Sustainable Development Goals on his desk, and he felt called to write Designing the Purposeful World: the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a Blueprint for Humanity (Routledge, 2018). Between 2015 and 2024 he engaged thousands of people, aged from seven to well over seventy, asking them to describe the world they'd like to see; it was always in line with the SDGs.

In 2023, conscious that the SDGs carry a 2030 time-stamp and that sustainability had become somewhat fear-driven, Clive set out to promote a more optimistic future, and wrote Leading Beyond Sustainability: Six Aspirations for a Brighter Future (Routledge, September 2024).

Clive continues as a practitioner in Purposeful Leadership: sharing his inspiration at conferences, coaching purposeful leaders and facilitating leadership workshops.

Away from "work"

Clive enjoys time with his wife Frances and their five children. They love to travel and to walk the hills and coasts of the UK, especially in their home county of Yorkshire and in Northumberland. As a younger man Clive was an enthusiastic rugby player for twenty-seven years; that is now just a memory, kept alive by a few war wounds and replacement joints. Thankfully he can still walk, and write poetry, and paint.