TBI uses a performance appraisal system called PPAS. This system runs from 1.0 to 4.0. 1.0 is the lowest conceivable score, which a person would be at in their first week on the job. 4.0 would mean they had mastered every facet of their job. It is more of an aspirational ideal than a likely level of achievement. (According to Ashley Platts, no one would ever get a score of 4.0. The whole system is a bit silly really.) A score of 2.0 would typically idicate you have been with the company for a year or so and are developing soundly enough  in terms of your job description. For today’s post we thought we would make our honest assessment of Luke Preece’s performance as Business Development Manager in 2012 from our various sources.

Opening TBI Bali and Palembang (Group Schools)

Neither of these group schools has opened in 2012 and both were scheduled to open in the first half of the year. No new schools developed at all by Preece. He did write a proposal up for TBI Bali but it was very shoddy work. He even managed to get a school closed in December 2012 by his attempt to force the resignation of a popular school manager. This is an unheard-of failure.

Score: 1.0 (He has clearly failed totally in this area).

Opening a Host of New Franchise Schools

There was loose TBI talk of opening half a dozen new franchise schools in 2012. Luke Preece has not sold one new franchise. Retty, who he got rid of, has completely outperformed him as a saleswoman of franchises. We see no progress at all here.

Score: 1.0

Inspiring Leadership and Building Relationships

The joint venture partners in Malang refused to even speak to him by the end of 2012 due to his reputation for dishonesty and lack of professionalism. The school manager of Malang wouldn’t speak to him all year after Luke Preece made slanderous allegations he was a robber. Former staff created a blog aimed at exposing how corrupt and dishonest he was, making the Preece ‘brand’ a byword for crooked ESL management. Inspiring only fear and loathing in people outside the TBI Mafia circle, Luke’s hostile and vindictive management style is a textbook case of egotism and arrogance.

Score: 1.0

Solving the TBI Teacher Recruitment Crisis

By the end of 2012, the Living in Indonesia forum was full of threads discussing the various dubious mechanisms by which TBI employed teachers illegally on business visas. KTCs were supposed to be phased out by June 2012 but Preece has failed to meet his own deadlines. If TBI Kuningan, the flagship school, is awash with KTCS, then the whole group is. He has also sullied the name of TBI by linking it to the kind of receruitment practices TBI once laughed at EF for pracitising.

Score: 1.0 (TBI still has an acute recruitment crisis)

Summary: Luke Preece has proven to be a total incompetent failure in all the key areas of his job. He hasn’t developed the business at all, but rather ‘lost’ a school in 2012 and dragged its name through the mud with his sleazy and unethical style of management. TBI is now a stagnant or even shrinking language school in a market where new schools are popping up every week. His promises are completely empty and the days when Retty ran Franchise seem like TBI’s glory days by comparison. Not even Needham was bad a manager as Luke Preece. It’s time to pull up your kaos kaki, Luke.

Score: 1.0