Bain and short stay in France...

My first week started rather cool with a series of get-to-knows, training sessions, etc. It is really nice to see it now from the inside, rather than like a listener during a presentation. Actually I have the impression that the values that these guys presented during the sessions are even more present and lived than what they really conveyed last year at my school. Of course they conveyed it in a pretty powerful way, but it is even more than that. Client confidentiality, trustworthiness, and honesty are no empty words down here, and I am quite impressed at the way they convey it, through a series of mini cases “The client wants this, but this happens, what do you do?” The relation with the client is cardinal here, and there is no fooling around with it. I appreciate, I feel home here. The consultants are the biggest bunch of cool guys and gals I’ve met yet, maybe I am still in the honey moon phase but I am very enthusiastic about the coming summer. I am now waiting today to get staffed, the staffing officer is on business trip so it is a matter of hours and then let’s rock!

I spent this week end in Paris. My sister had her graduation ceremony. Nice, although the 2 hours of speech in the heat were a bit of a hassle. To that extent, and although it might seem arrogant from me to criticize a guy of that caliber, one of the speeches was made by the ‘godfather’ of the graduating class, the CEO of a leading French environmental company (a truly big one, and a truly big guy from the function). I was appalled. No enthusiasm, words of wisdom were carried out with the passion of a fortune cooky, he had a 3 feet long face while telling us “I am so happy to be there” and I would be rich if I had gotten 1 dollar each time he said “I” or “In my role as a president of...”. Honestly I was disgruntled, and, remembering what General Peter Pace said a few weeks ago at the GSB (“Choose companies which have leaders that emulate you and that you want to emulate"), I mentally barred that company from my list. I know it is harsh to judge an entire company just based on the speech of a CEO, but hey, there are so many companies that you have to have a few KO criteria and one of mines is “Passion of the CEO”, period.

Fortunately the speech of the school director was Fantastic, thank you M. Ramanantsoa.