The CMA behind the CMA brand

François Renauld has had 25 different bosses in the 25 years he has spent thus far as President-Executive Director of the CMA Order. So for the person who holds the permanent position of orchestra conductor of the organization, it means adapting, year after year, to people of many different stripes and wide-ranging leadership styles.

In order to truly grasp the scale of the challenge, you must understand the context. If the CMA Order was an SME, there would be a boss – in this case the President-Executive Director – and about thirty employees to manage. There would be clients – the 7,200 members, of course, and employers who ultimately buy the CMA product – to satisfy. Things would be simple and clear.

But here’s the catch: in the professional world, life is a little more complicated. The Professional Code requires the 45 professional orders in Quebec to be headed by a board of directors. The CMA Order has a 24-member Board of Directors. In other words, François Renauld has to date supported, guided, motivated and encouraged approximately 600 board members during his term as chief strategist. The least that can be said is that not only has he developed a very enviable network of contacts, but he demonstrates outstanding human relations and political skills.

Our subject does not understand why we are making such a big fuss about it, because to him, as he says, “It’s all natural. I feel very comfortable in such an environment,” but the Order’s former Chairs see it as an achievement. Pierre Carrier, FCMA, one of the ex-chairs with whom he worked, explains: “François never gave me advice. He never told me how to act as Chairman of the Board. But he always protected me, saving me from many mistakes. For him, every new Chair is the best. He analyzes and sizes up the person and then acts accordingly.”

His entire personality can be summarized in the previous sentence. It is said that François Renauld never leaves anything to chance. Those in close contact with find him to be patient, determined and a perfectionist. He is fully committed to the famous creed of all good executives: for things to run smoothly, you have to plan (preferably well in advance), organize, lead and control.

Clearly, François Renauld has applied this creed. Thus, during the first 20 years of his term, he was the only person in charge of the inner workings of the organization. Five years ago, in order to make the process of transferring these duties to the next president easier, the executives of the Order decided to change the hierarchical structure and add a Senior Vice President to assist the President-Executive Director. “I was taking up too much space,” he acknowledges. “Since then, I have been able to free myself from daily duties and spend more time working on outside relations and governance matters.”

All the same, he still admits that he finds it difficult to delegate. “Well, you have to come to terms with accepting the limits of what you can do; there are only 24 hours in a day.”

Strategist and persuader

He acknowledges – unabashedly– that he does not like to be told what to do. So how does he reconcile his desire to make his own way with his role as éminence grise? “I am not looking to be in the spotlight. I do not need that type of attention. I am very happy to let the Chair of the Board fill the role of spokesperson. What excites me about my work is above all designing the best strategies possible to help the organization advance and then convincing everyone in it – the Board, the members of the Order and permanent staff – of the relevance of my proposals. In fact, it did not take me long to learn that since I didn’t like being told what to do, I had to know exactly what I wanted to achieve. That is why I try to make tempting, even mouth-watering proposals.”

Thus, when it comes time to prepare the three-year strategic plan, for example, François Renauld rallies everyone. Every aspect is considered, discussed, reformulated and agreed upon by consensus for months. It would never occur to him that he should simply appear before the Board of Directors, just like that, with a new idea, no matter original or promising it might be. He always makes sure that he has maximum support before officially submitting a proposal for a vote.

That is also what he does with the annual budget of the organization, which goes through a whole series of checkpoints before being presented to the Board. “And that process is necessary: there are 20 CMAs sitting around the table!”

In his ongoing pursuit of model governance, François Renauld decided to submit the Order’s application to the Grands Prix québécois de la qualité in 2004. The organization then became the first Quebec professional order to win this prize.

“This is no ordinary business competition we’re talking about here”, emphasizes Renauld. “It took us six years to assemble all the components of the well-known Qualimètre. In addition, to win, we had to demonstrate convincing results over a continuous 3-year period. I had to be very persuasive to get my colleagues interested in the process, because all of the preparatory work was added to the regular work load. When the prize was awarded, we went to accept it together. The Order gained a lot of visibility from this achievement. But more than anything, it allowed us to refine the slightest details of all aspects of the organization.”

In this context, where business processes and approval levels abound for every important decision, would a new Chair be able to enter office and make radical changes? François Renauld smiles at the idea: “Let’s just say that to become Chair, candidates must have already sat on committees or the Board of Directors of the Order for a few years. That way, they are gradually influenced by the organization’s culture. So when they begin their duties, they are perfectly prepared to assume them.”

Mr. Renauld recognizes that, from the outside, this method of operating may seem slow and heavy. “Some people ask us at times if this process isn’t a bit too inflexible when everything else around us is changing at the speed of light. I answer them that we have enough leeway and flexibility to be able to react and take advantage of interesting business opportunities when they arise.”

Patient and determined

When he entered office in 1983 and realized that the RIA profession (Registered Industrial Accountants) was changing fast, one thing became abundantly clear to François Renauld: “We had to develop a new trademark that better reflected the reality of RIAs.” Furthermore, using an English designation during the reign of the separatist government in the early 80s was considered total heresy. Nevertheless, the Office des professions could not accept a proposal to replace RIA with CMA as our designation without the approval of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF). And the OQLF refused to accept the Gallicized versions of the words ‘management’ and ‘accredited.’ That was a problem.

Upon examining the matter more closely, François Renauld noticed that a term can be approved by the OQLF if its inclusion in current usage can be demonstrated. So Renauld hired three linguists. With their help, he produced a 150-page document demonstrating that management and accrédité were used profusely in French-language academic literature at the time.

But that was not enough to resolve the issue. It had to wait until the Liberals came to power. As chance would have it, Claude Ryan, who had supported the CMA proposal while in opposition, was appointed Minister responsible for the French Language Charter and the application of professional laws! It could not have happened at a better time. In 1987, he delivered the goods. In total, it took 10 years for the Order to finally obtain the name change that had already become the norm across Canada, even though it was originally a Quebecer initiative. It was a brilliant idea that would result in making the designation totally bilingual.

Continuing on that path, François Renauld then used all of his influence to improve the training leading to the CMA designation. Five years later, the first cohorts of students began the Strategic Leadership Program (called the Professional Program at the time), which has since made the reputation of the profession.

Competitive…

By raising its requirements, the profession won over young people so effectively that the CAs and CGAs began to seriously envy the position that CMAs had achieved, especially when the government expressed its intention in December 2007 to end the CA monopoly over public accounting.

“One of the reasons that I have stayed so long at the Order is precisely because the environment is competitive and forces us to set ourselves apart, carve out a place for ourselves and achieve extraordinary things. If we were in a situation where there was a monopoly – with the shortcomings in management that inevitably induces –, I would have undoubtedly had to take on new challenges elsewhere a long time ago,” says François Renauld.

… but also conciliatory and realistic

Yes but, properly speaking, if the differences between accounting designations more or less boiled down to mere marketing approaches, won’t the idea of merging the three orders resurface just as fast as it was recently shelved?

In 25 years, François Renauld has witnessed four attempts to make it to the altar. “In 2004, we were about to call a referendum. We were even as far as having a new organizational chart ready; it was only missing the names,” he revealed. “The only problem was that the merger proposal planned on all accountants using the CA designation and adding the words “management” or “auditor” to denote their specialties. However, the members of the different orders were not really ready to give up their respective identities so easily. “The members of the three orders feel a strong sense of identification. In my opinion, one of the ways to make the merge work would be to respect the individual identities of the three groups, like the certified industrial relations counselors (CRIA) and certified human resource professionals (CRHA). These two groups receive similar but not the exact same training, and yet they coexist in the same professional order, while keeping their respective designations.”

François Renauld is convinced that the necessity of this merger will reappear on the agenda very rapidly. Primarily because, of the 45 professional orders in the province, accounting is the only sector of activity that is represented by three separate groups. Secondly, because Quebec has been experiencing a major shortage of accountants for many years. “Finally, because it would be quite logical, in terms of management, visibility and the political weight that the profession would acquire, for one order of more than 30,000 members to be formed,” he explains.

You can certainly count on the perseverance and credibility of our man to promote the idea, he who adamantly claims that he has no intention of leaving his position. “I am only 62, feel like I’m in good shape and love my work.” Hence, the story of François Renauld and the CMA brand does not end here.