Armed for success: Major Luc Richard, CMA and peackeeper, takes finance know-how to the front lines. (Profile).

It's 10:30 a.m. The air is cold and the sun is peeking up over the mist that has covered the Bosnian plains since dawn. Major Luc Richard, CMA, is getting ready to board a Griffon helicopter belonging to Canada's Bosnia-Herzegovina helicopter detachment. It will take him to the Banja Luka camp to attend a meeting of financial authorities from the South-West Multinational Division.

As the controller for the Canadian contingent in Bosnia, Richard sat on the Division's financial management committee with the controllers from the British and Dutch contingents. Every month, the three controllers representing the nations of the South-West Multinational Division meet to reconcile operational activities and funding for the deployed units and troops. This special committee discusses cost sharing between the countries and establishes financial directions for a tripartite headquarters. "The Canadian approach often dominates at these meetings," says Richard. "With our analytical skills, our results-oriented approach to problem solving, and our focus on our partners 'interests, we generally manage to come up with a logical, winning solution for everyone involved."

Major Richard joined the Canadian Forces 18 years ago, in the officers training program, and graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration, honours, from Carleton University in Ottawa. He was then assigned to the Valcartier base near Quebec City where he continued taking evening courses to obtain his CMA designation. "While I was doing my Bachelor's my goal was to get my CMA designation. It was the best qualification for what I wanted to do."

The CMA designation at the time was not as welt known as it is today and was, in Richard's mind, essentially geared toward cost accounting. What he wanted was to get numbers to talk, which, in his opinion, was far more interesting than just auditing books. He soon found out that being a CMA was far more than that. "Being a CMA is a philosophy. It's proactive management. CMA training automatically prepares you for the senior echelons of a company." He obtained his CMA designation in 1990 and continued to climb up through the ranks of the Armed Forces, where he is a logistics officer specializing in finance.

After assuming responsibility for financial management at the Valcartier Canadian Forces Base, he was given the opportunity to assume responsibility for non-public funds. "Managing non-public funds on a base is oddly similar to municipal management, except there are no property taxes to collect," he notes. "At the time, Valcartier's non-public funds included managing a shopping centre, skiing centre, golf club and recreation centre with an arena, in addition to the messes. It also involved all the activities normally found in the other sports and recreational clubs offered to military people and their families, all of it directed by the equivalent of a representative, elected municipal council.

"Once I analyzed the organization's operations, membership trends, along with demographic trends and infrastructure needs for the coming years, my real mandate became clear: I had to demonstrate the need for change. I analyzed every single factor, and consulted the services in nearby cities to provide a basis for comparison and support my conclusions. Then I presented my findings to the board of directors using just one slide that said: Change is needed if we are to continue providing current services."

A numbers game

One of Richard's fears when he started his career was that he would be unable to apply all that he had learned as a CMA in an organization like the Armed Forces. His career so far has proved him wrong. In 1994-1995, the federal government initiated a broad-reaching cost reduction program that hit military management head on. Major Richard became a top adviser to the controller and the commander for the Quebec Area to help the organization absorb the 50% cuts to its operating budget. The Land Force Quebec Area, which is the largest National Defence organization in Quebec, controls all military facilities except for CFB Bagotville and the Naval Reserve.

Richard also sees how his military experience would be useful if he ever wanted to launch a career in the private sector. He found out when he applied to his employer for assistance to do a graduate degree. He opted to do an MBA at the Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Montreal.

"Once I was accepted, I got cold feet. I was going to have to measure up against and work with seasoned managers with five to 25 years private sector experience. I really wondered whether I was up to the task. But in the very first week of the program, when we were working in teams on an intensive week of computer-based business simulations, I realized that with my CMA training, combined with my military background, I would be able to hold my own. The key to success in my opinion is excellent analytical skills, an excellent ability to synthesize information, and the capacity to clearly identify the objective, or in military terms, the mission. Thereafter, you have to keep that objective in mind with every decision you make and ensure that decisions are made only after a thorough analysis of the relevant factors has been accomplished. Once this is established, it is important to verify whether the direction taken is in keeping with the original mission." That is the methodology the Army teaches at the Canadia n Land Force Command and Staff College, from which Richard graduated in 1995.

Armed Forces future

When it comes to new management directions, the Canadian Forces does not stand still. Risk management, performance measurements, contracting out, change management and activity-based accounting, to name but a few, are all important aspects of the Forces' business strategies. Richard, in fact, was given the opportunity to implement activity-based accounting for the Canadian Army. "The big thing in the government now is the conversion to accrual accounting from cash accounting. It's a major change that's underway in a number of departments. It incorporates a new financial information strategy and is aimed at making the Canadian government's books comparable to those in the private sector. The ultimate goal is to provide better financial information that is understood by everyone involved."

On duty in Bosnia

Richard is first and foremost a major in the Canadian Forces, and military life means periodically leaving your family behind to serve your country abroad. In his case, he left behind his wife, Annie, and their four-year-old daughter Mathilde. In September 2001 he found himself in charge of managing the financial services of the Canadian contingent in Bosnia. Although it's a beautiful country with a landscape resembling the Rockies, you are quickly brought back to reality when driving through the streets where you see all the havoc the war has caused. There are roofless, windowless houses everywhere, with a few cords of wood as the only source of heat. There are endless fields that are out of bounds because they are filled with land mines. There are more than a million mines throughout the territory, along with two million other abandoned explosive devices that threaten everyday life.

Financially, this is a different world also. When Richard arrived in Bosnia, the CMA in him kept an interested eye on the fledgling Euro conversion project, a major page in European history and the greatest monetary transition ever attempted. Some 14.5 billion notes and 50 billion corns were produced to introduce the Euro on January 1, 2002, in more than 12 participating countries. The Canadian contingent was carrying out its monetary operations using the German Mark. January 1 was the absolute deadline for meeting the European central banks' guidelines. "I read the file, verified the information and went to Geilenkerchen to attend information sessions with banking authorities to learn more about the master plan for distributing the notes and coins of the realm."

He added that the conversion not only had to be explained to the troops, but it was also necessary to ensure employees and local suppliers understood what was happening and accepted the new rules of the game, which required courtesy and diplomacy.

"Once the information campaign was completed, we entered the coordination phase," said Richard. "First, we had to develop an operation plan. This meant obtaining approvals for converting a few million dollars into Euros from the Central Bank of Germany, getting the new denominations, transporting them by plane to Zagreb in Croatia, and then transferring them to helicopters for distribution to our 10 major installations, while always paying special attention to security concerns."

The next step involved preparing finance personnel, installing Mark collection and Euro distribution points so that the entire operation occurred simultaneously at all camps on January 1. "The evening of New Year's Day 2002, the mission was complete despite the fact that it was a holiday," Richard said. "Euros were in use throughout our installations. The only thing left to do was to return the old denominations through the reverse process to close the file."

Richard was quite proud to have completed this special project without any interruption in day-to-day operations or additional personnel.

For Major Luc Richard, Bosnia was a tremendous experience. "It was an opportunity to put all I know into practice and learn more about ways of dealing with international organizations, and with other countries." It was also a chance to get back to the basics, carrying out high-level management tasks, as in Canada, but with fewer personnel and resources.

"Really, there's no life like it," he says.

Captain Sylvain Chalifour is a public affairs officer for the Canadian Armed Forces.