Going beyond economics: an interview with EXCEL Award winner, Claude Beland.

Claude Beland graduated magna cum laude from the University of Montreal Law School in 1955. He taught commercial and cooperative law and published numerous articles and three books on the theory of cooperation. While acting as a volunteer or legal advisor in various caisses populaires (credit unions) and other Quebec cooperatives, he co-founded a francophone federation of savings and credit unions in 1962, grouping several caisses based and operating in the province of Quebec; until then they had been affiliated with the Credit Union League. The federation hired him as legal advisor in 1971 and appointed him general manager in 1979. The game year, he succeeded in bringing about the affiliation of the federation with the Mouvement des caisses Desjardins. He was appointed president of the Mouvement in 1987. Since then, assets have gone from Cdn. $20 billion to $75 billion.

Could you tell us a little bit about the Mouvement Desjardins, how it started, how it operates? The foundation of the Mouvement goes back to 1900 when people from a community close to Quebec City decided to gather their savings together to form a credit union. It was a small project at the time and that was the way Alphonse Desjardins, the founder, wanted it. He believed it was important for people to know what they did with their savings, and hoped the next village would do the same. When Desjardins died in 1920, some 220 credit unions had come into being. After his death, some decided to form a federation. Others followed suit, and today 1,479 credit unions, including those in Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick, are grouped into 14 federations, which in turn belong to a provincial confederation charged with the orientation, planning and coordination of the Mouvement's activities. This powerful cooperative entity gave itself a central credit union in 1980 as well as a whole network of corporations and subsidiaries (insurance company, trust company, securities company, etc.). Today, two out of three Quebecers -- some five million in all -- belong to a Desjardins credit union. With its 18,500 volunteer directors and 47,000 employees, the Mouvement is not only Quebec's primary financial institution, it is also the largest private employer in the province.

Our corporation's primary responsibility is to offer complementary services to member credit unions. We exist first and foremost to ensure our members are totally satisfied and recognize how important each credit union is to the community. The demand for increased competitive services comes from them. I would say our assets are the result -- not the objective -- of what we are pursuing.

You also have a certain number of joint projects in European countries.

Again, these projects exist to satisfy our members' needs. More and more members are doing business in Europe. In today's global economy, it would not be very wise to invest a great amount of time and money to develop our own internal network, so our strategy has been to create alliances with existing networks, such as Credit mutuel de France, DG Bank in Germany and other financial institutions that have the same intrinsic values, that treat our clients as they do their own.

What about your projects in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Mexico?

Those projects fall under our Societe de developpement international (International Development Corporation) and are tied to our social commitment. We feel privileged to have inherited a cooperative formula such as ours, which came from Europe basically, but which Alphonse Desjardins adapted to Quebec and to our culture. We feel we owe it to other nations to help them. We do not try to impose our model, our mode of operation, but rather export our values. The method and rules of operation to protect those values vary from one country to another. I distinguish three levels of values: fundamental values -- our raison d'etre -- operational values and management values. The only ones we can export are the intrinsic values. Pooling people's strengths and getting them involved can be done anywhere. It's then up to the people to decide how to do it in their own countries and cultures, to invent rules that suit them.

How does communication fit into all of that?

Communication is the cement that holds the stones together. In a structure that at the outset tells you that as president or chairman you have no more power than any other member, you have to rely on your communication skills. It is important for the chairman of an organization such as ours to bring people to a higher level. Being a good banker or generating profits is not sufficient motivation. When you have a noble, generous project such as ours, it is much easier to rally people around. When people get involved in petty power struggles, you have to be able to say, "OK, what are we pursuing here, what's our ultimate objective, what are we here for?" With a vision, I can then get them back on track. It is not necessarily easier, but it can be done. In a cooperative system, members do not give the president additional power but they say: "Make us soar, make us go beyond." So you have no choice but to play your role as a communicator.

Communication is to listen, to encourage, to reward. To live with your employees and to bring them on the path you choose. Warren Bennis (author of "On Becoming a Leader") distinguishes between leadership and management. Management is making people do what has to be done. Leadership is bringing people to want to do what has to be done. That's the difference. Once you have brought them to that point, your job is easy. People who are involved, who are empowered: That's the Mouvement's great strength. Once you have empowered people, there is no need for the chairman to have additional power. They are committed to the same vision, and it's incredible what they can do. The power of the group.

How large is your communication staff?

There are about a dozen people at the Mouvement itself, but the beauty of our cooperative organization is that communicators are everywhere, in every federation and at all levels. We once held a Desjardins communication conference which 140 communicators attended. There is definitely strength in numbers. We bring our people together periodically -- at least twice a year -- to bring them back to a common vision. We organize a lot of conferences and seminars.

Do you have your own way of communicating with your board of directors.

There are 33 members on the board, whom I meet with once a month and occasionally talk to on the phone. Between meetings, however, my thinking evolves. It used to be that from meeting to meeting, people couldn't always follow my line of thinking. I wanted us to evolve together. So on Saturday (sometimes Sunday) mornings, I write to the members of my board. I don't always have much to say, but I always find something. I tell them what I have thought of during the week, what has happened. This week, for instance, my letter deals with human resources management. Now, when I table projects or bring up issues, members have traveled along the same path in the interim and the process is easier. I often get feedback from members, too. They read the letter and call to sound me out. So on most Monday mornings, board members receive a fax from my office.

Ninety-one percent of Mouvement employees are proud to work for Desjardins. How do you explain that?

In a survey we did a few years ago, employees complained about a number of things, but when asked whether they liked working for Desjardins, an overwhelming majority said yes. After taking a close look, I understood how stimulating it is to work for Desjardins. Employees feel they are building something, they do not feel they are working for owners who are growing richer. They know they are working for the community. In that sense, it is highly stimulating and motivating.

Your personal level of credibility is also extremely high. Why is that?

You have to state your message in plain, simple language and be completely transparent. If you empower people without telling them why you are doing so, if they can't see how it all fits together, they will tune out after a while, they will abandon you. So you have to be very, very transparent.

And you have to use a lot of humor!

What advice would you give today's CEO?

The key to being a good CEO, I think, is to be a good communicator. In tomorrow's organization, with growing automation -- at least in our area -- we will need brains. And if we are going to acquire brains, we must give free rein to their creativity, imagination, energy and skills. And so the CEO's role is really to set a clear direction, to map it out and to ensure people can get there. Today's CEO is a facilitator, a symphony conductor.

How do you see communication in year 2000?

We are going toward a communication era. We will have to make choices, we will have to be discriminating because information is not necessarily communication. You have to communicate the right information, the one you need, the one that will help you achieve your objectives. Communication requires a lot of training, a lot of discrimination, a lot of intelligence, a lot of brain power because we will have to make sense of it all. The tragedy today is the overdose of information. There is so much information that people have become disinformed. They absorb bits of it and talk in sound bites.

Is there a link between the Mouvement's social commitment, its communication of that commitment and its success?

Organizations that last are those with a vision that goes beyond economics. The original Desjardins goal was for people to acquire a little dignity and to act on their own. They had a noble project. The Mouvement's social impact means that today nearly 9,000 Quebecers sit on boards of financial institutions. That is an incredible revolution. When we protect the environment, we don't do so to be good citizens or to gild our image or whatever. Our members are the owners. If we pollute their environment, they will tell us to stop. If we do not create jobs, they will come down hard on us.

In a global village, organizations no longer have identities, no longer have ties with their environment. And so economics have taken over. Most organizations only have one goal now, and that is to earn money for their shareholders.

But the pendulum will swing back. And there will be another wave, one I call a human ecology wave. At some point, we will ask ourselves: "Who are we living for?" We are in for a bumpy ride. So when you talk of communication, whether or not you are a CEO, you have to talk along those lines. There is still the mentality that when you are a business person, you should only deal with business issues. We still live in a fragmented world. It is clear that tomorrow, we will have to communicate in a holistic way, we will have to clearly state what's at stake, we will have to get everybody to work together to solve the problems and to ensure we pull through.

Mado Reid is president of Quio, a communication consulting firm in Montreal.