Combining a dual role of chief cook and bottle washer and occasional guide in Nice with ( proud) member of the Obramat (Group Adeo) audit committee.

Recently arrived in Nice, I intend to offer occasional guided visits of the town around the theme of the influence of the Brits and Americans in the developing of Nice and surrounds. Not as a strictly commercial venture but if people visiting want to learn a little about the recent past…

Adeo is a family company of some 115000 staff active in more than 15 countries. Its role is to provide its customers with solutions both in terms of products and services to create the type of home they can best enjoy respecting completely their propensity to be hands on do it yourself people or to be accompanied in the improvement of their home. In a rapidly evolving society which is becoming more and more digital, in an environment in which the legislator is more and more present audit has a role in providing management with a picture and a film of its capacity to innovate whilst maintaining operational effectiveness and ensuring compliance with both external and internal constraints. And all of this in very different cultural enviropnments .Our challenge has been - on the one hand to ensure that a population of auditors who inevitably spend around 3 years in the function before moving on in their individual businesses are able to understand our business in depth, undertake useful audit work both locally and within the group and take pleasure in giving and taking.- and on the other hand to educate management so that it accepts and actively looks for constructive criticism!

Over an initial four year period we repositioned audit in its role of “evaluation / recommendations “ rather than the department that writes procedures and controls - or validates them. Our challenge was to get line management to integrate the concept of operational control and to get top management to be open to the idea of evaluation of its processes. The issue is on going but it was and is even now a fascinating challenge of how to establish meaningful, robust dialogue

From an activity that was “classroom” based to one that offered a complete range of training approaches (integration packages tailored to all major function, training cycles , in store trading kits, a complete e-learning trading offer...) we innovated and at the same time worked on ensuring that management took on board the key conditions for turning training programmes into ways of developing long term performance

Business school recruiting Bac+2 students with a first industrial / technical degree and training them in two years to be sales engineers.A wonderful adventure- creating ex nihilo a viable educational establishment and providing both the style of pedagogy and the content which gave our students the skills, creativity and confidence to approach international markets sensibly and intelligently.