The following is a talk given by LDS Presiding Bishop Gérald Caussé at the October 6, 2017 BYU Global Supply Chain Day and Alumni Conference. Posted by permission.
“Doing Good through Global Supply Chain Management”
by Presiding Bishop Gérald Caussé
Valérie and I are honored to be with you today. I would like to thank Scott Sampson for his invitation to participate in this Global Supply Chain Alumni Conference at the Marriott School of Management. I realize that I am in the presence of extraordinary men and women. Whether you are students, professors, or alumni, you shine brightly in your studies and careers—not only because of your professional expertise, but also because of the good influence you have on society due to your values and examples.
I would like to express my appreciation for the manner in which you recognized the expertise and accomplishments of the Church’s supply chain during last night’s dinner. We accept these compliments with gratitude and profound humility. Having served in the Church for a long time, I have to recognize who really directs this Church. Each day, I feel a little smaller as I observe the miracles and the wonders that are being accomplished. Not one of us can accept personal glory in serving the Lord, but it is a genuine privilege and a great honor to be associated with this great work.
Nearly ten years ago, I was enjoying what I felt was a promising career in the supply chain and food distribution industry when I received the call to serve as a General Authority Seventy in the Church. I will never forget when President Thomas S. Monson telephoned us at our home in Paris, France. I can still hear his exact words: “Brother Caussé, you are called to serve as a Seventy until the age of 70.” Valérie and I only had about one and a half seconds to accept the call—a call that turned our entire lives upside down. Of particular note, it meant that we would most certainly leave our country for the next 26 years of our lives!
The following week, I was still in shock about the call, but I gave notice to my employer that I was quitting my job. For eight years, I had been managing a food distribution company in France—a company with which I had made a long- term commitment. Our company, Pomona, was the leading food distributor in France for restaurants and food service companies. Prior to that I had worked as the director of supply chain for Carrefour, the second largest food retailer in the world. For more than 15 years, my daily routine was made up of warehouses, trucks, food supplies, and grocery stores. I loved my life in France, and I found my professional responsibilities exciting and fulfilling. A few months after the call from President Monson, I left my employment to begin a new phase of my life. I felt that I was retiring from the business world. It’s a strange feeling to retire when one is only forty-four years old!
Our family moved to Frankfurt, Germany, where I served in the Europe Area Presidency for the following four years. We were completely surprised when in 2012, we received another telephone call from the First Presidency calling me to serve in the Presiding Bishopric at Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. As you may know, the Presiding Bishopric has the responsibility to supervise the temporal affairs and the welfare services of the Church.
I had just started my service in Salt Lake City when I was invited to visit the Church’s Bishop’s Central Storehouse, which had just been dedicated. I arrived to see a brand new 500,000 square foot distribution center. I went inside the vast building and observed rows and rows of shelves stocked with boxes of food. The aisles buzzed with noisy forklifts. I breathed in the familiar smell of food products. Even if my eyes had been closed, I would have had no doubt where I was. I smiled and said to myself: “I’m back!”
This afternoon, my message is to illustrate how we must constantly seek to align our personal objectives with the plan that God has prepared for us—including the manner in which we pilot our professional careers. It is written in the scriptures: “The Lord knoweth all things from the beginning; wherefore, he prepareth a way to accomplish all his works among the children of men; for behold, he hath all power unto the fulfilling of all his words.”1 Only by conforming to the Lord’s plan can we “fill the measure of our creation”2 and receive a fullness of joy and accomplishment in our lives.
I would like to share with you some key moments from my professional career where my personal relationship with God and His gospel made a difference. I hope you will forgive me for being so personal. But I humbly wish to use these experiences to illustrate a few important spiritual principles that I feel are essential for every Latter-day Saint who is following a professional pathway, whether you are young students or more experienced professionals.
First Principle: Always listen to the Spirit, even if it means you have to change your plans.
I studied at a business school in France. When I finished my curriculum, I thought my choice of career was clearly defined. I had a major in finance, and I had completed a ten-month internship with an investment bank. At that point, I received two firm job offers with two highly-rated banking institutions in Paris. An exciting career in the banking sector seemed imminent for me.
Then one evening, I received a telephone call from a high school friend suggesting that I apply at Bain & Company, a US-based strategy consulting firm that had just opened an office in Paris. I rejected his suggestion out of hand, telling him that I had already made the choice to work in banking. However, he was insistent. He used every possible argument to convince me, even going as far as claiming that interviewing with Bain would help me prepare for my interviews with banks. A still, small voice convinced me to follow my friend’s advice, and I have never regretted it.
Several weeks later, I began a six-year journey working in strategy consulting in Paris and later in London. No other choice in my life has been as helpful in preparing me for my future responsibilities in the Church as those six years that I spent in consulting. Still today, almost every day, I refer back to the concepts I learned and my experiences during those years of practical and intensive training. During that period, one of my most notable clients was the Carrefour Group, which directly prepared me to work in the food distribution and supply chain industry.
I firmly believe that the telephone call from my high school friend that day was among those events of daily life, seemingly unimportant at the time, when the thread of our existence crosses the grand design of a loving Heavenly Father.
Every day I realize how blessed I have been because I listened to that still small voice, which upon the completion of my formal education, advised me to change my career plans to follow the advice of an inspired friend.
Second Principle: Place your trust in the Lord and move forward.
I have often noticed that those men and women who have accomplished remarkable things in their lives had great confidence in their future success, even when they were young.
An interesting case in point is Winston Churchill, the celebrated British statesman. Even as a very young man, he had an unshakable confidence about his future. While he was serving in a cavalry regiment in India at the age of twenty- three, he wrote to his mother: “I have faith in my star—that is that I am intended to do something in the world.”3 What an incredibly prophetic thought!
I believe that each one of us, whether we are young or a bit older, has much more than a star in the heavens to guide us. God watches over us. We can place our trust in Him and move forward in life.
After serving for six years in strategy consulting, I was hired by the Promodès Group, an international retail group based in Paris and a major competitor of Carrefour. It was also an extremely successful family company, its stock having posted the largest increase in value on the Paris Stock Exchange for the previous ten years. I had just turned thirty years old and I was motivated by a desire to acquire experience in managing personnel and teams. The position offered to me was that of a regional director with the responsibility of about 400 grocery stores as well as two large food warehouses in Normandy. I was very enthusiastic about managing several hundred employees.
Unfortunately, after several weeks of training at the company headquarters, my plans suddenly fell apart. The general manager told me that the position I had been promised in the Normandy region was no longer available. Instead, I was offered the opportunity to take the reins of a newly created department, with functional responsibility over logistics and supply chain management.
I was extremely disappointed. I even thought about resigning because my hopes of managing teams and employees seemed to be slipping away.
Furthermore, I felt that my professional competency in the area of supply chain management was insufficient to carry out this responsibility.
Nevertheless, I remained convinced that the Lord had led me to this company for a good purpose. I decided to trust in Him and to give myself, body and soul, to this new position. I was given the responsibility to spearhead two major reorganization and cost reduction projects for the company. This opportunity gave me my first contact with supply chain management and warehouse distribution.
I was neither a specialist nor an expert in logistics, but I quickly came to understand that I had strengths that could be helpful to the company: a fresh perspective, a logical mind, and an ability to manage complex projects that I had acquired while working in consulting. The projects I managed ended up having a critical impact on the future of the company. It helped me gain visibility and exposure with the top management of the group, which provided me with another springboard to advance in my career.
Third Principle: Apply the principles of the Gospel in all circumstances.
The responsibilities of managing teams arrived more quickly than I expected. In the April 2017 General Conference priesthood session, I spoke about how my experience of serving in the Church led to an unexpected professional promotion.
One day, my company president, a good man of another faith, called me into his office and asked the following question: “I just learned you are a priest in your church. Is that true?” I replied, “Yes, that is correct. I hold the priesthood.” I had a chance to share with him how I attended seminary nearly every day of my youth, and served in priesthood assignments in my congregation. To my great surprise, several weeks later, he called me back to his office to offer me a managing director position for a food distribution company of the group which had 1,800 employees. I was astonished and expressed my concern that, being only 33 years old, I was too young and inexperienced to hold such an important responsibility. With a benevolent smile, he said: “That may be true, but it doesn’t matter. I know your principles, and I know what you’ve learned in your church. I need you.”
He was right about what I had learned in the Church. The years that followed were challenging. The company’s financial situation was critical. They faced serious social issues subsequent to the recent acquisition of several companies. I don’t know if I could have had any success without the experience I had acquired by serving in the Church.
Shortly after I started working in this new position, a serious strike broke out at the company’s main distribution center. The warehouse was blocked by several trucks, and no merchandise could enter or exit our facility. The Human Resources Director called in a panic to tell me that the strikers insisted on meeting with their new managing director as a prerequisite to any further negotiations.
I was petrified! I had absolutely no knowledge or experience in social management and conflict resolution. I called my president to ask him for advice. His response left me speechless: “There is nothing I can do to help you. You will know what to do. Good luck!” I remember locking my office door and kneeling down to ask my Heavenly Father to help this young executive without experience. Then I left to meet with the strikers. The negotiations lasted all through that night, but the conflict was resolved and deliveries began again the following morning.
After three years of relentless work, the company’s accounts were back in order, the new acquisitions had been properly integrated, and social peace and unity had been recovered. Only later did I realize that during this period, the thing that helped me the most was not the concepts or techniques I had learned in business school or in consulting. Rather, it was the implementation of the essential gospel principles I had learned at Church—most notably, love and respect for others and the desire to create an atmosphere of unity, patience, and longsuffering. I firmly believe that all good management must be based on this simple teaching found in the Doctrine and Covenants: “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”4
After three years of hard work in this food distribution company, I was appointed as Director of the Supply Chain for the Promodès Group. I was asked to consolidate the group’s supply chain operations into one single entity that would provide logistic services to all retail companies, from the smallest convenience stores to the largest superstores. This important reorganization had just been completed, when an announcement was made that the Carrefour and Promodès groups would merge to become the second largest worldwide retail group after Walmart. The new group operated 8,000 stores and employed nearly 200,000 people in 26 different countries. My universe had suddenly completely changed dimensions.
Top executives from the two groups combined their respective divisions by applying the well-known principle of “the best of both worlds.” During merger negotiations, it was agreed that since supply chain management was considered as one of Promodès’s strengths, management for supply chain operations of the new consolidated group in France would be assumed by the Director of Supply Chain of Promodès. Consequently, I found myself promoted to the head of logistics in the new entity, with the responsibility of combining the supply chains of the two companies.
This new project represented an incredibly complex and daunting challenge. Each group had its own history, culture, and operating methods, all of which varied drastically from one another. In fact, they were almost opposite in nature.
Carrefour had traditionally focused on the strength of its customer marketing, brand names, and store operations. In contrast, Promodès had based its expansion on its central purchasing power and its supply chain expertise. The two years that followed were probably the most challenging and exciting years of my career in food distribution. The financial stakes at play numbered in the billions of dollars.
I quickly realized that the principal factor of success was not of a technical nature. It resided in my ability to mobilize and unite vastly different teams—to get them to focus on the same vision and share one common objective. It was not an easy task. It required hundreds of hours of meetings, committee discussions, work sessions, and especially a lot of listening, mutual respect, and patience. There, once again, applying the gospel principles and human values acquired in Church service proved to be determinant factors in achieving my goals.
Fourth Principle: Always put the Lord first in your life.
After two years spent reorganizing the supply chain of the Carrefour group, I made the decision to leave the company to work in a much smaller family group, which was the number one food supplier in France for restaurants and foodservice companies. This career change followed no professional logic. However, it had everything to do with my desire to put the Lord first in my life.
At the time, I had been serving as a counselor in the Paris Stake presidency for eight years. One evening as we met with members of the high council, the stake president indicated that after serving nine years in his calling, he would probably be released during the upcoming stake conference. At the end of the meeting, a member of the high council came to see me and whispered in my ear that he firmly believed I would be the next stake president. His seemingly innocuous remark completely flabbergasted me. The challenging restructuring of the Carrefour group was consuming all my time and energy, and I didn’t feel I had any capacity to consecrate myself to serving as stake president.
When I got home that night, I confided my concerns to my wife, Valérie. I told her that I sincerely hoped that someone else would be called as stake president. Her reply took me by surprise. “Gérald, you should look for another job. You should prepare yourself in case the Lord needs you.” Her reaction only added to my confusion. In my personal prayer that evening, I poured out my heart and begged the Lord to spare me from serving as stake president. Then, as a last measure, I heard myself say that if I were to be called as the new stake president, then I needed His assistance to help me find a new job. I even shared with the Lord the name of the only company for which I could consider working: Pomona, a food distribution company which I had always admired because of its work ethic and values.
With strong encouragement from my wife, I resolved to call a recruiting firm, whose name I had in my telephone contacts. Several days later, I had my first interview. After inquiring about my professional background, my interlocutor looked at me intensely and said, “Now, this is interesting! We just received the assignment to hire a new managing director for Pomona. Are you familiar with this company? You know, you have the perfect profile for filling this position.” I don’t know if he saw the astonishment on my face when he pronounced the name “Pomona.” I suddenly realized that the Lord had taken the lead in my life.
After I left the recruiting firm’s office, I called Valérie on the telephone. “Chérie,” I said, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I am going to be hired by Pomona,” (because for me, there was no doubt about that, even though I hadn’t had a single interview with the company’s executives). “Congratulations, but what’s the bad news?” she asked me with concern in her voice. I replied, “I am going to be called as the stake president.” Several weeks later, I was officially hired by Pomona. The very next morning, Elder Harold G. Hillam came to Paris and called me to serve as the president of the Paris France Stake.
The following years were magnificent for my family and me. I loved serving my brothers and sisters in the Paris Stake! My experience at Pomona was also a blessed and peaceful time. I had the great joy of working for a company whose culture and values aligned with my own. I was also blessed with superiors who understood and supported my involvement in the Church, and who later gave me their encouragement and blessings when I was called as a General Authority Seventy. I am also very grateful for my wife’s loving and inspired counsel at a pivotal moment in my life when I needed to extract myself from the daily pressures of my profession to put the Lord first in my life.
Fifth and Last Principle: Rely on the power of God rather than on the wisdom of men.
Shortly after my call as a General Authority Seventy, I was invited to Church headquarters in Salt Lake City for several weeks of training. One morning, I arrived early at my office and found a message asking me to go as quickly as possible to President Boyd K. Packer’s office, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve. He greeted me with great kindness and invited me to sit down. To my surprise, he took a piece of paper out of his drawer and asked me to read it out loud. It was the second chapter of 1st Corinthians. After having listened to me read the entire chapter, President Packer thanked me and dismissed me without any further commentary. As soon as I got back to my office, I reread the entire chapter, and then again, and then one more time. I wanted to identify what important message President Packer was trying to teach me. One verse in particular caught my attention: “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”5
I understood more fully the importance of this verse when I was called to serve in the Presiding Bishopric of the Church, some five years ago. This is a calling that fills me with humility each and every day. One of our main responsibilities is to manage the temporal affairs of the Church worldwide. This includes the management of finances, the construction and maintenance of temples and meetinghouses, the administration of information systems, and the management of human resources. It also includes the production and distribution of Church publications—including scriptures, manuals, videos, and internet sites— and making them available to the leaders and members of the Church throughout the entire world.
Often my nonmember friends ask me to describe my responsibilities in the Presiding Bishopric. It is not an easy task. It would be easy to simply reply that my counselors and I constitute the executive directors of a worldwide organization. It is true that our daily routine is made up of activities similar to those of the executive board of large international firms. We define strategies, develop and administer budgets for operations and investments, manage several thousand employees, help grow the Church’s financial and real estate assets, and develop and operate distribution, information, and communication systems.
However, none of these explanations can adequately describe our responsibilities. During these past few years, I have become more and more aware of the uniqueness of the Church, its manner of functioning, and its organization. It is anything but a human organization. It is governed by the power of direct revelation and the principles of the gospel.
President David O. McKay asked the following question to members of the Church gathered together during April 1937 General Conference: “If at this moment each one [of you] were asked to state in one sentence … the most distinguishing feature of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-say Saints, what would be your answer? My answer,” he replied, “would be … divine authority by direct revelation.”6
I would like to illustrate this principle by relating an experience that the Presiding Bishopric had some time ago with President Henry B. Eyring. We had the opportunity of presenting to President Eyring a construction project to be located in the center of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. President Eyring spent some time studying and commenting about the placement of the building, the architectural designs, the interior décor, and other details of the project. He was visibly very interested in the project. He told us that he had lived near Philadelphia as a child, he had even been baptized there, and consequently had a great deal of personal affection for this city. I thought, “we could never have found a better person to guide us in this project.” At that very moment, President Eyring suddenly placed the presentation down on his desk. He lifted up his eyes and said to us, “I know the city of Philadelphia too well. I fear that my personal experience may interfere with the process of revelation that needs to take place. I would like you to go present this project to the Prophet. He will better know the Lord’s will. He holds the keys.”
That seemingly innocuous experience profoundly touched me. I testify that the principle of revelation is present at all levels in the Church, both in spiritual and temporal affairs. Our decisions are made in the spirit of prayer and constant seeking of the will of the Lord rather than our own will. Our vision does not stop at the macro-economic indicators or at the requirement of obtaining an immediate result. It is not only based on the wisdom of men or on the personal background and experiences of any certain person, but it integrates the sacred designs of the Lord and is accomplished by the power of His priesthood.
My dear friends, the principles I just described have blessed me in my personal and professional life. They apply equally to each one of you, whether you are currently students, professionals, or somewhere else in life. I invite you to ponder what gospel principles can bring to your life. To receive a first-class professional education, like the one given at the Marriott School of Management, is certainly a major asset for your future career, but recognize that your membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is your most distinguishing asset—the one that can make all the difference to you in every circumstance.
As you move forward in life, trust wholeheartedly in the Lord. Do not hesitate to follow the still small voice of the Spirit, and never compromise in living the principles of the gospel. Always put the Lord first and rely on His power rather than on the wisdom of men.
I testify that if you do this, your life will unroll in perfect unity with the plan that God has for you, and you will find a fullness of peace, joy, and fulfillment in your personal and professional life.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Reprinted by permission from Presiding Bishopric Office – 11/10/2017. (c) 2017 LDS.