Bruno Laquet, CIO of steel-makerCorus
Group, has always relished a new challenge -
it's the driving force that has motivated his restless career.
"I've always been trying to start something new," he says. "So any
time there was something new somewhere, I was always the first to
say: can I do it?"
As IT is in a state of perpetual motion, it's no bad thing to be
willing to grab new opportunities when they come along. Getting
your foot on the ladder first means you're ahead of the crowd as
you climb higher. Laquet explains his relish for the new as an
incessant curiosity and a vigorous desire to explore the uncharted
frontiers of IT. "I'm more motivated when I have something new to
explore," he says. "When that happens, I just feel the internal
energy boiling away in myself.
"But when a situation has settled down and stabilised, I miss
the energy. I think being willing to mobilise all your energy is
really important when you aspire to a leadership position."
An IT professional who actively seeks out new challenges needs a
range of qualities, says Laquet. "You need to be creative because
when you're looking to apply IT in completely new ways, there are
no precedents to guide you. But then you need to set up a team and
give them some direction - because when you're working on something
new, your colleagues will need to understand in which direction you
want to move."
Then there's the need to understand the different factors that
may affect the project. "But I think there's a risk of trying to go
too deeply into analysis," says Laquet. "At some point in the
project, you need to have some gut feel and some inspiration - and
then follow your chosen path. Very often, there are many ways to do
things. It's not so important choosing which way to go - it's more
important to choose a path and get everybody aligned on it."
Laquet has build his successful career on the back of being
known as the guy who can take on a difficult new project and make a
success of it. When he left his technical college in Paris in the
early 1980s, he started working in R&D at France Telecom. At
that time, IT was emerging from the mainframe world and the PC was
beginning to show how it would reshape IT.
"I became IT project leader and set up the IT infrastructure for
the newly established R&D laboratory," Laquet recalls. He also
led a team that developed its own computer-assisted manufacturing
(CAM) system.
After six years, Laquet was looking for a new challenge, and
joined Thomson Semiconductor as IT manager. Following mergers, the
company morphed into ST Microelectronics. Laquet stayed with the
company for 11 years and now looks back on it as a formative
experience in his management development. It was where he started
to learn about what differentiates a manager from a leader.
Pasquale
Pistorio, the inspirational Sicilian, had begun a major
transformation programme to turn the loss-making company into a
worthy rival for the then global semiconductor leader, Motorola
(for which he had previously worked). "I admired his ability to
lead people," says Laquet.
While at ST Microelectronics, Laquet was given the opportunity
to show he could deliver on another major new project. He provided
the IT part of a small team tasked by Pistorio to create a European
distribution centre. Laquet moved from his native France to Geneva,
Switzerland and worked with a multinational group on the project
for a year.
"The semiconductor business was becoming more and more global
and we needed a European approach - an open platform," he says. "We
had to do everything to bring the new distribution centre online -
including finding the land and commissioning the building.
"As a project, it was like being in the gold rush - we just
didn't know what was going to come next. But what I really enjoyed
was the freedom we had to develop the solution."
Along with a lust for the new, the other driving force in
Laquet's career has been a desire to experience the best that
world-class organisations have to offer. Pistorio had always lauded
Motorola as an example of a brilliantly run global company. And,
eventually, Laquet decided he wanted to experience that for himself
- so he accepted the job as IT director for Motorola in France.
Over six years, he worked for Motorola in four locations. One of
the most fascinating from a career development point of view was
when he moved across the Atlantic to become IT director for global
administration systems at the company's Phoenix, Arizona base.
Laquet says one of the things he learnt from his time at
Motorola was the importance of "applying process in whatever you
do". But he also discovered that stepping into the new can
sometimes be confusing. "On my first day at Motorola, I joined a
meeting of the team I was leading," he says. "They were talking
about something I didn't understand. I finally realised they were
discussing which process they should use to define the process they
would use on a new project."
Even though working for Motorola was like a top-level course in
world-class management, Laquet couldn't resist an offer from
aluminium manufacturer Pechiney to become its CIO. "It was the
first time I'd been offered a CIO post - and it was based in
Paris," he says. "It was a big challenge moving from an industry
that typically spent 5% of turnover on IT to the metals business
where 1.5% was the norm."
Like many industries, Pechiney was going through a series of
global mergers and acquisitions, and when the company joined up
with Alcan, Laquet found himself sidelined from the number one IT
slot in the new company - and was offered the CIO post in one of
the divisions.
So when fellow Frenchman Philippe Varin, who had recently taken
over as chief executive of the London-headquartered
Corus
Group, asked him to join as CIO, Laquet swiftly crossed the
Channel. Varin was in the middle of sorting out the accumulated
problems of the troubled steel-maker and Laquet soon discovered
there were plenty of issues in the IT function.
After Corus's merger with Dutch Koninklijke Hoogovens in 1999,
the rival IT functions of the respective companies had descended
into a state of undeclared war. "The two outfits had no respect for
each other," Laquet recalls. The root of the problem was that the
UK IT operation had been largely outsourced, while the Dutch
function had a big staff with plenty of internal expertise.
Laquet calmed the warring factions by making it clear that he
wanted IT to be organised in a different way - as a
demand-and-supply model (see below) in which there would be a
mixture of
outsourcing and inhouse expertise. It is a challenge that has
taken him nearly four years to bring to completion, but which has
brought peace to the company's IT function - and enabled it to
deliver real value to the rest of the business. Job done.
Happily for Laquet, there is already a new challenge on the
horizon. Corus's acquisition by India's Tata Steel in 2007 means
Laquet now regularly takes the plane to Kolkata to discuss plans
for the future of IT in the new group. "What I like about people in
India is their ambition and the belief that nothing is impossible,"
he says. "They say: just dream about something and go and do
it."
That's not a bad way of summing up Laquet's own career - and not
a bad philosophy for any other IT professional looking to
progress.
CV: BRUNO LAQUET
• Studied telecommunications at ENST technical university in
Paris.
• 1978: Became project leader at France Telecom R&D.
• 1984: Joined Thomson Semiconductor as IT manager. Implemented
manufacturing systems on three production lines.
• 1987: Appointed European IT director at ST Microelectronics,
reporting directly to group CIO and responsible for IT teams in 11
European countries.
• 1995: Accepted post of France IT director for Motorola with a
team of 70 IT professionals.
• 1997: Within Motorola, moved from France to Switzerland to
become IT director of the semiconductor component group.
• 1999: Moved again with Motorola to Phoenix, Arizona, to become
IT director for global administration systems.
• 2001: Shifted industries to join aluminium manufacturer
Pechiney in France as senior vice-president and CIO.
• 2004: Head-hunted to become CIO of Corus Group.
LAQUET'S ROLE
• Bruno Laquet is CIO of Corus Group, reporting directly to
chief operating officer Rauke Henstra.
• Corus's IT runs on a "demand and supply" model in which most
service lines are outsourced to specialist suppliers that are
managed by Corus sourcing managers.
• Laquet has appointed six IT directors who report directly to
him. Two of them oversee IT demand for major product areas - "strip
products" and "long products" two manage IT for business processes
- distribution and corporate functions and two oversee IT supply -
one for infrastructure and one for applications.
• Laquet is embarking on a programme with his opposite number in
Tata Steel (which acquired Corus in 2007) to explore ways in which
the IT of both companies might benefit from more integration.