Richard Caron, CEO of consultancy firm Meotec, tells us at CEO Today about his role from its foundation and his journey from the early days to creating a truly inspirational company.
How would you describe yourself and your role at Meotec? What inspired its creation?
I would describe myself as a hyperactive, grumpy and passionate man. Maybe that is the ‘serial entrepreneur’ side of me. I think I’m also an emotional person: I adore my clients, the people and the partners I work with and I want them to be successful.
Fun fact: I always come with my dog to the office.
At Meotec, my role is all about facilitation and organisation. I’m the guarantee of values and ethics within the company. I see myself as someone who provides energy, courage and ambition to my team. I want to attract talent – which can sometimes be individualistic – and unite them to a shared goal. I also want to make sure that we are having fun while working at Meotec, and another important part of my role is to forget what has been done in the past and to imagine what tomorrow will be like to stay innovative.
Since the end of 2005, Meotec’s vision has been to define itself as an operational consulting firm evolving between strategic consulting firms and engineering companies.
This intermediate positioning, the robustness of our business model and the quality of our recruitments enabled us to achieve €30 million in revenue in 2017 and between 20% and 30% of organic growth each year since the beginning.
300 consultants work with our clients in 4 professions:
– Project management
– Purchasing and supply chain
– Cost Control
– Quality and process improvement
What inspired me to Found Meotec was Darwin with its missing link. I thought about this in the development of consulting firms: I discovered an important gap between strategic consulting firms which tell you what you need to do by designing strategies, and engineering consulting firms which execute these strategies.
The point was to be able to fill this gap by designing an action plan based on strategies that have been decided on and to implement them operationally.
Moreover, I had a lot of clients that understood the strategies that the strategic consulting firms provided, but they didn’t know the tactics to implement it. So, Meotec’s objective was to find people that were able to imagine the tactic and to implement it.
What has been the biggest and/or most complex project you have been involved in during your career?
The most complex project I have been involved in during my career was to create Meotec from the beginning. I felt like taking a leap into the unknown without any assurance if I would be able to keep on paying my rent.
It was a real challenge to convince my clients to trust me and to work with a company that didn’t even have a balance sheet.
Meotec achieved €30 million in revenue in 2017 – to what do you attribute this success?
To me, we should not be focused on how we attained this goal: the only question I ask myself is why we didn’t achieve €50 million, and what we can do to get there in two years? What will make us grow faster and stronger?
As previously said, I’m not interested in the past, but what is essential to me is how we can become the leader of tomorrow in the consulting sector.
Where do you see Meotec developing in the near future?
I see Meotec as an inspirational company – a firm you want to work with as a client and that you want to join as an employee.
I want the consultants to be more fulfilled and empowered. This is why I want more and more of them to be a part of Meotec’s adventure by joining the capital of the company. I see Meotec as a more international company with a real European geographical grid and transnational synergies.
My aim is that it will not lose its agility despite its size, and finally, that it remains customer-centered and focused on the service we provide.
Read from the original source: Ceo today magazine
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