Chairman's message

Responsible management covers a vast area. It finds its origins in the fact that a company does not operate alone; it grows and develops around several poles: customers, obviously, but also employees, shareholders and community as a whole, meaning the social environment and, going even further, the planet. I consider responsible management has four pillars. The first involves finding the right balance between these poles. This balance is dynamic but it can never be permanently stabilised. It is a balance between the short and the long-term. It is the role of a company director and his managers to find the right balance at every stage of corporate life. That’s the first pillar.

The second pillar is to invite all the employees to become increasingly closely involved in responsible management. This represents an educational process much more than a normative one.

The third pillar of responsible management is all about what guarantees results. In a company, it is not about determination to achieve - it is about what causes results. By this I mean that the very essence of a company director’s responsibility is to create the conditions whereby the expected results are spontaneously produced by employees without them feeling any particular pressure to achieve them.

The fourth pillar of responsible management...in my opinion, there is an enemy to responsible management and that enemy is bureaucracy with the associated excess of procedures and formalities. My deep conviction is that people have a creative ability and that responsible management must encourage employees to cooperate and create a genuine culture of responsible management within the company.

Paul-Marie Chavanne
CEO GeoPost SA