First published as part of the CMA Member Stories series September 14-18, 2009.
Our first CMA Member to be featured in CMA Member Stories is Laurent Abbatiello, Eng. MBA, CMA, PMP.Laurent describes himself as a "... results orientated coach and consultant." He is a French trained Engineer and CMA with a graduate diploma in Management Accounting from Concordia (QC). He also owns an MBA from the Insituto de Empresa (IE), a Spanish business school and a Project Management Professional (PMI). In addition he is working towards his Certified Executiive Coach Designation at Royal Roads here in BC.
Laurent's business is called Mobilis Performa and he is is passionate about catalyzing improvements and learning alongside his clients. His experience spans several sectors, including banking, energy and manufacturing, two continents and close to two decades. His favourite quote is from Albert Einstein - "The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome.”
To start us off we asked Laurent that given he has a number of designations, what was it that intiially attracted him to the CMA designation?
He replied:
Back in 2004 I completed an MBA at the Instituto de Empresa (in Spain) and discovered Finance. It was love at first sight! Back to Montreal, I decided to further develop my financial and accounting proficiency and opted for the CMA designation. The rationale behind pursuing a CMA (rather than CA or CFA) was that there was a greater fit with my job as a performance improvement consultant and coach. The CMA curriculum with its strong focus on analysis for decision-making added a new dimension to my expertise and strengthened my ability to identify opportunities for my customers to improve their bottom line by taking a closer look at their financial statements.
We asked Laurent to tell us what he believe are the personal characteristics of a successful CMA?
Laurent replied:
The ability to understand the operational world hidden behind raw figures while being able to do the math. Characteristics associated to that are:
- Attention to details
- Ability to understand the Big picture
- Strategic thinking abilities
- Curiosity
Next we talked to Laurent about online social media and asked him the following:
Within business community social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging are gaining momentum. To what extent do you believe these platforms are relevant to CMAs?
Here’s what Laurent had to say:
These platforms are relevant to everybody! More of today’s business contacts are now being generated online and there is no going back to how it was before. I think we can expect to see more and more content tailored for specific stakeholders and in that way the Vancouver Chapter is ahead of the game with a growing online presence. The more people are going to share through the tools made available, the more it will drive interesting contribution, opportunity to learn and meet. Knowledge used to mean power, now Connecting is quintessential.
To illustrate you will find Laurent on LinkedIn here.
Next we asked him how important he believes language skills are in developing a business/career?
Laurent’s thoughts were:
I believe language skills to be paramount in developing any career where customer contact is key to success:
As a consultant, language skills are important for business development or for inviting people to board the train of change but more than anything else it is key for establishing and developing trust in a business relationship.
As a coach, language is everything. Understanding correctly the issue expressed by my coachee and phrasing the right question using proper nuance and vocabulary is instrumental in helping my customers walk the path towards excellence.
Today is the final part of our interview with CMA Member, Laurent Abbatiello. On his business card it says Laurent provides “business mobilization and performance.” We asked him to elaborate on how his CMA designation helps with this? Laurent was happy to oblige:
My CMA is one of the designations that helps me provide “Business mobilization and performance” services to my customers. I am using my CMA knowledge to identify performance improvement opportunities, build strong business cases showing the impacts of the inefficiencies identified and provide realistic costs and ROI figures for the proposed improvements.
Decision making discussions pertaining to performance improvement are always revolving around what the benefits for the organization are going to be. Lots of factors have to be taken into consideration including but not limited to people, processes, products and customers. Financials elements are also to be considered and again the CMA helps in proposing suitable answers to my customers.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks CMA Member Story. You can contact Laurent through his website at Mobilis Performa.
