Interview with Guillaume Lagarde (Advanced Management Programme 2022), commander of Tours airbase

Nearly midway through his mandate in command of the Tours et Cinq-Mars-la-Pile airbase (which from the Indre-et-Loire region has military control over the skies of northern France) and the defence bases of Tours, Guillaume Lagarde joined the Advanced Management Programme (AMP 2022) on EDHEC’s Paris campus after a career in the army spanning two decades. What if businesses in civil society and military institutions could learn from one another when it comes to leadership? 

How would you summarise your current position and responsibilities? 

I’m in command of airbase 705 – “François et Jean Tulasne” site in northern Tours (1500 people) and “Camp Mailloux” (500 people) in Cinq-Mars-la-Pile – as well as the defence base of Tours (4000 people) that it falls under. I’ve been given a letter of command covering quite traditional aspects, which requires me to carry out permanent missions and oversee activities, as well as more specific aspects linked to the local territory and prevailing circumstances, such as ensuring the rise in influence of intra-army bodies, with 500 people joining us this summer as part of the ministry’s efforts to reduce the concentration of command. I spend a lot of my time on financial decisions, which I coordinate with the other commandants trained in administration. My role is to be decisive beyond the simple management of everyday affairs, in the rollout of autonomous projects: feasibility, design and implementation, so that one of the bases can integrate the local landscape, often in collaboration with the departmental authorities of Indre-et-Loire. One of the current challenges in this post is to use the 2-year mandate to see through projects that are generally achieved in 6 years. Or to target 2 years and 6 months so that my successor can complete them. Often, I don’t have a schedule imposed on me in any kind of ministerial plan, which allows me to be more flexible. Indeed, I have developed military/civil and public/private partnerships by positioning myself in continuity of my predecessor’s work. I remain firmly convinced that this approach is key to moving forward quickly and effectively. By seeking out the help of experts, we can find intelligent common ground while also saving a lot of time, a central constraint in my work. 

The airbase and defence base together form a community akin to a small town. Is your role comparable to that of a mayor?

It’s above all a role of organizational leadership, but it’s true that as the second employer in the Indre-et-Loire department (after the regional university hospital), the two bases are a bit like a small town, so we maintain close links with the civil, military and economic authorities and are an attractive unit in terms of expenditure. This year, we will have invested more than the city of Tours! Like local authorities, I have to deal with transport and soft mobility. A private scooter operator has just launched its business in our zone in northern Tours, and another has entered the self-service bicycle market. These need to be integrated in a way that connects them to the tram network, whose terminus is currently a 30-minute walk away. And then there are the everyday realities (childcare, schooling, looking for a GP, etc.), which are already complicated enough for the mainstream population, but are even more so when you’re regularly transferred, roughly every 3 years for senior army personnel. And so one of my missions is to make work as agreeable as possible for everyone. Motivation and a work-life balance must be reflected in tangible aspects like crèches. 

What’s the make-up of your team?

I oversee a team of 6. I have a deputy for each base, and I act as the overall supervisor since a single issue might affect both bases. Among the other senior personnel who work alongside me, one looks after infrastructure, telecommunications, finance, mobility and sustainable development. Another is responsible for security and operations. The cabinet chief works on communication and partnerships, among other things. Then there are various support roles, such as human resources and in more specialized areas (catering, for example). I entrust them with projects mainly relating to the scope of their work, but nowadays leading a project outside of the traditional schemas, with time constraints, is not necessarily straightforward. And so, working with them and with the unit command (head of department) whom I select, I must ensure that they don’t lose too much time on any obstacles they might come up against, especially of a regulatory nature.

When it comes to recruitment, is there as much emphasis placed on experience as on capabilities?

We are used to recruiting personnel as soon as they finish their studies (from midway through secondary education all the way up to 5 years of higher education), with little or no experience. And so our troops, most of whom have never worked outside the army, naturally don’t imagine that a candidate with one or more significant experiences in civil society could then join the army. But we have considerable recruitment needs, and I encourage others to consider such profiles, generally highly motivated, which are also a way to avoid exhausting our training resources. Nonetheless, armies take experience into account, particularly when it comes to a change in post for “older” personnel (around the median age, which for us is 34) and in the careers of senior personnel. At the top of the hierarchy, experience is mandatory in certain areas: budget management, leading operations, etc. With regard to capabilities, we try to maintain a principle of continuity in terms of mobility so that those who want to change post will always have the skillsets to work in their desired destination. And we don’t necessarily always know how to meet this expectation, because we want to be certain that we can capitalise on our investment, both in terms of managing public expenditure and the hours spent in training, in which there is no productivity.

EDHEC’s AMP programme developed your theoretical knowledge of leadership, something you had acquired in practice through the army. In the Grande École or BBA programmes, it’s the reverse path: theory first, then practical management in the professional world.

It’s always essential to know, understand and take on board the theory, and then test its limits through on-the-ground experience. Learners on the management programme are experienced executives and entrepreneurs from whom I learned a lot by sharing in their experiences. I noticed that in practical cases they were ultimately less prepared to make decisions in the face of constraints than for everyday decision-making. In contrast, for military personnel operational risk management begins with planning. This model has proven its effectiveness in rolling out operations, but its flaw can be the process, to the point that sometimes the initial intention behind the order is overlooked. Whatever the preparation, there will always be a form of uncertainty. We devote what sometimes seems to me an excessive amount of time to this planning. In business, the time dedicated to project management is linked to a question of profitability, and in my eyes that’s more appropriate, not only in competitive sectors. Practical schemas are such that we don’t always reason in the same way. Because we don’t face the same everyday realities, we don’t develop exactly the same qualities. 

Is the army evolving in terms of its managerial practices?

Transformations, including in management, are part of everyday life in the military. We also have a very strong culture of feedback. We are above all interested in what didn’t work, because you can only progress on your weak points. You need to be able to engage in self-criticism. I can communicate my personal opinion during an annual evaluation interview with my superiors, or sometimes have more informal discussions and debates with certain generals. While there is quite a lot of openness, it doesn’t mean that our recommendations are necessarily followed. Nor do I claim to be representative of airbase commandants, since I don’t come from the navigational army corps and I haven’t had a strong career in operational terms. But I’ve managed to find my place in this world, to which I bring a kind of diversity. My role is to try and move the institution forward quickly, while taking our framework into account. It’s a balance that needs to be struck to introduce modernity and move with the times but without destabilising the combat tool which is the airbase’s purpose.

What means can you use to inform the wider public that the military is seeing such transformations and career opportunities nowadays? Is there a responsibility to “demystify” the institution?

Yes, absolutely! First, efforts must be made to educate the civil and local authorities, who have varying levels of knowledge of what we do. We are quite well known among business leaders and in the economic sphere, much less so among the general population, who have fewer opportunities to meet us. In Tours, this knowledge gap can also be explained by our geographic proximity to the city, which is involved in many different issues in dealing with the towns that make up the metropolitan area. We may be the second employer locally, but there are thousands of others! And so each year work must be done to build our reputation, and there’s a whole load of prejudices that need to be broken down among the population so that those who would like to join us truly understand what they are signing up for. That was the principle underpinning our job dating events, which we held at the beginning of March. We are on hand to explain our work (older and younger personnel alike), especially positions that might not spring to mind such as logistics, transport, mechanics, hotels, catering, accommodation or communication, as well of course as piloting, air traffic control and space exploration!