Chief Executive Officer, Wm Morrison Supermarkets Limited (Morrisons)
Innovations managériales et organisationnelles... Quoi de neuf ? | Rami Baitiéh
Intervention de Rami Baitiéh, directeur général de Carrefour France à l'occasion de notre 58e convention "Innovation, relation et ...
About Rami Baitiéh
Rami Baitiéh, CEO of Wm Morrison Supermarkets, has spoken about the company’s focus on digitalization, data sharing, and customer-centric management. In a May 2025 appearance, he stated that Morrisons increased its loyalty scheme coverage from 50% to 80% of sales, allowing the retailer to collect customer data and provide suppliers with access to a platform for sales, availability, and promotion insights. He described this as “data monetization” and emphasized the importance of collaboration between retailers and suppliers to serve consumers. Baitiéh also noted that demographic stability in Europe means “no reason to grow in volume” and warned that cyber security is a major threat, saying his company was hit by two cyber attacks six months prior. In other recent interviews, Baitiéh discussed his management approach, which includes a Monday morning “customer relationship” meeting where he reviews complaints, Net Promoter Score, and online reviews. He said he focuses on turning around the business through revenue growth rather than cost-cutting, and advocated for “subsidiarity”—delegating decisions to lower levels—as a sign of a culture of trust. Baitiéh also stated that a company’s performance depends on its degree of diversity and complementarity, and described launching an employee survey on birthplace and origin that achieved over 40% participation.
Transcript (16 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
Thank you very much Rami for coming in a rather complicated period with news that I believe somewhat disrupted this morning's agenda. I won't say more. It's a great pleasure to have you. What we said this morning — the joy is to have Didier, to have Rami, to have Éric Salin this afternoon. Beyond the people, it's really the incarnation of what you've been able to carry in your respective houses. A career — it's been, I believe, more than 27 years at Carrefour. A journalist recently defined you as a 'Carrefour baby.' You joined as an intern, and I understand you almost left your internship much sooner than planned, because within a few minutes you created a program that ultimately made your days meaningful. I believe that program not only changed many things at Carrefour — it's still being used, you may correct me — but then opportunities at Carrefour led you to Eastern Europe, Poland, Romania. You didn't waste time because you married a Polish woman, a contact with the culture, the desire to learn. Your accent reveals that you are Lebanese, a country dear to France. Your career also took you to Taiwan as CEO, and to Argentina, where I believe you took on what was almost the thirteenth labor of Hercules — giving Carrefour Argentina a chance, saving many jobs and families behind it. Always a connection to the human dimension. Then Spain, and for three years now — tomorrow you'll celebrate your third anniversary — as CEO of Carrefour France as well. An evolution, or rather a revolution, of this company as we've seen it. One of the first symbols, I don't know if it's an urban legend, but they say you went to Rungis the morning of your arrival at Carrefour to lift the curtain with ground-level staff before opening your executive committee meeting. Again, you may tell me if it's legend, but it shows a sense of being grounded. The purpose of this exchange of about twenty minutes is to gather what you've been able to instill in your management. The suggested theme is perhaps a bit tricky: what management innovations? I hope you won't take offense — I'd say customer relations and management are probably the oldest professions in the world, and yet you've imported a fresh breeze. I believe and hope you'll speak notably about subsidiarity, which seems tied to your journey and your vision of how companies should evolve. I could be more verbose. Thank you for being with us despite what hit you this morning. Thank you Rami, the floor is yours for a good twenty minutes or so, and then we'll free you after Q&A for another meeting you need to attend. Thank you.
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Rami Baitiéh2:50
Thank you for this introduction and your kind words. Hello everyone. I'm sorry for my delay — I was just next door finalizing some actions for the night that awaits us. Tomorrow I celebrate my three years leading Carrefour France. When you write a strategy, there are two ways to do it. There's a top-down way and a bottom-up way. Either you go from the top down, basing yourself on macroeconomic factors — you understand the patterns, the new customer behaviors — and you say, here's where the future is going: demographic changes, climate changes, financial crises, ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, etc. You take those into account and say this is where my company will go. There's another way to write strategy, which is bottom-up: go meet your client, your employee, your worker, ask them what they're complaining about, and you know precisely what they want. From there you build upward what you might call a roadmap — or a strategy. My method is both: basing myself on macroeconomic factors to understand changes in consumer behavior, but also starting from a real, ground-level base. Once a month we hold a Comex — an executive committee meeting — and each time I take my direct reports and we go out onto the shop floor to be in contact with employees and customers.
Once we went to a store in Les Ulis, in the 91. We arrived at 9 a.m. on a Thursday. The store director declared a break for all the cashiers because the Comex was going to take over the registers. I wore the blue vest and each member of the Comex opened a checkout lane. For those without experience — which should be most of us — we asked the main cashiers to stay alongside and guide them. After about an hour, we held a debrief, and I asked my colleagues: what did you learn? The number of things we learned — you don't get that in a strategic committee meeting, I can tell you the truth. So I do both. As an aside, a female customer came through my register and noticed I was struggling because the barcode was illegible. That already tells you there are upstream problems — the checkout tester ends up having to answer for all these questions because upstream people didn't do their job properly. And so she has to spend her whole day apologizing on behalf of the company. Anyway, the barcode wouldn't scan, so I tried typing the code with one finger because I'm not used to it. The customer asked me if I was new at Carrefour.
At the end I asked her: are you satisfied with your shopping at Carrefour? She said, of this store, yes, I'm very happy — your store director is excellent, I see him every day. He was very pleased. But then I asked, what about corporate headquarters? What's wrong with the general management? She said, what's the point — you being at your post doesn't serve any purpose. I said, tell me, I can relay the information. She said, relay the information? They'll never listen to you. I said, madam, I know people there, I assure you. So she told me: my daughter sent her CV to apply for an open position at Carrefour and never received any response — neither positive nor negative. I said, I assure you, I will tell the general director. I wrote it down, and afterward I met with the entire recruitment team. They explained they have 25 recruiters receiving 400,000 CVs and it wasn't possible to respond to all of them. But from thread to needle, we traced back to the root cause of the problem and fixed it. Now, I can't guarantee every one of the 400,000 CVs is scrutinized in detail, but every CV receives a response. We consider 400,000 people — 400,000 clients, their families — and we absolutely do not want to alienate them.
From there, another experience: we went with Alexandre Chertkow to the call center. I put on the headset, my team put on headsets, and a customer called with a problem regarding her loyalty program voucher. I didn't have the answer naturally. The person next to me said to handle this you'll need to call this service, then that service, and gave me a number. I called my team who should have the answer to give to the customer. I said, hello, this is the call center client service, I need information please. They told me to hold. I'll transfer you — no problem. So he makes me wait three minutes. I said, there's a customer waiting. He said, I can't help right now. I said, what do you mean you can't? There's a customer waiting! He said, yes but she's waiting and I can't. I said, why is it like that? Do you have a manager? He said, my manager isn't here. I said, okay I'm going to the end of this. If it doesn't work, I'm the one who has to fix it. If there are problems with these processes, it's my job to fix them — not the customer's. Finally, when I told him who I was, he thought it was a radio station calling. No, it's really me. But the manager was there, the director was there, everyone came. Beyond this experience, what did I learn? I learned that when you only go top-down, you know an essential part of the truth, but far from the whole truth. And when you go bottom-up, you possess an essential part of the truth. It's not complete — you still need macroeconomic factors — but this bottom-up feedback is never wrong. The probability that you'll make a mistake in solving problems is zero because you're starting from the customer's actual problem.
I gave all cashiers at Carrefour a small notebook. I told them: when a customer complains about something at checkout, write down the complaint, take a photo, and send it to this WhatsApp channel called 'Customer Feedback from Cash Registers.' And so once a week — every Saturday evening — I receive all the direct customer complaints that came through checkouts that week. And I have the three most frequent complaints. In November, the most frequent complaint was: customers were asking, why are you obligated to print me a receipt? It's not useful, it's not good for the planet, and I have too much paper. So we made the decision to stop printing receipts. In February, the top complaint was: why did you stop printing the receipts? Because between November and February, something called inflation happened. Prices increased 25% on certain products. Our customers who were used to paying 36 euros for something now saw 49 euros — and without a receipt they thought, what happened? Was I stolen from? Did I make a mistake? Where's my receipt? So the question I asked myself — and it was the only time I asked the IT director to go backwards and take a step back — was: if we didn't have this immediate proximity with the customer, how would I have known? If I had waited for macroeconomic factors to tell me the truth, how would I have known? Customer complaints are the foundation of strategy. Indispensable — not the only element, but indispensable.
Now, you mentioned in the introduction that I've worked in many countries — Argentina, Taiwan. When I arrived in Taiwan, I asked myself: why was I sent there? Not for a vacation. For nine years the country had been earning less and less money each year. We went from about 63 million euros in profitability down to around 40 million. We were making money, but less each year. Like any sensible investor, I thought: if my business is dying there, better to sell now and get some money rather than wait another 10 years and sell at a loss. My mission was to find a way to keep the country, save the jobs, or determine if it was over. I spoke with the teams and they explained: demographic change — people switched to one child under the one-child policy; Taiwanese don't shop once a week, they shop five times a week; and the waste tax is calculated based on the weight of your neighborhood bin. It's not like in France where you can throw whatever you want. And it's your communal bin — if one person puts in a big bag, it raises the average for everyone. The neighbors will look at you strangely, so you'd better not throw away much. Everyone takes out a small, light bag so everyone can see. There are no garbage collectors to help you — you're your own garbage collector. The truck comes through slowly between certain hours, and if you're not there, the neighbor handles it for you.
So the customer in Taiwan — they told me about the demographic changes and such. I said, show me the complaints. And it's true, during the first week I knew nobody in Taiwan, had no friends. So what do I do at midnight? I review complaints. And reviewing complaints, I realized something: in none of the complaints did the customer say 'I no longer like the store, I no longer like the format, I no longer like this size' — none of that. They said things like: I went to the store and found a mouse walking on the bread; you're missing certain noodles. Things like that. And so from these complaints I understood there was still hope in this country. That's the absolute truth. Complaint-driven management is so important that when there's fog everywhere regarding external factors, you rely on internal factors to save yourself. And I tell you, this has always saved me.
This complaint management also helps complete the strategy. We mustn't forget the cultural aspect — cultural change is very important. The fact of taking managers and directors to do frontline work — it's not that I want them to become call center agents. I'm not like that; I'd be too expensive to be a call center person, and my teams are the same. But the objective behind it is to understand, through this exercise, what cultural change is necessary in the company. I understood from the cashier experience that I have a cultural change to make with everyone who applies for a job at Carrefour. From the call center experience, I understood that poor employee at the call center doesn't have the full range of resources at their disposal, even though the customer is the most important person in our day. I understood that in our culture we put on PowerPoints 'Customer is at the center of our business,' but in reality the customer isn't at the center. When I call the person to help me, they say 'Wait, I have a customer waiting.' If the customer has to wait, that means the customer isn't at the center. And that's the difference between the first level of 'yes' and the second level. Are you customer-centric? We are customer-centric — that's the PowerPoint, the first level. It's very easy; everyone agrees. But if it were that simple... The second level is 'walk the talk' — how do you truly show that when there's a conflict between a financial interest and a customer interest, the customer wins? That's second-level. When my boss asks me for a meeting and the customer calls with an urgent issue, who gets priority? What do I put on my calendar? Saying the customer is the most important person requires cultural change, and that cultural change doesn't happen in 24 hours.
You must identify the necessary cultural changes — because not all culture needs changing. I've managed subsidiaries that were in total catastrophe, and I made cultural repairs, but it was never 100% change — it was cultural evolutions. For example, we wrote into our cultural framework a pyramid that states: when there's a conflict between disorder and process, process must win; when there's a conflict between process and commerce, commerce must win; and when there's a conflict between commerce and the law, the law must win. So when the process person tells me creating a catalog requires six weeks of preparation, and two weeks ago I look at the weather forecast and see 36 degrees coming to Paris and maybe more in the south — that means in five days I need a catalog to sell inflatable pools, but the process says six weeks. I'm not sure it'll still be 36 degrees in six weeks. So who must win? The five-day timeline, because commerce must win. And once I say commerce must win, it means the entire organization — accustomed to taking its time — suddenly puts on the ambulance lights and siren, and everyone steps aside. No one criticizes, because the company culture supports it. Commerce trumps process — of course, always within the bounds of the law, which sits above the pyramid.
Another cultural aspect related to complaint management: when there's a problem — I remember in Argentina — the store would say it's because of the merchandise. Merchandise says it's because of marketing. Marketing says it's because of finance. Finance says it's because of logistics. Everyone points to another department. Wait — we can't spend our time passing the buck. It's never my fault; it's always the other person's fault. And when it's not the other person's fault, it's the external factors. If that doesn't work, it's my predecessor. We can't run businesses this way. So we'll consider that one finger points at others, but three fingers point back at myself. I take care of my link in the chain, and then I flag the systemic gap. These are some cultural examples that are necessary and even indispensable for improving service. We have a problem in France, but it's an opportunity. Among all the countries I've known, France is not exactly the most Japanese country in the world when it comes to customer service.
You go to a café — well, I'm a customer! So a company called me recently, and I only had two minutes. You receive these calls and just endure it. I wanted to test their customer service. They said, can we do 11? I said no, I have 11. 11:30? No, I said 11. I'm the customer! They didn't even understand that I'm the customer. This is a problem we have in France, but it's an extraordinary opportunity. Because the company that knows how to differentiate itself for customers — I promise you — people will talk about it even at dinner parties. They'll say, you won't believe what happened to me — and the director personally came to see me. Two Carrefour examples: I asked every store director to leave their phone number and photo at the store entrance. So you go to any Carrefour — no need to say 'call me the manager' — he's right there. It's a WhatsApp number, it costs you nothing, you call. I myself put my email address on the website: dear customers, if the company's processes haven't met your expectations, don't hesitate to write to me. People write to me, and I respond systematically. The first day I got about a hundred emails. Since then Alexandre Chertkow has strengthened the call center, and we've saved time.
To finish this example: a female customer wrote to me saying she was in a certain store and a Carrefour employee mistreated her, using words unworthy of a civilized company. I told her, go to the store entrance, find the phone number, call, and it will be resolved. She said okay. Two days later she wrote back and said, I called that person and she came to see me — but it was the same person who had mistreated me. I said, cultural change is necessary. I went to the store, I met this person — she was six months from retirement, but that means nothing. I said, why do you treat people like this? We can't have customers treated this way. Every customer is unique. We do a job like doctors — a doctor doesn't ask about your color, your origin, your beliefs. Those aren't questions that interest them. They're there for a purpose, a reason for being. And our reason for being is to feed the French, to help them get good products at good prices with good service. From there, I consider each customer as if they were my company's only customer. And of course I apply the same philosophy to employees — consider each employee as if they were my company's only employee. This way, instead of saying I have 3 million customers a day, I have one customer plus one customer plus one customer. This way we restore value and goodwill to the human dimension. Especially in a context where service isn't very cultural, you can make a difference. I hope I've answered your expectations, and I'm available for questions. Thank you very much.
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Interviewer27:10
Rami is still with us for a few minutes, so if you have questions — after the conference, you understood, you just need to call customer service and you'll get Rami! If we have a question or two before we move to the cocktail — I know we need to wait for the countdown. Perhaps a point on the notion of subsidiarity, because I know Rami, you're also a reserve officer in the Air and Space Force, and I believe during an exchange with one of your counterparts, a senior officer, you spoke about subsidiarity. What did that bring to you, or what did it consolidate and strengthen in your conviction about giving room for maneuver to the ground level?
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Rami Baitiéh27:50
Yes, I draw a lot from my work with the Air Force. Subsidiarity means not taking a decision that belongs to a subordinate level. It's about trust, because that decision belongs to them. Subsidiarity is very important — more important as teams grow larger and more complex. Without subsidiarity, there is no delegation. Subsidiarity is the signal of a culture of trust: I trust you. You could call it two-level decision-making. In some cultures, it takes three months to make a small decision — buying a chair. We need to make that much more agile. Why? I think of the customer as in a building, and each company is an elevator competing with others. The customer is in constant change — since the dawn of time, they change floors, their behavior changes, their life changes, their demographics change, their beliefs change, their behavior will change tomorrow. Each time they take an elevator. If your elevator isn't on the same floor as the customer, they won't take it. They'll take the one right across from them. You can blame the weather, the sea, all of that, but they'll take the other one. So you must be at the customer's floor. If the customer changes fast and the company can't change fast, there's a problem. That's why today the customer uses a smartphone — companies that are still on paper, that still need eight signatures to make a decision, there's a problem. You need to put the elevator at the floor where the customer is so they can take it and be accompanied.
So this notion of subsidiarity is today cultural, organizational — it's one of the great values of large companies: giving everyone the capacity to decide. That doesn't mean the pilot of an airplane will fly however they want — no, they must ask command for major things. But whether to fly at 500 or 800 kilometers per hour — that's their decision. They know how to manage the situation. It's the same for us: a cashier now has 7 euros per day of authority. So if a customer says, I didn't see that cost a euro, I thought it was 90 cents — okay, here's 10 cents off. She has the authority to do that. That authority is subsidiarity, that trust, that capacity to decide. It seems like nothing, but it's enormous. The problem with subsidiarity is ego — the sense that everything must go through me, I must feel useful, I must validate everything. You need to slightly reduce the ego and push subsidiarity a bit more. All of this is cultural. It doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't need a CEO to happen. Because someone might say, I'm not the CEO so I won't do it. That's wrong — cultural change doesn't just come from the president. It comes from writers, dancers, singers, musicians, bakers — everyone. Anyone can contribute. That's what I've believed throughout my career. I was a department head and I said, regarding my department, I can change things. I changed things. Regarding my sector, I can change things. I change things. At every level, be a driving force toward your management, toward general management — bring ideas. Don't wait for culture to come only from the top. It can be circular too.