Focus on Members
Focus on Our Volunteer - Lorne Booth, CCP (Emeritus)
In this edition, we focus on one of our volunteers extraordinaire, Lorne Booth, CCP (Emeritus). Lorne has been an active member and volunteer of the CIC since 1964.
His list of accomplishments is impressive. From 1974-1985, he taught in the forerunner of the CCP educational program when it was delivered through the University of Toronto. Through his teaching, he became involved in the Toronto chapter's awards program and continues that involvement to this day as Chair of the Awards Committee. He is proud of the committee's fund raising efforts that provide cash awards to CCP graduates and top students from the chapter. Successive Toronto chapter Board and Executive Committee members have been delighted with Lorne's mentorship. He rarely misses a chapter Board meeting or annual graduation ceremony.
Lorne was very active as a Vice President when the Executive Committee with Don French, President & Dean, and Bob Harbour, First Vice President, recommended a major revamp of the National Board. The intent was to more accurately represent the national membership and reflect and respond to their concerns.
As President & Dean, Lorne and his Executive Committee of Bob Bolden, Fred Schiffner, and Dave Nichols, believed that the Institute should nurture the sense of fraternity and common bond with other credit professionals. He visited every chapter with his wife or the General Manager and was always trying to strengthen the very important chapter/national relationship.
He says that out of the many wonderful memories he has, those that stand out are the initial visit to Ottawa when Les Morin agreed to start the chapter, the presentation in St. Johns of the Newfoundland Associate Chapter Charter, and the presentation of the ‘Emeritus' designation to long time friend and well respected Winnipeg credit professional, Norm Osland.
In recognition of his valuable contributions and commitment to the CIC, Lorne was awarded the CCP (Emeritus) designation in 1992.
We recently spoke to Lorne regarding his career. Here is what he told us:
"My long career in business started in sales and operations with major companies. I never thought I would end up in the credit field. In fact, I thought that the regional credit manager was mostly concerned with collections rather than the ‘manager' of a major asset. After all, our sales organization sold almost anyone what they wanted and the Credit Department's job was to collect the account as best they could….
However, as the General Credit Manager, I soon realized that I, in fact, could play a very challenging role between the endless drive for sales volume and the need to balance and protect our financial resources.
Many very successful credit managers have fine tuned the financial or comptroller aspect of the role and in many businesses this is the only objective. In other businesses where competition is very strong, I have taken a more proactive role in considering the marketing plan, the encouragement of junior sales staff and the profitability in the sale.
For a proactive credit approach to work, the credit manager would require a very strong voice in customer credit exposure and be accountable for the partnership and receivables performance. Sales management supported this role and never let me down.
While the proactive credit approach has challenges and risks that could be avoided, it may be the real team approach that some company executives would value in a credit professional.
That has been my experience and it has been challenging, exciting and rewarding."
