DIGITAL, DIVERSITY, EDUCATION - BECAUSE IT'S WORTH IT !

Because She's Worth It !

I had the immense privilege to interview Lubomira Rochet, Chief Digital Officer of L'OREAL, a few weeks ago, as a key speaker for INSEAD Essentials 2014.

Our topic was "How to Make the World a Better Place through Digital, Education and Diversity".

I must admit that Lubomira really managed well to summarize this rather complex theme into a couple of inspiring ideas which I wanted to share with you here.

i. Digital can truly make a difference on the lives of billions of people. For example, Digital can make the world better by helping people to choose, e.g. to make informed choices from an amazing array of offers in mature markets for instance. "Smart personalization" will allow consumers to find the right products/ services meeting their needs at the right price.

ii. Diversity does not necessarily mean gender or generation. Rather, it is often about "being different", e.g. with a non-conventional background in the corporate world. Lubomira used her own example, diving straight from the Service industry (Microsoft, Valtech) into the Cosmetics industry (L'Oreal). The benefit of such diversity is the disruptive agenda it creates into the company.

iii. Succeeding in Diversity often requires to make bold decisions in terms of leadership appointments. Such boldness in promoting "different" people will spread more creativity and self-confidence into the ranks and ultimately will create more value.

iv. Making the world better actually starts at individual level. The times of macro-systems, like capitalism or communism used to be, are probably over now in a super-connected world, in the Digital ecosystem. It is now in the hands of anyone to change things, to act in a responsible manner, and to induce a better world with confidence and courage.

v. To succeed in your personal and professional life, there is a clear and concise recommendation to the younger generation:
     - Learn fast
     - Be yourself (and believe in yourself)
     - Speak out
     - Never compromise with your values and what you believe in

Thank you for this inspiring and connected conversation !

Watch the interview online : https://vimeo.com/106174742

BUSINESS IS A FORCE FOR GOOD : 6 LEADERS' ATTRIBUTES

May the Business Force for Good be with You

I am back on line!

A few weeks ago I opened the third edition of INSEAD Essentials in Paris with the unusual claim that the role of business is to make the world a better place, and to be a force for good.

Many people out there are saying:
- Business is about making profits, and financial markets don't care about long term...
- Business leaders cannot be truly seeking to make the world better as they must make profits...

Well, I dare to say that the quest of "value" is now over, as the world has lost confidence in the financial and corporate world.

It is now the time of the quest of "values".

I mean "values" in their broadest sense: respect ; sustainability ; trust ; long-term focus ; ethics ; corporate responsibility ; integrity ; employees first ... The sort of values that Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, explained at INSEAD Essentials last year, describing how values drive his vision and strategy for Unilever (50 billion euros sales ; 200.000 employees), through the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.

The big question then is HOW the business leaders must think and act consistently, to address the permanent dilemma between making profits and making the world better.

I have listed 6 attributes of top leaders who are authentically seeking to drive the business as a force for good:

1. Adaptability:  We need to understand the context and the ecosystem which we live in.
2. Creativity:  We need to be creative to invent new ways of doing business.
3. Humility:  We need to be humble to face the huge challenges of the 21st century.
4. Empathy:  We need to show genuine interest in others, and to understand them.
5. Charity:  We need to develop a real and authentic love for mankind and society.
6. Benignity:  We need to start seeing the world with benevolence and positive attitude.

Such leaders are authentic, inspired and connected !

See the full speech online:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B74WgOngp7hIU2RtQ05nbjI5M2M/edit?usp=sharing

LEADERSHIP IN TIMES OF INSECURITY

How to lead in times of insecurity ???

Many readers asked me about a post I published in March on the blog of my former firm about Leadership in times of insecurity... Here it is.

When I reflected on the theme “Leadership in times of insecurity”, I immediately thought about the popular acronym that’s used to describe the world we live in: VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous). I find this is a pretty clear and concise definition of “insecure times”.

Many different skills and attitudes are required of leaders in such an insecure world. From my experience in working with successful CEO's as well as religious and political leaders, I can list four critical qualities:

Creativity. Information flows at incredible speed in the digital era. Ideas emerge and fade rapidly, and only the great ones survive and thrive. Therefore, rapid and efficient innovation is the key to succeeding in such a world, and creativity is the fuel. Leaders today must become (and remain) generators of cutting-edge ideas.

Adaptability. The world changes from day to day. On September 14, 2008, anyone in corporate finance would have been thrilled with a job at the prestigious Lehman Brothers. But it was a completely different story on September 15, when Lehman collapsed. More than ever, leaders must adapt to (instant) change. They must seek change and they must love change. In fact, leaders must become agents of change and be able to take command of it. Adaptability is the best leadership attitude in a perfect corporate storm.

Capability. It is not enough for leaders to be creative and adaptable in our insecure world. They must be capable, too. Needless to say, corporate life equips people with leadership tricks, management toolkits, and best practices, among others. Every day at work is a learning day: capability becomes deeper and broader as you get older. The only trick is then to figure out how and when to use it properly. And remember, in today’s insecure world, pure strategy is meaningless – only strategy with good execution, based on real capabilities, will succeed!

Humility. In February 2013, I wrote on my blog about what I see as a leader’s greatest strength – humility. I believe that, in insecure times, the best leaders have to admit that they do not know it all. Most certainly, leaders will fail at some stage in a VUCA world. Only the greatest leaders will learn from their failures and their mistakes, and they will recover fast by fixing the problem. The CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, sums it up very well: Fail fast, learn fast, fix fast. You can read more about humility, the trait all successful leaders must have, in this blog post.

The four characteristics above are necessary to succeed in insecure times, but they may not be sufficient. Leaders need to do many other things in order to handle insecurity. For instance:

- Making bold and courageous decisions without having all the facts and figures at hand

- Defining and implementing the right purpose and following it whatever the obstacles

- Being resilient no matter what degree of pressure and insecurity they may face

- Acting together, playing a collective game, rather than trying to optimize locally on your own. There is a great African proverb which says: “If you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together.” Setting up partnerships is the key to succeeding in an insecure world; NGOs, governments, corporations must act as one, with a common vision and positive attitude

There is a lot more to say, but I will end here and leave you with two ideas to trigger further thoughts on this blog, and hopefully an active online discussion:

First, in times of insecurity, true leaders do not simply seek to thrive and succeed. True leaders inspire and connect people to make the world a better place.

Second, do we have to continue to describe our world as “volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous”? Couldn’t we see this differently and more optimistically? Why not think of it as “vibrant, unique, cool and astounding”!

THE WAY FORWARD... TRIPLE "A"

Triple A : Agile, Adaptable, Alert

You may have wondered why I did not post anything for a while... unusually.

Well, there are times to write and to act, and times to take a step back, to reflect and to think.

This often happens in times of CHANGE.

Change is good and change must not overwhelm you. In today's world, which is quite volatile (cf. a prior post on this blog), one must be very adaptable, agile and alert - The 3 A's :

- Adaptable means accepting change and taking in the causes and the consequences with no fear and no anxiety. This does not mean no stress, as stress results from unexpected situations and stimulates adrenaline (which is cool and helpful to manage). Leaders must be adaptable to change.

- Agile means being fast and very proactive in the times of change, notably in decision-making. When change hits, one must quickly grasp all inputs, envisage all possible routes and potential outcomes, and make the right decisions to master the effect of change, if not the change itself. Sometimes agility also means creating change, and mastering it. Leaders must be agile to take control of change.

- Alert means being open to all "signals" before, during and after change occurs. Change often makes people focus on their own situation, or the events immediately close to them. On the contrary, in any change situation, complex, uncertain and ambiguous, one must keep all eyes open and actively listen to the outside, focused outwards, to understand and interpret all facts, events, people, news, untold stuff etc. Leaders must be alert and be in control of the full change ecosystem, not self centered.

So in any given change context, do remember the Triple A attitude, and welcome change rather than resist or waste precious time.

Be inspired and connected by change !

PS: Next time I will tell you more about my personal big change... Indeed, I left Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in May to join Deloitte as a Senior Partner, member of the Consulting Executive Committe in France, leading the Consumer Business practice (clients in consumer goods, retail, luxury, travel, hospitality, leisure...) and co-leading the Strategy practice under famoud brand name Monitor, founded by the Harvard guru in strategy, Michael Porter.

TRUST... TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS !

Trust your Team with your Life

Sometimes ago I wrote a post on this blog, and also on the Think Act blog, about an essential attribute of leadership, namely HUMILITY.

I got many positive and encouraging comments about this analysis, but also many questions about it: How can you show and develop humility as a leader?

Well, I strongly believe (and observed) that truly humble leaders demonstrate a difficult virtue in their daily life: TRUST.

Actually, trusting others is quite difficult to achieve in the corporate world, which is by essence competitive and seen as a battlefield... But trust is at the heart of highly effective teams and corporations.

There are several key components required to build highly effective teams for a leader, for instance:
- Recruiting top talents
- Setting an inspiring vision
- Making decisions efficiently
- Communicating a lot
- Holding people accountable

But all these key success factors would be useless if the leader does not empower people. Indeed, the principles of delegation and subsidiarity are considered in most business schools and consulting firms performance assessment tools as the primary ingredient of success. This is easily understandable, even intuitively, as the African proverb says: "If you want to go fast, go alone... But if you want to go far, go with others"...

The most effective teams in the world are probably the US Navy SEALs, the famous commandos who rescue hostages in the most challenging conditions one can envisage. They perform in "fire teams" of 4 to 6 soldiers, trained in perfect harmony to address all types of lethal situations. Each member of the fire team has a role, and fully delegates other roles to the others, assuming they will perform it to the best of their capabilities and training - this is subsidiarity. But the "glue" which ensures this harmony, cohesion and efficiency is only about mutual trust.

Trust is the pre-requisite to empowerment, communication and team-work. Without trust, Navy SEALs would not perform well. Without trust, corporate leaders cannot expect their teams to perform. Without trust in the corporate world, everything can become an ordeal or a problem in the group, and therefore impede progress and performance. Conversely, in a high trust environment, the capable people in the organization will feel that everything is possible, hence perform greatly.

Trust basically enables everything: It frees up creativity; It makes people confident; It allows honest communication; It speeds up decision making; It allows inspiring thinking and actions...

I'd like to share a final thought to summarize all: I have advised dozens of CEO's in my career, and I can definitely write here that the greatest leaders are always the most humble ones - and the most humble ones are the ones who trust their people most !

Back in 2008, Steven Covey wrote in his book, The Speed of Trust, that trust is the one thing that changes everything. He was right, 100%.

Trust definitely leads to inspiration and connection !

"LEARNING TO TRUST IS ONE OF LIFE'S MOST DIFFICULT TASKS"

Isaac Watts

 

 

LEADERSHIP IN TIMES OF INSECURITY ...

Sometimes leaders can be disoriented... 

When faced with the harsh reality of insecure times, leaders must adopt a new attitude, full of courage and inspiration... but they must also demonstrate 4 key attributes :

• Creativity
• Adaptability
• Capability
• Humility

Please visit my latest blog post on this topic, on Roland Berger's Think Act web site :
http://www.think-act.com/blog/2014/03/17/four-essential-leadership-traits-to-manage-insecurity/

Inspire and Connect !

DIGITAL IS ... OUTDATED !

Digital, Digital, Digital ... The End of Marketing as we Know It ?

Everybody is using the word "Digital" now, to an extent which has become over the top...

• Advertising agencies pretend to have Digital Creatives. 
• Consulting firms pretend to have Digital Labs. 
• Marketing Officers pretend to be Digital Officers. 

Well, it is true that 10 years ago, when Facebook was born, no-one could claim to be digital, as Social Media barely existed. That said, it is really exaggerated to claim being 100% digital in 2014. 

I have authored a study called "Digital: The new frontier of marketing" ... Worth reading :-)

I believe that Digital is an integrated part of Marketing, as other components like advertising, consumer insight, shopper studies, brand development, category management, trade marketing... are of have been!

Many constituents of the so-called Digital World are essential tools to be a great marketer, or to run a world-class marketing function. Nowadays you need : Big data and analytics ; Open data and co-innovation ; Multi-channel sales ; Tribal marketing for social media communities ; Online co-creation etc...

But Digital today seems to me nothing more than a set of tools !

Digital and digitization cannot be seen as a new function, an end in itself, a new business philosophy nor a new business model.

Digital is simply a means to an end, a new component of our daily business and personal lives, a new way of working, a new toolbox ... It can be very useful to marketers indeed. 

Therefore, Digital will not be a substitute to Marketing - definitely not!

The role of digital in the marketing function has become huge, as Consumer Product giant companies such as Procter & Gamble spend up to 1/3 of their media spend on digital media (internet enabled such as YouTube, Google, Facebook...). Other giant companies such as Unilever have appointed some top executives in charge of Digital within their marketing function, e.g. a Senior Vice President Food Digital, a former "traditional" brand manager. 

So let's not be confused (or over-whelmed) by "Digital" or "Digitization" verbal diarrhea... The digital phenomenon is simply a new way to look at things and to do business. 

My belief is that the newly appointed "Chief Digital Officers" will soon return to their formal job titles of "Chief Marketing Officer" or "Chief Information Officer", depending on where they came from originally. 

And as Marc Pritchard, P&G global marketing officer, recently said: "The era of digital marketing is over. It's almost dead. Now, it's just brand building". 

Digital is dead, long live Digital !

Let's be digital, inspired and connected. 

YESTERDAY WAS ALL ABOUT FOOD... AND THE FUTURE IS FOOD TOO !

Star entrepreneurs from Michel & Augustin and Sushi Daily 

Yesterday night we held a great "premiere" conference with INSEAD Alumni in Paris... a "Vertical" event about an industry, viewed from all possible angles (leadership, marketing, finance, technology etc.), but most importantly through the eyes of Top Entrepreneurs.

Being in France, the industry choice was easy and quite obvious : Food !

Having worked in this sector myself for the past 15 years, first at Unilever (Knorr, Lipton, Ben & Jerry, Magnum) and then in strategy consulting, advising food companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Ferrero, Orangina Schweppes... I came to yesterday's event with high expectations, not only because the sector is great, but also because the panel of speakers was just fabulous, amongst others :

• Michel de Rovira (INSEAD alumnus), co founder of Michel et Augustin, delicious tasty sweet food (cookies, yoghurt). The start-up already generates revenues of €25M, and they just raised €12M funding from F-H Pinault the CEO and owner of luxury group Kering.

• Jérôme Castaing (INSEAD alumnus) and Kelly, founders of Sushi Daily, world class shop-in-shop chain. They have opened a first corner shop within a Carrefour hypermarket in 2010, and they now own more than 200 shops globally, employ over 1200 people, and generated revenues above €100M in 2013.

We were not disappointed yesterday night ! All 150 guests enjoyed the evening and the final tasting. My personal learnings are the following :

• Food is all about passion, taste, quality and excellence : Successful retail concepts are not enough, one must focus 100% on the product, which needs to be outperforming standards and outstanding. For instance, Sushi Daily seek to produce and sell "the best sushis in the world". Michel & Augustin seek to produce "the most fun and tasty cookies in France and abroad".

• Food innovation can be "frugal" : There is no need to invest millions of euros on R&D or Marketing... It is simply amazing to see that some Food companies that started a few years ago only with a few thousand euros in loans now generate enormous revenue and substantial profits. What matters is the perseverance of the founders, and the development of good Food in a garage or basement ... like the Tech and Digital entrepreneurs basically.

• Food staff management, talent training and retention is hyper critical : It is clear that thousands of candidates want to work in Food... But the need for excellence and outperformance requires that senior executives apply the toughest standards to their people. Kelly, the founder of Sushi Daily told us that she came in France as an Asian immigrant, eager to succeed, with huge appetite for success in her new life. The minimum skill she is looking for when recruiting is NOT food knowledge, but rather a high level of motivation, that equals or surpasses hers !

• Food trends for tomorrow are well known; they provide great opportunities for Food start-ups : safety, ethics, religion, health... are the most obvious trends and points of attention in the industry. But a great one, notably vis-a-vis youngest consumers, is YAWYE : "you are what you eat"... The cool, healthy, innovative brands who address this new consumer insight will definitely strive in the coming years.

All in all, we can be proud in France to have so much talent and successes in the Food market... which is partly coming from our history ("la tradition culinaire"), but also certainly from the entrepreneurial and creative talent we have in this country.

As there is a "Silicon Valley" in the USA for Digital innovation and progress, we have in France our own "recipes" for success in the "Food Valley" !

Let's talk next time about our "Cosmetic Valley" if you want...

Dear Epicurean friends of Food : Let's be Inspired & Connected !

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

I wish you all the best for 2014.

May this new year be full of true joy, radical optimism, good health, good fun, new challenges, faithful hope, great successes, and sunny moments for all of you and your families.

Be inspired & Stay connected !