Grégoire (Greg) Poux-Guillaume is CEO of AkzoNobel, a leading coatings company (headquartered in Amsterdam) that is active in more than 150 countries and earned revenues of more than 10 billion Euros with over 35,200 employees, and is one of the most renowned and internationally experienced executives in Europe.
Prior to becoming CEO of AkzoNobel, Mr. Poux-Gauillaume was CEO of Sulzer, a Swiss industrial company with more than 13,000 employees. Before that, he was CEO of GE Grid Solutions (fmr. Alstom Grid) and Senior Managing Director of CVC Capital Partners, a leading Private Equity firm, after having workd in the technology venture capital area of Softbank and as a consultant at McKinsey. Mr. Poux-Guillaume has worked and lived in England, France, Myanmar, Scotland, Switzerland, and the US and started his career at Total.
Mr. Poux-Guillaume obtained a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from École Centrale Paris and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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The CEO Leadership Series is the flagship event series of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) at the Heilbronn campus. The goal of the event series is to connect top managers with young students in order to promote a fruitful dialogue. The guests first hold a panel discussion with the host about their careers and organizations, and then respond to questions from the students in a Q&A session. This gives students valuable insights into the fascinating and exciting life and work of successful and renowned managers.
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00:00 Teaser
01:33 Intro
04:13 Childhood, university
06:48 Total
10:09 Working offshore
14:09 Leadership experience
16:15 Harvard Business School
20:29 Consultant at McKinsey (most important skills)
26:07 Softbank
27:57 Not having a job
30:28 Finding a new job
32:45 Offering Sephora to Bernard Arnault
34:30 Taking a job without extensive prior experience
38:05 Being offered a new job
42:26 Alstom
46:01 Midlife crisis
48:06 CVC Capital Partners
51:49 Returning to Alstom
54:07 CEO of Sulzer
58:30 Leaving Sulzer
1:00:08 Joining AkzoNobel
1:02:17 First days as CEO
1:05:01 Future of AkzoNobel
1:09:54 AkzoNobel as an employer
1:13:24 Day in the life of a CEO
1:19:03 Music, (junk) food, hobbies, reading
1:24:43 Legacy
1:27:10 ***Start of Q&A***
1:27:30 Money
1:35:12 Inspiration
1:41:30 Mindset as CEO
1:47:42 Technical expertise
1:51:29 Uncertainty
1:56:12 Difficulty decision
2:04:20 End
Music: Good Morning by MaxKoMusic
I’m the opposite of what they teach you at University which is that um ax Noel is my 10th employer and uh at least five different sectors so all the stuff that you’re not supposed to do uh after your studies you uh went to total so what why toal and what did you do there well as much as I hesitated as to whether I was going to study engineering or something else once I got into engineering I found it really interesting and I I wanted to have the first job that was in a technical industry I was going to be working offshore it was pre- intern uh working offshore meant that you were on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean there was you know there was no internet so you were cut off from the world so for 2 years I worked offshore on a you know on a piece of metal in the middle of the ocean uh 28 days in a row seven seven from 7 at night to 700 in the morning I mean I learned more in those two years about leadership than I did in the rest of my career I remember exactly what he said he said it’s night we’re in the middle of the ocean they’ll never find your body you learn data driven in analysis and you learn the art of presenting something and if you only learn these two things you’re you’re you’re set for life what was your job at sulter at this time I was I was the CEO I was the top guy in a public traded company and um and uh which is something completely different so let’s move on to uh ax Nobel AEL ax Nobel is a is is a really exciting company that has wonderful products that has strong brands that has strong Market positions and paints and coings [Music] dear students welcome to the CEO leadership series my name is Chang Wang Lee and it is an incredible pleasure for me to present to you the CEO of axo Nobel axon Nobel is a world leading paintings and codings company with more than 35,000 employees around the world and revenues of more than 10 billion EUR it operates in over 150 countries and it’s actually also one of the oldest companies in the world with a history that can be traced back to 1792 in addition Aon Nobel is one of the most prestigious and influential companies in Europe and certainly in the Netherlands where it belongs as one of only 25 companies to the prestigious aex index of the largest blue chip uh companies in the Netherlands Mr gregar poom or Greg has been CEO of Aon Noel since 2022 and is one of the most important and experienced managers in Europe and in the global codings and paintings industry in addition he’s arguably the most the most internationally well-versed managers uh top manager and top executive in Europe and perhaps also Worldwide having lived and worked in Angola England France Myanmar The Netherlands Scotland Switzerland and us and perhaps many others that have forgotten to mention uh Greg has studied mechanical engineering at the EOL Central pal in Paris and obtained an MBA from the Harvard Business School he began his career at total and then worked among others at McKenzie as a consultant in the technology Venture Capital Area of SoftBank and a senior managing director of CBC Capital Partners one of the world’s leading private Equity firms before taking on the role as CEO of uh Alstrom grid later on GE git Solutions and then becoming CEO of zzer a Swiss Industrial company before for becoming CEO of ax Nobel as I mentioned in 2022 now it is an incredible pleasure for me to welcome uh Greg here to our campus not only because of his immense Renown and experience that I’m sure he’s happy to share with you and that you and we can all learn from but also because my team has been urging me to switch out this table because you know it has received some scratches over time and I’m hoping to get a recommendation of what decorative painting we can use for Max Noel and perhaps even a good deal later on so please help me and very warmly welcome Greg [Applause] poong what an introduction I feel important already wow thank you very much for visiting our campus and coming to our event series it’s a great pleasure to have you here um let’s perhaps start with the beginning can you tell us a little bit about your life you know from your childhood and youth yeah um um I’m French uh I was born in France my U my father was uh was an executive in a in a Metals company that uh doesn’t exist anymore was taken over by alen then by Rio Tinto um I have two sisters we lived in France until I was 11 and then my dad got um transferred to the US so I spent part of my childhood New York from age 11 to 16 then he got transferred to the UK so 16 to 18 in um in the UK and then my parents stayed in the UK I went back to France for University for really absolutely no good reason apart from the fact that I hadn’t been in France for a long time and I I thought it was exotic um studied for five years and my first job was in Angola in the oil industry and and and then I’ve had a series of different experiences and I’m uh I’m the opposite of what they teach you at University which is that um ax Noel is my 10th employer and uh at least five different sectors so all the stuff that you’re not supposed to do all right all right now before we get into that let let’s perhaps take one quick step back at your kind of university studies yeah why did you choose on the subject of mechanical engineering and would you have done now looking back at your 10 different employers done anything differently uh I I I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to study I was um I could have just easily have uh I could just easily have studied business in terms of interest uh actually I was I was leaning towards applying to uh um business undergrads and um um I guess you know we’re all influenced by uh by by our parents to some extent you know my my dad had worked for this French company and in French companies in those days if you hadn’t studied engineering you were like a second class Citizen and he was obsessed with the fact that his you know he was going to get his revenge through his son and uh essentially uh convinced me that you know I was good at math why not engineering I didn’t really know what I wanted to do engineering sounded interesting so I studied engineering I wish I could tell you this was like a calling but you know when you’re 18 it’s hard to figure out what you want to do all right uh after your studies you uh went to total so what why total and what did you do there well as much as I hesitated as to whether I was going to study engineering or something else once I got into engineering I found was really interesting and I I wanted to have a first job that was in a technical industry so I essentially wanted to put what I had learned to use and uh I had moved around as as a kid with my parents so I had the the international bug so I wanted something technical I wanted something International and I was I was really really worried about being bored and what I mean by bored is you know sort of sitting in an office waiting for things to happen and uh I was a little bit restless and the oil industry was uh was was exciting from that perspective because you uh you could do things that uh that involved working with people in complicated situations at a really young age and that was that was attractive to me all right all right so can you uh describe a little bit what your job profile was what you did at toal and then how come you left toal yeah so um I um actually my my first job was was at with elf elf is na toal but at the time they were two separate companies they were very um very competitive with each other and um my first job was an abedine I was a this is catching I was a drilling engineer which means that I was um doing all the calculation and all the the the planning and the architecture Associated to uh drilling exploration wells in the oil industry so you know you have seismic you know that there might be oil in a certain place it’s off and you have to put a rig and you have to uh you have to drill and the it’s kind of like building a building uh so you have to you have to conceive the whole the whole the whole well and then you have to execute it and I was doing it on on something really really sophist oops I think it’s moving around something really really Technical and sophisticated all right which was uh high pressure high temperature um Fields so I’m not going to bore you with the details but it was kind of new and uh we were feeling our way around trying to figure out how it worked um and and that was fun you know I was working for two senior guys um french guy and a Scottish guy and we did one really complicated well and then uh and then I was out of a job because elf had taken me on a on a two-year contract right after University and they didn’t have permanent jobs so I was out of a job but um the value of mentors the uh the the guys I was working for um actually talked to their counterparts at toel which was really a competing company and got me a job there saying look you’re you’re you you know we they liked me they thought I’d done a good job and they they helped me stay in the industry all right nice nice so um you went to toal worked there and at some point you also left that company to do an MBA was that the reason yeah I I’ll I’ll I’ll touch upon the total thing a little bit because it it it conditioned a lot of the things I did afterwards I had done Engineering in the office in abedine in Scotland and at toel the attraction at toel is that I was going to be working offshore now working offshore this was this was like you know you guys I don’t know if you guys were born you know this was like 1994 and uh it was pre- interet uh working offshore meant that you were on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean there was you know there was no internet so you were cut off from the world and it was 28 days in a row offshore and then 28 days off and um I was the drilling supervisor which is the the person responsible for the for the drilling rig for 12 hours a day because it’s 24 but there’s two there’s two shifts and I was always the junior guy because I was 25 and uh the junior guy did s at night to 7 in the morning so for two years I worked offshore on a you know on a piece of metal in the middle of the ocean uh 28 days in a row 7 7 from 7 at night to 7:00 in the morning uh but I was on holidays half the time okay because the rotation thing was when you got off the rig you were off for 28 days and then you had to go back on so I did that in uh I did that north of Shetland which is pretty much the Arctic Circle and then afterwards I did in Angola um and then then Yanmar uh so two years what was really fun about it and what was really lifechanging was that I got to um I got to interact with people in a in um in in a in a complicated intense environment because drilling exploration rig Wells is dangerous and and it’s also really expensive I was in charge and I was way too young to be in charge and I wasn’t really competent to be in charge because I had the technical knowledge but I didn’t have the the real life experience and uh it was a wonderful learning because I had to work with people that were technically reporting in to me but knew more than I did and I had to find the balance between being a leader but at the same time not being you know not being like like a young schmuck you know not being not not being kind of uh um not trying to uh to uh to be the boss in a sense that was going to hurt me at the moment where I needed those guys cuz I needed them to share their experience with me so I learned a lot I mean I learned more in those two years about leadership than I did in the rest of my career it was a lot of fun I you know uh I worked in Angola I got upset one night and everything stopped and I thought why are these guys stopping you know it’s it’s really expensive so I was you flapping my my arms and getting everybody go back to work and these were all you know people from Angola and at one point they all huddle on one side of the drill floor and it’s in the middle of the ocean it’s all dark and it’s at night and at one point there was one guy who spoke English and he walked across the drill floor and he said uh that he and his colleagues had talked and they had decided that he I remember exactly what he said he said it’s night we in the middle of the ocean they’ll never find your body and then he went back on the other side of the drill floor and then afterwards I decided to apolog apologize and be nice and and and everybody work well together but you know it was it was it was I I learned a lot and sometimes it was painful and then um my company thought that uh I had potential but after two years on rig you’re I wasn’t able to make full sentences you know I was I I I I was limited in my communication because you’re working with the same people for 28 days on a rig you know it’s kind of like being in prison there’s a moment you stop talking and you’re just you you’re you’re grunting pretty much so um my company said well you have to do something else and they put me in charge of drilling uh research and development and I did that for a year but while I was working in Angola I had applyed to business school and I got in and therefore I left go to business school in the US okay looking back at your leadership experiences um how would you describe it I mean you already mentioned you tried to balance kind of U you know different aspects of it and now looking back how would you describe your leadership style at that time well I mean when I was I was 25 I had no clue how to lead you know I thought uh it was pretty scary you know I was the boss these were all like really I mean these were all people that the the the workers were always local but the the the middle management was usually American and usually was guys whose first job it was after the Vietnam War you know it was really that kind of profile so you had these you know they had these guys in their in their mid-50s and and uh who hadn’t gone to school had had a very different life and I was like the young engineer showing up saying I’m the boss you know it’s it’s really scary I mean uh people are not going to follow you just because you’re the boss but but what they’ll do is uh they’ll uh they’ll uh they’ll let if you if you don’t understand that you need people and if you don’t understand that you have to somehow create a team where you you don’t abdicate your leadership responsibilities but at the same time you’re you’re leaning on other people and letting them help you and express themselves if you don’t do that what what happens is that they let you to be the be the boss and at some point there’s a problem and to solve that problem you need their real life experience and they go like so boss what do we do and and usually it ends badly so what you learn is that um you learn that it’s not about being the smartest person it’s not about being the most educated person it’s it it takes you know it’s um I’m I’m quoting uh Hillary Clinton you know but it it takes a village you you kind of have to build a team of people with different skills and different experiences and make sure that everybody has an opportunity to express themselves while still fulf fing your your leadership obligations you know there was a schedule we had to stay on time we had to do certain things and and it’s hard it’s hard to figure out and and the first few weeks were were horrible you know it’s uh I was scared the whole time all right well you you seem to have managed very well uh you went to Harvard Business School can you maybe tell us what you did there how your what your experience was there well uh I mean I did a an MBA so um you guys you go you guys know what these things are it’s uh it was useful for me because I had studied engineering so I’d never I never had an economics class I didn’t know accounting I had know Finance um I had no understanding of financial markets so all of it was marketing i’ never done marketing so all of this was new and really really interesting uh but you know what you learn the most important takeaways from business school were not really the the academic aspects it was more uh the exposure to people that they had all the work before you know before business school because in the US usually you have to have a few years of experience work experience before you’re you’re admitted to the better programs so everybody came from different backgrounds and it was an opportunity to kind of see what other people did and learned different things and and um it it does one really really good thing and it does one really really bad thing the really good thing is that you um you figure out that the world is a much bigger place and that you can do different things uh the really bad thing is that makes you completely delusional you know you think you can do everything which uh when I look at my my my years after business school and when I look at a lot of my classmates a lot of us uh either you know the positive way of putting it as experimented and different things or got lost you know because when you’re in Business School you tend to uh gravitate towards whatever is fashionable uh and uh and what’s fashionable is not always what you’re good at so uh uh at at at Harvard they said that um whenever you know they did statistics of where the graduating business school class went in terms of industry and they said that whichever industry was was was the the biggest pool of uh of you know people going there after business school usually that was um that was past the bubble it’s it meant that the cycle was over because uh business school students are not the most entrepreneurial you know usually you go to business school because you you’re not an entrepreneur if you’re an entrepreneur you’re running full speed and uh and therefore uh it’s a it’s a population me included that has a tendency to gravitate towards stuff that is is already visible and fashionable and is not necessarily the best opportunity so uh try to pick the cycle the you know the the next cycle not the previous one um good point good advice so what did you pick after business school well my my my my situation was a little bit complicated because I wanted to do um I was interested in doing either private Equity or turnarounds private Equity because I I I was interested in the the deal aspects that I’d learned at business school you know buying companies transforming them fixing them um turnarounds is the same thing without the necessarily the the the the capital structure you know companies that are struggling where you’re trying to put them back on the right path and and I was interested in that because it was uh it was leadership it was a strategy it was Financial it felt like really complete but the problem is that I’d done drilling for five years and I scared everybody so um despite the fact that I had an NBA from Harvard whenever I applied to these jobs people said well you know you’re you’re like an interesting candidate which whenever somebody says you’re interesting in English it this is this is this is not positive you at least not in an interview like oh you’re you’ve got a really you’re like a really interesting candidate or you got a really interesting profile probably means like you’re exotic but we’re not going to take you and um so I I couldn’t land where I wanted to land and uh and therefore I um I I I chose something that I felt got me closer which was management consulting and I joined Mackenzie okay can you describe your job at McKenzie I mean I was a consultant I was an associate right after business school so you uh the wonderful thing about Consulting is that you U you you get to try your hand at different Industries in a short period of time so the uh the you know the engagements will be uh you know 6 months 3 six nine months uh you’ll go from one industry to another you see different things you you get to show that you’re able to have an impact in different Industries which was important to me because I I knew I didn’t want to be a consultant over the long term but I I I needed to you know it was kind of like a finishing school if that makes any sense you know uh in uh in the 19 in the early 20th century when uh when uh I guess this was you know what finishing schools are when uh young ladies would be sent to finishing school where they learned to be like the perfect Hostess and it’s kind of like that was that me I learned to uh I learn to um to um to datadriven analysis which is what you learn in good consulting firm which is really really important um you learn datadriven analysis and you learn the art of presenting something and if you only learn these two things you’re you’re you’re set for life honestly because what you find in most companies that uh you have a lot of people that think they’re uh they’re they you know when you work in a company you spend your your time defending ideas defending projects and you do that by kind of showing making the data uh speak so you take the data and you analyze the data to show that what you want to do is the right thing to build a business to position the company in the market to position a product whatever so you’ve got to do the analysis and then you’ve got to present it and most people either don’t know how to do the analysis you know they rely on like emotional stuff or they get confused and they make the data say the opposite of what it actually says you know I don’t know if you’ve ever seen people that present an analysis and you’ve got a graph and they’re saying and the conclusion is and their conclusion is exactly the opposite of what the graph says it happens in companies all the time because people don’t know how to make uh data speak so they don’t know how to do data driven analysis and if they do they are usually really bad at presenting because presenting is an art you know um how do you what do you present what is I I learn how to do a story line you know storyline is really important when you make a presentation you don’t throw all the stuff that you’ve ever analyze into one PowerPoint and hope it’s okay you you you figure out what the story is and then you you each each slide uh is is an element of the story and each slide has to have one message because people get confused statistically if there’s multiple messages on one page so this is what you learn in Consulting I didn’t stay very long because there’s have you guys ever done Myers Briggs uh uh you know that’s probably I’m an old guy so Myers Briggs is probably something more modern the professor Al will tell you that’s it’s one of these personality analysis tools where you do a test and it R it ranks you on um you know are you are you emotional or analytical are you uh you know are you uh extrovert introvert and what what’s really interesting about that that analysis is that it gives you your profile and then you compare it to a book of people that are successful in a given job and what their profile is and then you realize that um most jobs have one profile a dominant profile of people that are good you know either because it’s a job or you have to be analytical and and uh you have to be analytical and uh and and an extrovert because you’ve got to sell or whatever uh Consulting is the only industry that has two profiles of people that are good there’s the people that are Consultants but then leave to do something else that’s me and there’s the people that are consultants and then become partner and the people that are consultants and become partner um it’s almost a perfect overlap with univ University professors except it’s University professors that like money it’s an aside but trust me so uh because if you think about it a senior partner at a consulting firm is like a university Professor you’re not doing the work yourself you kind of know what needs to be done you know the methodology but your job is to get younger less experienced people but with more energy and more resources to do that analysis and and and get it to kind of the finish line so it’s similar in some ways hopefully um I was I was I was not meant to be consultant in the sense that I I I like doing things so I was really frustrated in Consulting because we we’d have all this great strategy and we’d present it and the client would say awesome thank you and I like thank you like he’s like yeah you got to leave now you know we’re going to do it ourselves which I didn’t like so uh but I learned these two really important things datadriven analysis and the Art of presenting and uh those things have served me really well for the you know um to date okay uh that’s the reason why you left Consulting uh did you leave like in the classic story you know you you leave for a client that basically hires you or did you leave to yeah pretty much pretty much uh and and and you remember what I said about people that come out of business school have a tendency to uh um to be one one cycle late uh I left to work for soft Bank uh soft Bank uh you know masi son Japanese billionaire Tech Visionary um has a really really big fund um the vision fund it’s it’s well known currently because these guys overwhelm the The Venture Capital industry by deploying build ion dollar funds to an industry usually that was deploying smaller tickets and if you’ve watched the movie about weor uh they’re the guys that put massive amount of capital into weor right before it exploded because people realized it was actually a real estate business so but that was like this that was the first uh cycle of SoftBank when they were doing software investments in in Europe and um technology was a big thing you know this was like this was 2000 2001 um the it was the end of the do era um Venture was transforming from from the from from internet to software and um and it felt really interesting with a technical background to go into technology investing except that um I mistim the cycle and uh by the time I got there um I was there a year and a half and then September 11 happened um this was already after the uh the Doom bubble had burst the market were bad September 11 happened and um and a lot of funds stopped investing um they essentially uh um pull back um I got I went to the office one morning they said oh we’re having a call with all the European offices uh in in two hours we got on a call and uh they said uh we’re stopping all Investments go home we’ll call you and they never called okay I was I was 31 and I was unemployed this is this is turning out into a terrible story I’m sorry you guys are like on Friday afternoon it’s you know anyway so I was unemployed at 31 so so what did you do then I was it was it was terrible because not because not because of anything material because uh you know I was at an age where you uh you can reinvent yourself but it was terrible because um my my wife U my my wife’s German she’s a lawyer uh she was working um she was working six days a week and she had really long hours I had really long hours and we had a 4-month-old baby and uh suddenly I was home and I was the babysitter so my wife would leave for her love firm in the morning and she couldn’t help herself she’d leave me like stuff to do you know and usually she’d say something that would really upset me like well uh given that you have time which go like I don’t have time I’m having a lot of important discussions about finding a job you know but then I’d have to do errands and we had you know our our son was was four months old and um I was home for um it was it was four months before I got a job so um I lot of really interesting learnings from that and I can I can and I can tell you about it uh but uh as an aside which has nothing to do with uh with business um it’s um I don’t want to extrapolate based on one Daya points But whichever parent spends a lot of time with a baby ends up being the parent the baby runs to when he hurts himself because we have a son and we have a daughter my wife had stopped stopped working when her daughter was born and they’re very very close and I was the babysitter when Tim was four until he four months old until he was eight 8 months and uh and it was very irritating for my wife because I I was I was kind of like the mom you know so I had to put him to sleep and all that but it was fun so uh all this to say that uh um what’s what’s the um what’s the John lenon thing uh life is what happens while you’re making plans or as Mike Tyson said much better uh everybody has a strategy until they get punched in the face and uh Mike Tyson is the 20th Century’s Premier philosopher but um I was punched in the face and I was out of a job at 31 in the middle of an economic crisis because that was 2001 late 2001 so you know how did you recover from that punch um I did what you do when uh when you get uh when you get I I did when you do when you get fired from something which is that usually your feelings are hurt whether it’s your whether it’s your fault or not I mean this wasn’t my fault they stopped investing but it still feels personal so what you want to do is you want revenge and uh and what that leads you to is to try to get the exact same job except better so you can you know so you can so you can wag your finger afterwards but um one it was really really difficult CU nobody was in was hiring in the investment world and two um kind of two months into um having discussions with venture capitalist firms I started thinking um am I applying for those jobs because it’s what I want to do or am I applying for those jobs because I want revenge or I lack imagination you know I’m trying to get the exact same job because then it doesn’t feel then it feels like a Continuum and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t sure I wanted to do technology ventry capital I wasn’t sure that that was my my my calling and I I probably um I missed having the job more than the job itself I guess so I started looking at other things and um and this is this is where there’s another lesson which is that um I I I I worked my my network and what I mean by that is you talk to a person who introduces you to a person who introduces you to a person and um really outside of normal job channels you know I wasn’t applying for jobs I was just talking to people and and my message was I’m interested in what you do um I have some skills uh I’m on the market um we can try you know I wasn’t telling people I I want you to give me you know long-term employment I was telling people I’ve got time and I’m willing and if you want to try me out uh I’m gain and and I met um I met somebody who um who uh it’s a it’s a weird story but he was running a real estate company but actually he was he was a former private banker and he was the he was very close to um a French retail billionaire the guy who owned K you know the big uh food retailer and um I met this this real estate guy for something completely different and then he we we agreed that I was in a good fit for for real estate and then he called me up afterwards and he said you know you told me you’re available and you’re willing to try things um my uh my my my friend this this this you know this retail billionaire guy um is uh trying to diversify his family holding and and um he’s interested in a business that’s owned by another of his friends and his friend has given him access and uh he hired a law firm um uh a bank uh Auditors to do a due diligence and he’s not he’s got nobody to run the process and I told him I had the perfect guy it’s you can you start tomorrow now um one uh the guy he was buying a business from was Bernard and the business was Sephora this wasn’t small you know I was doing like software Venture Capital deals pre- Revenue you know we didn’t we deploy like5 million EUR and it was like really really scary you know and this was like real business with like shops and products and people and and I had never done a due diligence I had never run a process of that size I had no clue how to do it so I told this guy I told him you know I appreciate your enthusiasm and your vot of confidence but you know i’ I’ve never done this and you go you’ll figure it out so this was this was my my first well maybe not my first but one of a long series of jobs that I took with very little knowledge of how the hell I was actually going to do the job which is another lesson and it’s another lesson actually more for the ladies in this room than for the guys in this room because uh and this is not gender stereotypes this is this is Academia there all studies show that women self sens when they apply for jobs if there’s a job where a guy knows how to do 30% of the job he feels he’s qualified the ladies if you don’t have 70% coverage of the skills necessary you’re not going to apply and it’s why companies change the way they advertise jobs because there’s a really really interesting gender bias in terms of how the genders position themselves for opportunities but to go back to me specifically I didn’t know how to do the job I was honest but he told me yeah you’ll figure it out and then I was then I was you know thrown into the deep end of the pool and I had to run this process and and in the end we made an offer um which um which wasn’t accepted and then I ended up doing another deal for them and I ended up working for this this this this pelli who’s um the guy who own K the retail billionaire I ended up working for him for almost a year uh without a contract remember at the beginning I said I’m available I’m willing to try things things and um so they could essentially ask me to leave anytime I I wasn’t I didn’t have any social coverage I didn’t have anything you know no unemployment no nothing but but I don’t know I was like 31 my wife was working it didn’t feel like I was going to be uh struggling to feed myself so I thought let’s go and and then when they wanted to offer me a contract I I wasn’t sure I wanted to because I realized that I enjoyed the deal making aspect of things but I also realized that working working for a family is is really really strange and it’s probably only a good career path if you’re part of the family itself um so I I I I thought 31 is a bit young to lock myself into something where if I stay here I have to do this forever because or work for another family because you become less employable because you’re more um kind of fall in a box where uh you don’t have the the brand names that people recognize you know doing deals for a family is not the same as doing deals for Morgan Stanley or CVC um Morgan Stanley and CBC is a calling card for other things the family thing is a calling card to work for the family essentially or maybe another family so I thought well um this is really interesting but this is probably too risky in terms of being a dead end and also I I missed um I missed running a business I I missed you you know the oil rig thing felt like running something you know so uh I told them um I told them that I was looking for something else but that I would give them kind of you know a few months of visibility when I did find something and they were happy to have me continue until I had found whatever I was looking for and then I found my next opportunity also through kind of talking to people this time with a real contract though cuz uh you this second child was underway you know I kind of have um and um and I moved on we parted good friends uh and uh and I moved to something completely different what was that something that that that something was was alom alom today um it’s a public traded company if you go online you’ll find it you’ll see it’s a it’s a it’s a rail equipment company it’s locomotives and trains it’s uh it’s uh Al and Bombardier merg their rail business it’s the largest rail equipments and systems company in the world but before it was just rail it was Rail and power generation and and Electrical uh equipment it was essentially it was like the French zans and um the you had General Electric zans and Alon and they were essentially you know competing with each other Alon was going bankrupt um they had just fired their CEO they had hired a new guy the new guy hadn’t taken the job job yet and uh a head hunter I talked to told me hey I’ve got something which is a bit unusual but kind of corresponds to what you’re looking for cuz I said I want to go back to running a business but because I knew that I had a weird background you know the oil thing then Consulting then venture capital and doing deals for a family um you kind of have to be um aware of what your your your your cards are and my cards were um I’ve done operational things and I’ve done Consulting and I’ve done Financial things but I’m I’m likely to get a job with a blue chip company because they’ll say what’s this weird background of you work for all these people so who are the people going to hire me and the answer the people that are going to hire me are the people that don’t have that many options you know companies that are struggling and also when you’re struggling you need people that can do multiple things because usually the timing accelerates and um and uh and being polyvalence is is is a positive so the CEO was actually joining to do the turnaround and he wanted somebody who’d done operational jobs but he also wanted somebody who’d been either in consulting or in um um mergers and Acquisitions preferably both uh another example of um of how you um how you position yourself when you don’t have all the cars in hand you know if uh if you’ve done five years at Goldman Sachs and uh and you’re talking to Morgan Stanley it’s really easy to position yourself right it’s the same thing you’ve got stamp of approval easy but in other situations it’s harder so uh this this guy told me uh the company’s going bankrupt uh I’m starting next month um and he called me and he called me back and he said you’re not really what I’m looking for but you’re as close as I have the the time to find before I start so why don’t you come and work with me and and literally what he said is why don’t you come and work with me and if it doesn’t work out I’ll fire you in 3 months but we’ll stay good friends um so I said okay and uh and he didn’t fire me and it was the most interesting job I I’ve ever had so so once again what I don’t know what I don’t know why you guys are here on a Friday afternoon when it’s sunny outside but uh probably not because you want me to talk to you about paints and Coatings or tur bines or electrical equipment or whatever else I’ve done but it’s more you know how do you navigate in this weird and complicated world where uh you kind of have to have a job but it has to be something that you’re interested in and you have to make your own luck and and there’s different ways of doing it I’m explaining you my way which is probably less standard less mainstream than a lot of people that come to talk to you but that was another job where I got the job but it was like I was on a 3 months notice thing where um it could could have ended really quickly joined the company and within a month and a half we were insolvent which means that on a company of 120,000 employee we can make payroll at the end of the month which technically means that you have to go into receivership so you have to so well it’s very nice to see that a you had a contract and B that such a nonlinear type of uh you know CV or or background is is very rewarding as well so can you maybe tell us about your job running uh I believe it was Alum grit then because it must have been very different right do you want me to accelerate my storytelling because you guys are going to be here all night otherwise right please keep going it’s very captivating so so I took this job at Alston and I was I was the head of strategy uh Business Development head of restructuring uh I was essentially the uh I was actually the CEO was a very um very very impressive guy the most most intelligent person I’ve ever I most intelligent person I know to this day uh also huge personality really really abrasive uh and I was essentially the guy that had to follow him around and translate his vision into uh into actionable um items so um he’d uh you know um he do things like say um we’re going bankr corupt we have to restructure the company the company was very very heavy sales were dropping we had way too many people and we couldn’t make payroll and uh part of if you if you’re talking to Banks and trying to get them to refinance you part of what they’ll ask for is they’ll say you have to get your cost structure under control because I’m not here to pay for things that you can’t afford so we had to do a lot of restructuring which means a lot of people lost their job which is really really tough and um and he essentially told me um uh go do it which was very scary um he had these principles which were good principles where he said well we’re going to lead by example so we’ll do we’ll do the headquarter we’ll do corporate first and and we downsized corporate by 35% which you know my story’s been fun at this to date right but that was that was really really tough you’re you’re talking to people and essentially you’re saying look U one out of three has has to go you know and um so it was a lot of really tough things that you had to do at an accelerated Pace because the company was failing uh and then we had to sell businesses and then we had to refinance uh with our banks and then we had to get uh we had to uh um fight with the European Commission because the the French government’s uh guaranteed part of our debt and that’s called state aid and when you when you get get state aid you have to have you have to give remedies which means that you um you um you have to uh accept some element of pain in order to rebalance the competitive landscape so it was a lot of really really interesting things it lasted a year and a half it was was really intense uh you know I I worked all the time we had small kids um uh and uh and then a year and a half later the company was back on on on sound sound footing and uh and I was asked to run a first business a hydroelectric business which was also struggling so it was it was turning around the business and then a second business which wasn’t struggling it was a business that you had to develop which was Air Pollution Control essentially it’s um a business that uh built equipment that handled all the emissions that you know essentially hurt the environment so particles uh nox socks uh um CO2 which was a really really interesting growth business uh so I I ran these two businesses and um and and and then I had uh then I had my midlife crisis and I left uh you should I go into my midlife crisis sure please this is you know this is this is you know this is I don’t know if this is less linear but more entertaining that you guys were expecting but my midlife crisis was that I had these interesting jobs and um I worked all the time and I traveled all the time and I was on the road 60% of the time because these were small businesses you know the hydro business was like the hydro both businesses were a billion euros um a billion Euro business in a company um you’re you’re you have to keep the structure light which means that I was on the road doing a bunch of things all the time uh traveling economy by the way to like Brazil and China and wherever else uh you know sleeping on planes um uh in in coach um for 60% of your time it’s it’s physically uh tiring and um and I saw all my classmates from business school that were in private equity and they slept in their own bed and they were uh you know they were they were making really good money and uh their uh you know their wife saw them from time to time and their kids saw them too and I thought what what am I doing you know why am I doing this and also I had um I had a I had a falling out with my mentor who was the COO of the company that I guy I joined to turn the company around because I thought our was problematic he um he uh he um had a different plan and and I got frustrated so I was frustrated by the strategy of the company I was frustrated by my life I was frustrated by the uh kind of ratio to the the the the the effort reward ratio you know but I’m working a lot and uh and uh and you know so I I thought life can life there’s got to be more to life than this you know there’s got to be more to life than uh seeing my kids on weekends and uh and sleeping on planes all right so so I left so I left and uh I um I joined the private Equity Firm uh CVC uh to do deals which um was really really interesting I love CDC I I love deal making it was a lot of fun um but it was very very different and the the very different aspect is what part of it was related to The Firm itself and one part was related to U what actually makes me happy so the part that’s related to The Firm itself is there’s a lot of private Equity Firm firms where you you try to do deals but you also have a portfolio and based on your skill set you’ll work on different companies of the portfolio so I I had run industrial businesses there were industrial companies in the portfolio I should have been asked to work on those companies once they’re owned by CVC but CVC has a philosophy which is called eat what you kill which means that if you haven’t done the deal it’s not your company so uh I wasn’t being asked to work on the portfolio which was frustrating because I had the background for it but I was being asked to do deals which was frustrating because I didn’t have any of the deal flow because you arrive your desk is empty and suddenly you have to start trying to find deals which is really tough by the way so um it was difficult at the beginning then it got exciting actually did a deal uh and uh and I I closed it and uh right after we closed the deal I I resigned so I I was two and a half I stayed at TDC two and a half years uh your your the measure of success is are you able to originate and close a deal yourself which I did so I was kind of heading in the right direction but in those two and a half years I realized that yeah I was sleeping in my own bed and I was um you know I was spending more time with my family but I actually really missed the people I missed running a business and running a business is working with people trying to put the right person in the right job generating uh excitement in the company so that people uh uh surpass what they thought they could achieve and actually you know take the company to uh to to to new heights U all the exciting thing about working with the people was was yeah I I I just missed it and uh and I was at that point I was uh that was I was 31 no 41 sorry 41 so I had my midlife crisis at 38 and at 41 um I uh I figured out what I wanted to do in life so you guys have time you know it’s it’s uh and I figured out that I like I like running companies I like working with people and figuring out the strategy and fixing the operations and all these things I like that more than I liked um deal making and making money because at the end of the day you you you have to choose what makes you happy and uh and uh and I decided that I was I wasn’t going to choose was what was going to make me wealthier uh wealthiest maybe but I was going to choose what made me happy and if you guys read the Press you know CVC just did an IPO it’s valued at stratospheric levels uh you know it’s by far the stupidest financial decision I’ve ever made to leave CDC but it was also a really good decision because I’ve been happy doing what I do for the last uh I’m 54 41 for the last 13 years and I haven’t regretted that decision I’m very glad to hear and how did you end up with zzer what the next uh was the next well first I after CDC I went back to Alon okay I I had a I had a folding out with the CEO but we still I mean it was like it was like fighting with your dad really and uh and they bought a business that I had tried to buy when I was at CVC it was an electrical business and uh and then they called me to say look uh the CEO called me back and said look uh you know you should be running businesses um he he understood what he understood what I was meant for more than I did which is actually the good thing about having mentors sometimes they because we all lie to each other we I’m sorry we all lie to ourselves you know between what you know makes you happy and what you’ll tell people makes you happy it’s usually kind of two different things because maybe what makes us happy is either not glamorous or not popular or embarrassing or whatever else you know so sometimes your mentors figure you figure you out much better than you figure yourself out and he called me up and he said look okay you two and a half years of private Equity okay you had fun and I’m sure you know how to do the deals but he told me look you know you should be running companies and you know this is you know that’s what you’re meant for I’ve got this opportunity for you come back and uh you know we’ll uh we’ll work together and uh part of part of my part of the The Hope was that at some point he was going to retire and maybe I could be want a candidate to be his successor that was down the road came back to run that business um ran that for five and a half years um about halfway through uh we came to the conclusion that the company itself was going to have to um um take it’s power business and uh and and merge it with somebody else because we didn’t have the means to develop the next generation of power produ power generation products and this led to really complicated um transaction where General Electric bought 70% of that company including my business and I ended up part of General Electric and uh combining my business with the General Electric business I I I was in charge of putting the the businesses together and to be the COO afterwards I put the businesses together I made sure that there was a team that worked well with G people and Alon people and then I left to uh to join szer okay all right so what was your job at szer I mean was it uh similar in terms of profile szer um Swiss German industrial company based in ventor um it’s uh it it’s publicly traded so I I had been these other jobs I was the I was the head of a division within a larger corporate uh and this time I was I was the CEO I was the top guy in a public traded company and um and uh which is something completely different because in uh when you’re a division guy uh you’re not the one who’s talking to shareholders you’re not the one that has to arbitrate between the various divisions in the company um there’s a lot of things that you have to do as a CEO of a publicly traded company that you don’t have to do as a head of a division so it was a whole you know different kind of exposure and experience it was also a company that was struggling uh companies that recruit CEOs from the outside usually are companies that are trying to change and when you’re trying to change usually it means that either you’re not performing or your Market is changing and you have to transform so uh it goes back to one of the earlier points I made which is that you have to know what you are and if you if you are a person that goes from from one company to another in all likelihood the people that are going to hire you are people that are trying to change something or fix something and sozer was trying to fix its strategy it was trying to fix its uh cost structure it was trying to fix its share price performance and it had a really complicated governance because it was a publicly traded business still is but it also had a a large um Russian shareholder that um that nobody really know knew how to deal with um and uh and and that uh became something complicated over time because I I ran Soldier for six years uh three years into my tenure that Russian shareholder got put under us sanctions and then we had to uh do a complicated operation where we bought some of this share so that he would become a minority shareholder and it was very it was very complicated it was a it was Crisis management but the main job at at sozer was repositioning the company it was a company that was a leader in pumps and separation equipment for the chemical industry and in pumps it mostly did oil and gas and in separation equipment it mostly did refineries and this was 2015 you know if you’re in oil and gas and refineries um you’re not well positioned because sustainability is uh is is is the way forward and uh there’s a there’s a move moment where um you know there’s a moment where we’ll get to peak oil and there’s a moment where where that production will drop and um also as a public Trad company if you’re um if you’re trying to get investors excited about you being 55% oil and gas which was souls are in 2015 is is not a good play so what we did is we we we we um we analyzed what we were good at and we Tred to figure out what that skill set where that skill set was applicable to something that was growing faster and more sustainable and the pump business which was mostly an oil and gas pump business became um four years late five years later the the most important business in pumps for solder was Wastewater they’re very complicated pumps because there’s all sorts of stuff in Wastewater that uh that is not always liquid um and the most important business in the separ chemical separation business became uh biopolymers you know bioplastics because it’s the same technology so you take what you’re good at and you try to figure out which Market it’s applicable to and that’s what we did at sulzer went really well um I ran the company for six years I handed um my the Baton you know my to an internal successor and the company’s been doing even better since so uh all right I’m sure uh the students uh very likely we have questions on on that part of your job so you then so let’s move on to uh ax Noel Noel how did that change that switch come about and what are you doing nowadays so I did something else that you’re you’re that people will tell you not to do and and actually people are right on this one which is that um I left sulter not knowing what my next job was going to be um I wanted it to be an internal succession uh there were two internal candidates that made sense um both of them were going to leave because they wanted to be the top guy and and it was time so uh there was a timing issue where I felt like if I wait then we’ll lose these guys and then uh then then then we can’t do an internal succession uh so uh and also I wanted to time it with the end of a financial year so that was an organized succession and and it felt seamless to investors so so um so I I handed over my responsibilities at the end of the year and I and I went home and then I started having conversations again because you’re I was on the market I mean it’s a lot easier to do that at 50 50 51 52 I left it was 2000 you know I’m lost what year are we in I left early 2022 so I I just turned 52 it’s a lot easier to do at 52 when when you have a little bit of money in the bank than it is to do at 31 when uh when you have a baby at home and a wife who leaves you errands but um I love my wife and she was right to leave me eron so I had time but but uh so I left and and I thought well this is a good opportunity to um um think about what I want to do next and have conversations and and I I had a a bunch of conversations about really different opportunities in really different fields um in some cases publicly trade companies in some cases privately held companies even private equity and uh and ax Noel was exciting and uh picked a lot of the boxes that I had can I in my mind and uh I joined axo at the end of 2022 uh essentially to continue the transformation of the company axon Noel is a is is a really exciting company that has wonderful products it has strong Brands it has strong Market positions and paints and Coatings so 40% of what we do is decorative paint you know paint to paint your house pretty much and 60% is um industrial paints paints for uh uh boats ships uh your iPhone your iPad your computer your car um so it’s 40% b2c 60% B2B uh it’s a chemical business in the sense that we mix chemical products to make a product but it’s also retail business for part of it it’s a distribution business uh it it has iic complexity and um and and the main challenge at AO that that were that were um that we’re fixing is that it’s a it’s a wonderful company once again with great products and great Market positions that wasn’t always very good at generating growth and in part because it wasn’t very good at delivering the product in time so 132 factories around the world uh you know um what’s on time delivery what’s uh capacity utilization what’s equipment availability to uh make the business industrially efficient and to position the business for growth which were two things that axo did not do very well and that we’re working on and improving okay so let me ask two uh quick or maybe not quick follow-up questions so um can you do you still remember your first day or first days as a CEO of Aon Noel you know coming in from the outside in some ways what was that like and the second question is uh what do the future hold for X Noel where do you want to take the company yeah my my my my first day whether it was at axo or at sozer were not scary in the sense that um you know the more you do things the more you um you kind of figure things out it doesn’t mean you’re comfortable but it means that um you you know that you should not feel comfortable you know so uh the first time I ran a large business was the was the grid business business when I went back to ston and that business was 20,000 people and um and you know or four five billion EUR of Revenue and uh I remember being I remember being really scared the first two weeks um you know I don’t know if people tell you they’re scared but you know everybody’s scared at some point I remember being really scared because it felt like it it felt like a big step and and the company was not performing and it was really really complicated and my my predecessor had essentially kind of given me the key and left because he had something else to do so uh it was really like no transition at a time when the business was was really Harding so I remember that as being really a challenge and I remember that as being lonely and I remember that as being kind of frightening to a certain extent and and and the whole challenge it’s like everything in life it’s it’s an element of fear and and and um and nervousness is actually a positive as long as you don’t let it paralyze you and hence the fact that I talk about that rather than szer AO because szer and Aon Nobel uh I joined these companies from the outside um in the case of X Noel I had a one month transition with my predecessor who’s really really helpful so in many ways that was easier uh but also I I knew what I knew what to expect in terms of what I was going to feel uncomfortable about the uncertainties I was going to have and and uh so all the feelings were feelings that I was expecting and when you’re then so then it’s it’s not as big a deal um so it’s not I mean there’s nothing magical about the first 90 days or all the stuff that people tell you uh we can talk about that too but uh okay I’ll hand the questions back to you all right uh looking at the strategy of X and Noel you know you have sustainability driven Innovation focus on or or kind of focusing on specific market segments uh and Industrial Excellence so what what about the future of the company and do you have kind of visions and goals that you would like to achieve you already achieved a an increase on operating margin of what 45% within one year so congratulations so what about the future well it’s it’s it’s about um it’s about delivering on a recurring and sustainable way so um the the profitability Improvement that we’ve that we’ve um delivered over the last 18 months is it’s great but um when when you’re when you’re a company that has had uneven performance what people want investors want first and foremost is they want you to be predictable so it’s really really important to uh get into into the cycle of I give guidance I deliver my guidance I raise the bar you know the Americans call that U um beat and raise you give a guidance you beat it and you raise the guidance so you have to get into that that cycle but um and for that you have to fix a number of things and position the business in the right way but over time um The Challenge and the opportunity for a company like axo is that uh um paints coating are they’re chemical products and uh um the chemical landscape is changing really really quickly you had the Martin buer here I think oh yeah and and Martin’s a great guy the CEO of well now the former CEO of BSF um I don’t know how I can’t remember how long ago he was here but BSF is a good example of the fact that the chemical landscape is is changing fast uh sustainability is is not only the way forward but is a requirements and and therefore um my my industry is uh it has to adapt but if you want to be a leader you have to uh you have to you have to preempt you have to be more agile you have to find the opportunities to essentially differentiate by giving the market something it needs and what we need today is more sustainable products because there’s a number of chemicals that all these companies use that are in uh that are going to be banned or that are harmful to the environment and uh sometimes they’re they’re they’re still allowed but your question is how quickly can I find a substitute how quickly can I organize this transition so that not only am I um able to deliver a solution that the market needs but maybe I can drive the transition of the market because when products become available then sometimes that Fosters regulation also because because um if there are alternatives why not make them mandatory so for for aoel it’s a big opportunity but it’s also a big opportunity to help our customers um we do things like Powder Coatings you know if you take uh if you take uh you know probably the uh the the tripod here or if you take uh um these windows um the metal components are powdercoated it’s not paint it’s not liquid paint it’s powder paint that you you put an electrostatic charge on on the metal and you spray a powder which is paint without liquid the electronics electrostatic charge makes the particles go where they have to go so you don’t have any waste when you spray paints you have waste here you don’t have any waste because it goes to the place where you’ve got the electrostatic charge and then you then you heat that that door and and then you have that finish so it’s really great uh process in terms of there’s no waste so that’s more sustainable uh there’s no uh vocc volatile organic compound because there’s no solvents so that’s great for the environment only problem is that you’ve got to bake this thing you got to heat it 180 degre C that consumes energy uh We’ve developed a range we’re the only company in the industry that’s developed a range that we introduced a few months ago that that bakes that cures at 150° C you know it’s it’s it’s a big impact in terms of either emissions or energy cons option and that’s not driven by regulation because there’s no regulation that says this is the temperature and this these are the emissions but if you do that then your product is going to sell better because people can not only save on their energy but they can also reduce their emissions and a lot of companies have set targets for themselves so that that’s the transition that’s the opportunity and that’s the way forward all right which is exciting it it it it sounds very exciting and uh to make these things happen a company needs people we have many very you know good students uh future graduates so um why should someone join ax Nobel besides having a great CEO of course and uh what kind of people is ax Nobel looking for well you join ax Nobel if the if the purpose excites you and uh and and the purpose is once again it’s a sustainability driven Innovation so if the idea of adapting uh you know a company that’s uh more than 200 years old if the idea of of of leading that transition were you you you get that company position for the next 200 years if you find that exciting if you find the idea of taking some of these products that are really good products but are have have components that you know e either are going to be banned or comp components that could be substituted by something more sustainable if you find that interesting if you find the whole um if you whole find the whole sustainability transition in kind of um in um in a measurable way you know this is not theoretical this is like okay we’ve got this product this is the formulation these are these are the components what are the Alternatives uh this is okay this is the market how do we get people to um how do we get people to pay for more sustainable products um fun fact uh decorative paint um in Europe um European consumers will not pay for more sustainable products everybody wants more sustainable products but if you do a survey people are willing to pay like I don’t know like8 EUR a month for more sustainable products overall I mean it’s a low number we can’t we can’t charge a premium for sustainable products in Europe but we’re able to charge a premium for sustainable products in China because there’s a notion of um buying something more sustainable that’s better for you and China probably in part because you know in in in the days of the one child policy uh making sure that you had bioid free Paints in your house for example felt like a good investment to people and that still prevails in the culture today so uh how do I how do I take how do I take some of the products that we develop and we sell in China and get people excited about them in Latin America or in Europe it’s it’s all I find it fascinating uh but you at the end of the day I’m not here to sell you a and a bell um my my my um I guess the the the objective I’ve set for myself for today if if I if I should set myself an objective is more to to kind of give you insights or or or ideas as to how you make those career decisions and um and another lesson is go into something that you’re excited about um in terms of purpose um if it’s just a really good company but you don’t like the product or you don’t you know you don’t like talking about it um find something else so it it has to be something that gets you out of bed in the morning otherwise it’s uh otherwise professional life is miserable when do you get out of bed in the morning and what does your day look like uh I’m I’m I’m not a morning I’m not a morning person but I have to be so uh I’m really not a morning person I’m um I’m you know I’m one of my uh one of my best friends is a is a guy I met cuz we were the the two guys walking their dog at 1 in the morning every night um when um when when our kids were small and we’re still living in Paris I I was walking my dog between uh midnight and 1:00 in the morning every night and there was another guy and we started talking and he’s one of my best friends to this day uh so I’m not a morning person but uh you have to be culturally adaptable uh the last two businesses I ran X Noel Netherlands and Soldier and Switzerland these are countries where people start early and they finish early also so um as a CEO um as as a CEO you have to lead by example and also you have to adapt to the culture of the country or the company and therefore uh I’m in the office at 7:30 in the morning it’s uh it it it it hurts um every fiber of my nature but uh but yeah that’s life you you adapt how many hours do you work do you work on the weekends uh you know um I’m trying to say that in a way that’s going to be helpful um I’m well two things one is uh you have to work hard at the end of the day um everything’s competitive um it’s uh uh the uh the best opportunities come to the people that deliver the best results uh you can deliver results by being really really smart but honestly it’s a it’s a lot safer and it’s a lot higher probability to be really hardworking you know it’s uh I I uh I like to think I’m intelligent but uh you don’t want to rely only on intelligence you uh you know hard work also matters but having said that uh I’m at the age I make myself sound really really old you know I’m like I’m 54 but I’m at the age where uh you um you kind of look at your peers and and and yourself and you look at who’s happy and who’s not and the people that are happy are not the people that have the biggest jobs the people that are happy are the people that have kids that still talk to them and um and and partners that still talk to them so um it it’s which means that you you have to find a balance and uh my my balance mostly is that um when the kids were smaller I’d uh I’d go home to have dinner with them and I’d work afterwards again so that’s not great but uh you know my wife was also working so we both had a lot of work to to do and uh and it was really important to have the moments with the kids my kids are 20 and 23 now they’re like I mean like your age you know um one of them at um at uh at gut in Frankfurt and the other one at ITA in Zurich so both at University uh so my kids you know they’re they’re living their own life but the the balance having friends having uh doing things with your partner um uh having a life outside of work is really really important so it it’s not that I never work on weekends but it’s that uh I never assume that I’m going to work on weekends so I don’t do it automatically I I I mostly try not to uh but you know life is different today um I’ve got a bunch of devices um I run an international business stuff happens all the time people have time differences um part of what makes it work for me is that um I can compartmentalize so um I can I I can kind of jump into something try to either give an answer or um or uh or you know sort of um keep the ball rolling on a number of topics that come my way and and switch back so you have to be able to if you’re if you get bad news and it obsesses you for the next you know three hours then uh then uh then you’re going to be unhappy in these jobs and you have to find a job where uh that that’s a better fit for your personality um it it’s you have to find something that that fits the way you function the way I function is that um I um I have one differentiating skill set as a CEO which is I can sleep anywhere at any time um don’t let people tell you it’s about intelligence it’s about being able to sleep on planes being able to sleep in taxis going somewhere being able to recuperate because these are not jobs where you can say you know these are these are my working hours and this is my rest time you know but if you can sleep anywhere at any time and if you can you know sleep for small periods long periods and kind of it works for you then then the then life is easier and and I have that skill set I I wish I had other skills but I’ve got that one it’s already a good start all right right let Let’s uh you know wrap up our conversation with a few quick fire questions please U what Ty of music do you listen to huh I um I I’ve got something really cool which is that I I I share uh I I share a streaming um platform with my kids so uh you know we went for like the family group which means that I see their playlist and they see mine you know and and therefore I steal a lot of stuff from them too but initially you know I’m a I’m a child of the 1970s so uh I was into I was into heavy metal and blues you know so and then over time I I kind of widen and um the first concert I I took my son to when he was 9 years old I took him to cacdc with noise cancelling headphones and then my daughter got jealous and she was two years younger and I told her in two years I’ll take you to see a concert and she chose I mean it’d be the equivalent of God I don’t even know what the equivalent of it would be it be uh the equivalent of like Sabrina Carpenter or something like that you know but like the French version you guys does that speak to you guys or not like it’s uh it’s like Taylor Swift but more teeny buer and um and um I went to that concert with my daughter when she was when she when she torn nine and uh I remember it was still in the days of iPods and we downloaded all the songs and I knew the lyrics so my my 20-year-old daughter went to see Taylor Swift and uh I’m actually I’m actually really good at Taylor Swift now so I’ve got you it slipped into my playlist but uh but you know the last concert I went to was like Royal Blood for those of you guys who do alternative music so it’s not not exactly Taylor Swift so I’m all over the place but uh but uh yeah getting abused by my kids about my musical taste is part of the fun all right what about food what do you like to eat I’m the least French person I’m the least French French person ever in the sense that I don’t really care about food um I I I eat really badly um and I I drove here because I didn’t know how to get here um I was I was in Paris yesterday uh I had to um I I had to figure out where I was whether I was going to be in Paris or in Zurich this weekend in the end I ended up driving from Zurich so I had like a three-hour Drive I had like two types of aru you you do hero you know like the the the the crocodiles you know and and the and the gummy bears you know so um I eat really really badly I love junk food okay um and uh I can survive on pizza and sushi for like forever okay but uh my uh my wife is into food and she’s into healthy eating so uh she’s the only reason that plus the fact that I do Sports and I’m not OB Beast otherwise I’d be okay so what about your hobbies you like to do Sports yeah uh I I do uh there’s phases in life there’s uh the phase you’re in which is kind of you’re you’re you’re doing sports cuz you’re you’re young and you have too much energy to expand and then there’s a phase where you have small kids where progressively you stop doing anything because you’ve got a job and you’ve got kids and and you’re you spend your time driving there somewhere and and then there’s uh the period where your kids are in their teens and you realize you’re fat and flabby and you can’t run to the corner without puffing and then uh most people start something again um I started running uh and uh and then as you get to your 50s then you’ve got you’ve got this is for guys I mean women are surely are different but for guys there’s an off ramp at least in in the the the the CEO population there’s two types of CEOs and their mid-50s everybody kind of starts doing sports again going to a gym or running or stuff like that and then to in your mid-50s there’s the guys that start letting go and kind of go like the hell with us you know and then there’s the guys that go into like extreme stuff you know like Ultra marathons and all that sort of stuff and uh I am not in the extreme sport Cate atory uh I’m trying not to be in the guys that let go but what I do is I run two or three times a week um I’m not a morning person but I do that in the morning um uh I have a dog and my dog likes running so uh it’s also an obligation so twice a week I run with my dog uh and on on weekends and once a week if I’m lucky I manage to go early in the morning despite the fact that I’m not a morning person and um last before AO we were Liv in Switzerland uh one of my kids is still in Switzerland and uh and I do a little bit of commuting and I love skiing uh you know ski touring where you kind of skin up the mountain kind of thing which is also uh it’s uh it’s it’s it’s kind of cardio I can’t go to a gym it it it bores it it puts me it makes me want to kill myself and uh plus next to next to my house in Amsterdam there’s a gym but uh you know they all look like you guys you know I walked past I went in once and I’m like I’m like Jesus Christ you know they all have like abdominal muscles you know I mean I haven’t seen mine since the quter administration so and uh everybody looks really really healthy and I felt like you know so I said the hell with it I’ll continue running and uh and um and uh just you know like like like all the you know you get like stuff that you can do at home you know so all right not a whole lot lessons from that you know but please allow me one last question I mean you still have a lot of years ahead of you as you know CEO the business world I’m sure of it uh nevertheless uh when you look back yeah you know in the in the future at some point at all that you’ve accomplished what kind of Legacy do you want to leave behind yeah um I’m I’m not I’m not playing for a fact Professor Lee told me he’d asked me this question and I was trying to figure out whether I’d give you a like a philosophical answer or an honest answer and I’m going to go for honest nobody’s going to remember me why my legacy doesn’t matter you know it’s kind of like um most you know most of us uh you know kind of like you Ship Sails in the ship sailing in a night you know you you you uh you it’s not about Legacy of kind of looking back or having people look back you you have to be I think you’re happier if your Ambitions are more modest than that I uh I I hope to have U um I hope to have been a good friend Father partner to my loved ones and I hope to have uh help people uh develop and give the best of themselves along the way and what I mean by that is my job is as a CEO you don’t do a whole lot yourself you know it’s mostly about finding the right people for the right challenges helping them achieve things that they might not achieve otherwise and um helping a group actually be better than the sum of its parts and uh and and you can apply that to your personal life you can apply that to your professional life but that if I if I leave these companies better and better position and better um better armed for the future than they were when I arrived with people that are fully capable of functioning without me uh then then I’ve succeeded so essentially my job is to uh work myself into AB solance you know if there’s a team that says like why is this guy here and why are we paying them this much you know then that’s that’s success you know it means that it means that the company is better equipped to uh to F to function and to succeed and once again you the um there’s a lot of there’s a lot of really unhappy successful people because at the end of the day you have to be able to share your success with people that like you for yourself and that means that you have to have friends you have to have family so manage the balance sometimes you uh sometimes it’s not easy but it’s worth it all right well thank you very much for the open captivating conversation thank you thank you very much for your insights my name is Edgar Klein I’m studying business management in the master degree and my question is what role has money played in your journey and what role does it actually play in your life thank you it has played an important role um it’s really I mean the the politically correct answer is to say you know money is not what matters but the issue is that um business life at times feels like it’s measured in money uh I run a company uh we have we’ve been around for 200 years we hope to be around for 200 more years um we have uh annual guidance and we have a midterm guidance three years out I did investor meetings there was an investor conference and I you do these meetings where investors ask you questions I did investor meetings on Tuesday 90% % of the questions I got were about Q2 the next quarter so um people want it they want it now they uh they like that I talk about the products but they want to know what my ebit do is going to be and what whether we’re going to deliver the free cash flow so the the nature of these jobs is that there’s a lot of things that’s measured in financial results now you shouldn’t manage a company based on achieving short-term Financial results and the challenge is to understand what makes the company successful in longterm and and and still managed to deliver the short term in your personal life um I’ve made I’ve made good decisions and bad decisions because of money um I my midlife crisis which I described to you when I went into private Equity was um I felt the the the the the the effort reward ratio was not favorable I felt I was working really hard and I wasn’t making as much money as some of my peers from from Business School uh and I thought well uh if I you know if I make more money I can retire early you know but then actually I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to retire early I kind of enjoy what I’m doing you know so um and then you also find at some point that there’s there’s such a thing as enough money to be happy which is and it it’s very personal everybody’s different uh there’s people that have expensive taste people that don’t uh I actually don’t have expensive taste uh I uh I I I really much struggle to buy stuff for myself I I’m I’m good at uh I’m I’m more easily generous with others than I am with myself and and part of his education you know where your parents came from and and all of that but uh uh it it took me a long time to figure these things out so I would say that uh I did not choose my first job because of money because the oil industry was not a money-driven decision uh I went to business school um not because of money I went to business school because of Life what I mean by that is that I met my wife my wife is a lawyer she’s German but she was a lawyer in France for some strange reason and um and the job that I had in the oil industry I was going to move around from one country to the next forever and she told me look You Know You’re great and I’m sure we could be happy together but if you have this job you know it’s it’s it ain’t going to happen so uh so I I applied to business school so I could do something else that was actually compatible with uh with the aspiration of the woman I want to spend my life with you know so it’s sounds really modern I’m not sure I I I justed she was like okay I she’s not going to be she can’t work and with me doing this job so I have to do another job uh I went to private equity in part for the money I left private equity for the money because I real realize that I realize that you know at some point as as long as you have enough to to live the type of life that you want to live then it’s fine and and then the the other thing is that your your expectations adjust with your income so uh you know there’s a notion of people say you know like I never have enough um if if you’re uh you know if you’re the more you make money the more you feel that you have to make money because you’re uh I don’t know if you remember a few years ago um some years ago there was uh the the the former uh CEO of McKenzie uh went to jail for insider trading and and the whole debate was like why did he do insider trading the guy was a millionaire and uh and and there was a there was a there was a profile in I think the New York Times and the article said you know he was a millionaire hanging out with billionaires and and when you’re a millionaire hanging out with billionaires you feel poor you know so um my my balance is that I I still have the same friends that I had you know at University and even in in before that um a lot of my friends have like barely know what I do and their life is they make a lot less money than I do and we go on holidays together and I I don’t function differently on holiday from the way they function so that means that my my needs are not driving my professional decisions because the stuff that makes me happy you know the people I spend time with you know it calibrates at a level where where it it’s not driving me financial decisions are not driving my my my my my choices in life but um there’s a there was a really interesting um is you know in Academia uh Professor Le knows a lot more about Academia than I do so I’ll be really careful but in Academia the the current Obsession there’s always like popular themes and the the current Obsession at least in the US at Harvard Business School where I studied it’s uh the uh The Pursuit of Happiness so there’s a lot of there’s a lot of there’s a lot of academic studies and and lectures about about you know the the pursuit of happiness and what is what what makes you happy and I think one of and I I read a few of these things because when you get you know um when you get older you start reading that sort of stuff saying you know what is happiness about and one of the lessons from the uh from from these academic studies is that uh you know the notion that that money doesn’t make you happy it’s true money doesn’t make you happy but money to to some level money allows you to fix a few of the things that make you unhappy from the day-to-day basis so essentially uh if you uh if you have enough money to uh repair your car without you know when I was a student I had a I had a really old car and I had a car accident and I remember thinking I can’t repair my car you know and I remember thinking okay I have to I was giving classes and I remember thinking I have to give these many classes before I can repair my car so my car was sitting for a while before I could repair it you know it’s like day-to-day stuff that that that impacts your happiness if you’re able to cover those needs then then that’s enough to be happy and and those needs are dictated by the kind of people you hang out with so uh so everybody’s different but once again I’ve made good and bad decisions because of money because it takes time to figure things out does that does that that’s best answer I can give you but thank you very much thanks hello sir uh my name is Daria and IUD at Tom first thank you for visiting us my question is who has been your biggest inspiration growing up and why I I mean it’s my it’s my dad but it’s um there’s there’s not a negative butt you know it’s I was I was thinking it’s it’s I don’t remember having um I read I watched a few of the videos of of this series and uh I thought the mentor question is is coming and and the mentor question is difficult for me because I don’t I only partially believe in mentors and um um my my inspiration in terms of um who I am today is is essentially the way my parents raised me and I said my dad because my my mom was was uh uh you know from the generation where a lot of women did not work but um it’s my education the way my parents raised me my my dad had a had a had a stressful job um my uh my mom covered for a lot of things that my dad did not do you know I mean my my I think my my dad was I admired him in terms of um in terms of uh what he did and how he applied himself and how he committed to what he committed to um my my dad did had a you know had a really good career but um he probably could have done even more and um but he uh he was from a generation where you didn’t ask for things and you didn’t uh you know you were loyal um he worked for 34 years for the same company and when he was 61 he was one of the senior managers in that company uh he got fired for CS because he had a disagreement with the the new CEO and the new CEO decided to make him AAP a scapegoat for something you know so it was it was it was really interesting because I I admired my dad for his career and I admired my dad for how he picked himself up because 61 he still had a few years of work to go and he was doing really well and it ended from one day to the next you know and then afterwards he did a lot of Consulting work left and right in order to stay active and um but uh I admired his principles I admir his dedication I admired his uh application uh I admired his his commitment um and then I admired the fact that my mom was way more emotionally Adept than my dad and that uh if I had just been raised by my dad I’d probably be like a wolf you know and uh any emotional intelligence I have comes from my mom um but that’s the beauty of having you know having two parents who are really different and beyond that I don’t remember um you know I didn’t have sports idols and and even in business uh I I always chose jobs where you know people talk about having mentors and uh I CH I I often chose jobs because of people you know I took jobs that you remember the two experiences where I told you uh one the the the uh the family office thing for the retail Guy where I didn’t have a contract and the other one afterwards were alone where he told me if if it doesn’t work out I’ll fire you in three months I took both those jobs because of the of of of those guys you know I thought I don’t know what the job is but if I pick the right the right boss and then you can call that the right Mentor um then you know good things will work will will happen so best best answer I can give you and and by the way the the the the uh the uh the the anecdote I I I told you about my dad and and the uh you know getting getting getting fired at 61 do no fault of your own really but uh is that also shaped my uh my my my personal beliefs and one of my and this is very non-corporate but this is I’m here to give you guys advice I’m not here to sell you anything it’s uh it’s manage your own career don’t don’t believe that your company is going to manage your career okay companies don’t manage careers they they say they do but mostly we we try to manage businesses and we need people for that and good people but uh it’s really really hard to manage somebody’s career over a long period because we as companies don’t always understand your aspirations we don’t always understand what’s happening in your life and also our vested interest is that you’re committed to us and to some extent that you’re dependent on us because if you’re good we want you to stay not leave and um if you stay too long especially in this world too long with one company there’s always a moment where people are like well this person’s been with like 15 years with that company is you know is he or she adaptable to something else so uh part of my you know moving around and trying different things was always this idea that um that uh I wanted to be marketable and uh I thought that I would be marketable if I was able to show that I was able to work in different environments on different uh topics in different cultures and uh maybe I pushed a little bit too far but it’s it’s you know it’s the byproduct of that it’s the idea that you make your own luck and to some extent you uh you manage your own path and you buildt yourself by um making sure that you think about your decision tree you know uh rather than to let people think about it for you anyway it got suddenly a lot more philosophical than you were looking for but uh it’s Friday afternoon you know um good afternoon my name is kashin and I’m a master student at T so I’m quite interest in what kind of or what is the most significant uh changes in mindset after you became CEO is it a natural thing for you after you um you work a lot for that uh thank you uh the there’s it’s it’s a really good question and um and let me try to answer that try to answer that intelligently the first thing is that uh being CEO it’s not a career and it’s not an aspiration it it it’s kind of like something that happens along the way so uh you don’t start in your 20s by saying I want to be CEO I think you start in your 20s by saying I want to I want to you know I want to be an entrepreneur or I want to work in health you know in healthc care or I want to be an architect or I uh or I like to uh you know build products and and then uh as you as you develop um your your skill sets become more or less suitable for certain jobs you figure out whether you know how to lead people some of you some of you guys have activities on this campus where you’re uh you lead associations or projects act and you already get a feel for whether you’re able to lead people or not whether you enjoy it whether you enjoy the responsibility you know my um uh everybody’s different uh there’s people that that enjoy that Spotlight enjoy those responsibilities and people that don’t um and then over time if you have those if you have those qualities and those aspirations then then you can look for these opportunities but you develop a Ong the way you know you don’t become CEO first you’re you you run I don’t know like uh uh department and maybe you run uh a small business then maybe you run a country you know in different companies uh so there steps and and then CEO is um there there’s a lot of different CEOs you know there’s CEOs of startups or there’s CEOs of large public traded companies the skill set’s not the same uh so you have to find whatever is the right skill set for you but but at at the end of the day um what are the what are the qualities you need to be CEO um by you don’t have to be an extrovert or an introvert it doesn’t really matter you just have to be comfortable interacting with people I mean there are CEOs that are not comfortable interacting with people but it’s really difficult to be effective if you don’t like the contact so you have to enjoy interacting um if you want to be a good CEO you have to be you have to be a good listener um and and then beyond that you have to um I think you you have to enjoy uh putting things together so that people can give the best of themselves and and if you want to be a really good CEO you have to be willing to uh to uh share the credit and the rewards and make sure that people get uh get rewarded for what they do uh so and if you do that then you become a good leader and as you become as you you’re seen as a good leader then you uh then some point maybe you’re your CEO of something but um it’s a strange job you know it’s uh I’m here talking to you guys um I’m giving you my life stories uh are my life stories interesting I mean because I make him entertaining but I mean uh should I should I really be giving you advice um should I be um should I be uh leading the way for a company of 35,000 people um it’s really weird if you’re if you’re reflective it’s really strange to tell yourself that you have 35,000 people that look at you in terms of Direction so and this is why the uh um the uh the two populations in which you find the most significant proportion psychopath are CEOs and serial killers you know because you this is you it’s essentially it’s it’s it’s a it’s a job where at some time at some there’s moments in time where you have to have a little bit of a suspension of disbelief you have to be able to believe that you’re capable of leading all these people and you’re capable of of U you know um uh defining a strategy and a course and a direction and and and most people are not and and actually I’m not uh but what makes me effective as a CEO is I know how to I’m pretty good at getting the best out of people I’m pretty good at getting people to work with me even when they’re very different from me and therefore I I Rely you know it’s kind of my oil Rick thing I rely on the team and um but I rely on the team but my job is to make sure that decisions are made an action is undertaken because um a lot of really intelligent people don’t decide and and don’t don’t do and you have at the end of the day these are jobs for doers so uh there wasn’t really a come to Jesus moment where suddenly you’re like I’ve seen the light I should be CEO it’s more like one job bigger job bigger job bigger job at some point somebody gives you an opportunity and remember what I said earlier you’re really really scared when you get the call and then a few weeks later you go like oh maybe I kind of know how to do this and then over time you figure it out you know but can’t do it by yourself and if you try it you know bad things are going to happen and uh it’s a team sport so um if you don’t like working with people this is not a good job to have I’m moit I’m studying mastering management at tum and uh you say that uh you Jugger like a dozen jobs before and you also switched Industries so from the perspective of running a business how important do you think is the technical expertise in the domain that you’re venturing into I I uh I studied engineering I’ve got a Bachelor’s and a m and a master’s in mechanical engineering uh the single worst topic the single the the the class on which I systematically got the worst grades was chemistry because there was some chemistry you know there’s like a common trunk at the beginning of mechanical engineering I was horrible at chemistry I run a chemical business um I I ran I ran mechanical engineering businesses you know turbines pumps this is like mechanical stuff but I ran an air pollution control business which is a combination of me mechanical and chemical I ran an electrical business uh which is also very different so and I did private equity which is more financial in many ways so um I don’t think you should overweights the um over the the long term what you’re studying today is not so relevant for what you’re going to be good at in 20 years but it’s really relevant for how you’re going to get there because when you come out of this program you’ll be hired for things that you you you have a little bit of experience and a little bit of knowledge in which means that it’s a lot easier to get a job if you get a a job that’s that fits with your uh your coursework your degree but then afterwards you have to figure out um you have to figure out what you like and if what you if what you’re interested in is far from what your degree is in I don’t know if you if you if you studied um if you studied uh mathematics and uh you end up um you end up uh doing uh uh you you know uh I don’t know uh machine learning and the financial sector you know I don’t know you end up being a Quant and as you are a qu and you’re investing in health care companies you realize that you’re really really interested in the healthare sector and and that you know Pharma is is a is an interesting topic for you then what you figure out is what part of what you do today is somewhat applicable to what you’re interested in and you use that as a transition so for example there’s there’s a there’s a there’s a a significant need for uh for um mathematicians and uh and Big Data people and artificial intelligence and and Drug development so you find that as your entry point and maybe you you you come to the conclusion that what you like is is the commercial aspect of it and then you kind of use that as a so it it’s essentially you jump from one thing to the next but and that’s although it might not come across in the way I describe my career it’s kind of what I did you you try to not go into something that’s a dead end so you try to not go into something where if it doesn’t work out you’re stuck and there’s no way back you try to do something where what you’ve done before is actually helpful in some way as a building block for what you’re going to do later which is why you shouldn’t rely on companies to manage your career cuz you’re the only one who knows what’s what makes you tick and therefore you’ve got to figure out how the how the pieces fit hello uh thank you so much for your Insight my name is AR chumi I’m a master student at Tom and I wanted to ask you how did you find the courage to try new things in a world full of uncertainties how did you cope with the uncertainties because I think a lot of uh my colleagues uh have such a feeling and are anxious about their future they should make the right decision they should go to the right path how did you you cope with that it’s a really important question and the uh uh the uh the the semi ironical answer is that you have to be a little bit delusional but the uh the more important answer is that um um we’re all scared of things you know it it’s it’s um the unknown is scary um a lot of us uh study things so that we feel some sense of control and what we’re going to do you know I’ve done this so I know how it works and therefore I can you know but uh if you’re going to if you’re going to do um I think if you’re going to do great things and and you can Define great things in in a lot of different ways you can stay in the same industry and be the best product guy in that industry and that that’s great you know or you can be a CEO totally different but if you’re going to do great things at some point you have to find the courage to try things that you’re not comfortable with and where you don’t have all the skills and you’re not sure that you’re going to succeed because if you only do things where you know you’re going to succeed then essentially you’re you’re I mean it’s a safe path but it’s a really flat path you know so if if if you’re ambitious or if you feel that you have a calling or if you if you’re easily bored you know and you’re trying to find things that are exciting it it one of a great character trait to have is the ability to control your fear and to suspend your inhibitions and to just do things um a lot of the jobs I I I I took I I did not know how to do you and um and but I’m not crazy and I’m not delusional so I knew I did not know how to do them but I relied on on the fact that I know I’m a quick learner and I’m not embarrassed to ask questions and uh and and therefore I was betting on myself I was betting on I’ll be quick enough in asking questions and and and kind of synthesizing all of that into knowledge that I can apply to that job so that by the time people would realize I have no clue what the hell I’m doing I’ll actually start having a clue what the hell I’m doing you know so uh it it’s everybody’s different but um being able to uh ask questions and to uh listen to the answers and then to decipher them into something that’s usable is a really important skill to have and and if you have that and you can bet on yourself and try things that you don’t know how to do but um most people um most people are afraid to do that either because they’re uh they’re they’re um either because they they don’t like the lack of control or because they um they feel you know it’s kind of like the impostor syndrome you know like well but if I take this job and you know like people will see I I don’t know what I’m doing but you know look most people uh most people uh given the chance can figure things out the only question is can you figure things out fast enough so I encourage one of the one of the wonderful things I did I mean the reason why I’m in this job today and and I’m not saying that you should aspire to be in this job you know there there are a lot of people that have really different jobs at all levels of society that are as happy or more than I am you know so it’s not this is not the an ambition that you should have uh but the reason I’m in this job is that it’s because I was not scared of trying things that I did not know how to do but I did it always in a calcul manner always thinking what do I need to do who do I need to talk to how do I need to function in order to backfill before it becomes obvious that I’m not qualified for this job so sometimes it works too sometimes hi sir my name is Zane um my question is like can you describe a particularly difficult decision you had to make as a CEO of ax Noble and like what’s the Thought proc behind it and thank you well a Noel it’s it’s uh it’s been a year and a half and that year and a half that year and a half is uh is uh has been really fruitful but ax Noel was a company that was already on a transformation path and that was already doing a lot of good things so I I I don’t have a good example of something dramatic to give you it’s more a lot of it’s a lot of smaller decisions really impactful decisions for the businesses but you know axo is like axo is is pretty much 20 different businesses they’re all paint and coating businesses but they all have different markets and different needs so uh all these decisions it’s more the granularity that’s a challenge but if I if I give you an example that answers your question but it’s not an actual example it’s a souls are example uh souls are I’ve been running Soldier uh I’ve been running Soldier for 2 and a half years and um for for um remember what I said about work life balance and making sure that your kids still speak to you at some point in their life when they’re uh my son was my son was 18 he was in his last year of gymnasium and he’d qualified for like a uh um like a ski Championship like French ski Championship the junior thing he was really excited about it um it was we were living in Switzerland it was it was it was in it was in the French Alps it was over a long weekend like you know you have to get there Thursday night uh I took the Friday off I drove him there and uh and my aim was to uh watch him compete and on the Friday afternoon I was watching him um I was watching him practice uh and uh and I got a text message and the text message was from our general counsel that said uh our main shareholder we rep public traded but we had this Russian shareholder has just been put under us sanctions and it was a Friday afternoon because they did that in Washington DC on Friday morning so it’s Friday afternoon in Europe and this was 2018 it wasn’t for Ukraine because that Russian sholder is actually a Ukrainian Jew you know so he’s not you know people say Russian but he’s a Ukrainian Jew he got put in the US sanctions for interfering with us elections uh don’t ask me to get into uh what that means but what I did not understand and nobody understood is that U the US had just changed their sanction laws and any company in which a sanctioned person had more than 50% of the capital was automatically under sanctions too and uh he had more than 50% of of sulzer so um as I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on and uh how I was going to tell my son that I was going to abandon him on the mountain and and go back to Zurich um we started getting messages from our banks saying we’re uh we’re uh we’re blocking all the credit cards we had 2,000 Sal um we had 2,000 field people in the field that can pay for their plane tickets or their hotel room um on Saturday morning we weren’t able to transact in dollars on um over the weekend we had customers driving into facilities picking up half finished equipment saying you guys are are going to disappear as a company because the US has blocked you um we’ll take what we can take and good luck and all of that when um the whole management team was supposed to leave uh for for China at the end of the weekend because we had big business reviews in China in our business so I had to figure out what to do the first thing I had to figure out was do I send the management team to China or do I say everybody stays here and then uh how do we how do we work on this um so uh I’ll give you the short version and if you’re interested I’ll give you the longer version afterwards but uh the short version is I sent everybody to China except this the CFO and myself the CFO by the way was Chinese or or we had a I had I had just appointed you know I’m going to I’m going to make myself sound like like like you like a like a uh supporter of diversity which I am I appointed a Chinese woman as CFO to a Swiss German company which is that’s the positive the negative is she’d been in the job for 4 days so Jill and I stayed and everybody else we sent to China and we said you guys behave as if it’s business as usual so they were doing business reviews and meeting customers and we’re saying oh yeah it’s a misunderstanding with the US everything will be fine you know bake it until you make it and in parallel over the weekend we were negotiating with the Russian shareholder and we we were retaining lawers in the US and and and we essentially over the weekend we managed to buy part of our Capital back from the Russian shareholder um and we managed to do that and have 172 page um uh submission to ofac which is the US Treasury which you need in order to get out of the sanctions and we had that with them on Monday morning at 7: in the morning all of that with a team of 10 people and all the people that were on this team apart from myself the CFO and the general counsil they were all like more Junior people so I think the the the you know the if there’s lessons it’s it’s uh sometimes um sometimes the the most important part of the job is to not give a sense of panic you know show people that the the Earth is still rotating and that you know the sun will come up tomorrow and that and that we have a plan even if you don’t really have a plan two good ideas don’t come from the most senior people you have to get the most qualified people for the task that you have and it doesn’t seniority doesn’t really matter and three you have to listen um the uh I drove back from the French Alps uh on really early on Saturday morning I did calls on Friday and then I because it was like 5 in the afternoon I I drove back uh I left at like 4:00 in the morning I was at 10:00 in the office and while I was driving I was thinking and doing phone calls and all of that and I arrived in the office and I said like I know what we’re going to do this is what we’re going to do and I had like 10 people listening to me including some of the more Junior people and and after I said this is what we’re going to do everybody like went quiet and then we’re like well uh we thought about it too and we think actually there’s another way and it turns out their idea was better than mine actually so uh even when you’re in a hurry it it’s you you save a lot of time by by listening at some point you have to move to implementation but a little bit of listening to helps a lot so you know there’s a lot of difficult decisions that was those that was Crisis management and then there’s difficult decisions on people you know there’s uh you have really really good people that are really not good at their job and uh and you feel bad because they were good at their previous job and you put them in that new job and now they’re underperforming that new job and you go like can I reposition that person do I have to uh fire that person uh you know these are these are personally complicated things because sometimes the right answer is not the answer you would do just as a person it’s sometimes but yeah lots of examples is that all right thank you very much for your wonderful for visit GRE [Music]
1 Comment
I really enjoyed the interview.. He speaks frankly and from the heart. even about hardship.