Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I have a financial background but I have always considered myself a business leader first. As Warren Buffett said, Finance is the language of business so I learned finance before trying to learn the industries I worked in.
I started my career at General Electric where I worked for 8 years in both industrial and financial services divisions, before moving to Novartis 17 years ago. My journey took me to multiple countries including Spain – the place I consider home even though I am half French, half Portuguese.
Over the years, I realized than I love building up and starting from a blank page so I gravitated towards roles that involved driving change and overcoming ambiguity: In addition to leading transformations, I am grateful I had the opportunity to setup and scale new organizations a number of times.
What drives you?
Personally, I need to feel that I am serving a cause beyond myself and usually it’s about other people. I am at my best when I can coach and build confidence in others to achieve things they thought were impossible.
Your career track to-date has been one of continued growth. How do you overcome being uncomfortable?
You don’t! In fact, you need to overcome being comfortable because discomfort is where growth is. This is a lesson I learned from my father: I used to ride motorcycles when I was a kid and he would always tell me “if you are not falling, you are not testing your limits” (you can imagine how my mother felt about that one).
What needs to be avoided is the panic zone and, personally, situational awareness and self-awareness helped me stay away from it most of the time.
With experience, I learned how to quickly understand the requirements of a particular situation, to be brutally honest with myself about what I bring to the role and what I don’t and to figure out where to get help. It’s amazing how many people are willing to help if you just ask.
Large organizations invest vast sums of money in data and digital transformation. How do you demonstrate Return On Investment?
It’s interesting how “digital first” companies never ask themselves this question simply because data and digital is so tied to their business model. I guess the challenge lies with companies that view it as something they do as an add-on to their core activities. In large organizations, there are also plenty of transformations that can be considered “way of doing business” and trying to justify a ROI can potentially hinder your credibility. Don’t be too creative for the sake of coming up with a ROI.
However, what needs to be clear is the primary objective of the initiative: the advice I always give regarding pitching a data and digital investment is to tie it to a specific business problem to be addressed (and if you have testimonials from your customers even better). It makes it easier to identify concrete KPIs and meaningful benefits, even if not hard P&L/Cash impacts. And if you can’t, you should drop the transformation!
Knowing what problem you are solving and how you can measure the benefits is something you need to do upfront, before you get into the technology choices. On my last transformation, we used a value wheel to explore all angles of the high level processes we were tackling. Our ambition was to radically simplify the company and enhance business capabilities leveraging technology innovation so we evaluated a set of hard P&L impacts but also more intangible ones such as increased competitiveness (measured for example by incremental speed or customer experience) or even reputation and risk management. Not all of these contribute to a ROI but they do contribute to a strong investment case.
Mistakes people usually make when undergoing large scale digital transformations?
I had so much respect for the undertaking that I became a student of failure in digital transformation. I took my role within months of a smaller but similar project failing and being stopped. Hence, I really took the time to learn from our failures and interviewed a dozen companies about their own transformations.
I heard many things but, in a nutshell, we tend to fall in love with the technology/solutions and underestimate the people aspects of such programs:
• how much of a priority is the program for the executive leadership (not only in words) and do they understand that things will go wrong (because they will)
• is top internal talent that understands the capability gaps hindering our competitiveness or effectiveness freed up and incentivized to join the program
• do we have a detailed understanding of how the company operates today and what it will take for our associates, customers and partners to adopt the new ways of working
At the board meeting where the program was endorsed, I started my presentation by stating that “~70% of large scale digital transformations fail”. In my view, we gained their support because we had a good understanding of the challenges we faced.
How do you lead huge teams that encompass so many functions?
First, stating the obvious, you have to accept that you cannot be the expert in all the fields and functions. However, you can become an expert in your team members: what are they good at, what is success for them, in what environment do they perform at their best, what obstacles can you remove for them,… And finally you also need to become an expert in encouragement and cheering! In my experience, this behavior is contagious and rapidly adopted by most people managers in large teams.
To me, it’s what you want for people, not what you want from them, that makes you a leader worth following.
Your thoughts on intrapreneurship?
Intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs, despite operating in very distinct environments and with different risks and rewards potential, share common traits that I admire.
Among other things: they obsess about the customer or the problems they want to solve, they anticipate needs, they mobilize people and resources, they lead change and have a superior ability to deal with ambiguity.
I was surrounded by many entrepreneurs since a young age (I even married one!) and I have a huge respect for what they do. This definitely influenced the type of roles or projects I took on during my career and, despite working for a multinational, I often felt like I was sitting at the back of a garage.
In my opinion, companies wanting to drive innovation should be more deliberate about identifying their intrapreneurs and assigning them to resolving business challenges or responding to customer needs. I would also add a final ingredient: creating an environment where intrapreneurs can experiment and iterate within acceptable boundaries for the company gatekeepers (Finance, Risk, Compliance,…).
Top 2 key challenges faced right now?
On the professional front, the team successfully completed the first two phases of the program and I am now trying to identify my next challenge, one that will test my limits again! On the personal front, keeping my Math skills sharp to be able to help my son with his homework. I am way past my limit and had to study real hard so far this school year!
Any closing remarks/general advice to share.
Lift people up, there is no better cardiovascular exercise!
Thank you for having me.