A new company, team and country : Where to start?
Mont Blanc Mountain Area from TMBTENT
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”
As Panerai’s GM for the Asia-Pacific, Jean-Sébastien Gerondeau multiplied revenue in the region five-fold and opened more than 20 retail outlets across Asia. When that chapter in his career closed at the end of 2014, a new challenge awaited him: how to re-launch the Montblanc brand in France.
From managing a top-tier luxury watch brand with almost no marketing spend in an ultra-high growth region, Jean-Sebastien suddenly found himself in a sluggish single market famous for its constraints on doing business. An added hurdle: while French, he had never worked in France before.
We talked to Jean-Sebastien, Managing Director at Montblanc since February 2015, about how he successfully adapted to an unfamiliar environment and repositioned the French subsidiary of Swiss company Richemont for renewed growth.
1 - From our previous encounters, I know that you trust your gut feelings more than self-help books such as The First 90 Days. How did you do prepare for your new role?
It is fundamental when you start a new position to understand the brand, its DNA. Everything starts with brand knowledge. Rather than reading ‘How To’ books or hire consultants, I took two key actions:
I spoke with more than a dozen publishers in the specialized media to understand how they viewed the brand, the collection, and company’s positioning and its competition.
I visited every Montblanc boutique and talked to retailers and shop owners, regardless of revenue generated. My key criterion in prioritizing visits was the length of the partnership with Montblanc. I started doing that even before Day One as Managing Director , so my “90 days” started early. I still visit retailers, by the way, even during my holidays or wherever I travel in the world.
In 35 years, you are the First Managing Director who visits my shop
MontBlanc retailer
Talking to retailers I learned about how they perceive the brand, our marketing, sales support, and the products themselves. The aim was to understand the Montblanc DNA -- what it is and what it is not. The DNA of a brand is connected to its purpose. This is what makes a business grow, and employees engaged with their work.
2 - Twenty months down the road as the Managing Director of Montblanc France, how do things look? Would you have done anything differently?
There is nothing major I would have done differently. What I didn’t anticipate, however, was the final results of my actions and decisions.
When you start as a manager, people understandably scrutinize your every declaration and action, whether it’s a symbolic gesture such as personally meeting everyone on all three floors of our French HQ or strategic business decisions. When a new Managing Director steps in, people expect quick and decisive change.
Getting feedback from the ground was right and priceless
The feedback and lessons learned from visiting 200 shops were priceless. I also spent a lot of time in face-to-face conference calls, and doing deep dives into the numbers. It became clear that retailers were, year-by-year, losing confidence into the brand. It is retailers who present the products to the final client, day in and day out. They are the ones who make your brand live in the market. My top priority, then, was to restore their confidence in the brand.
Another axiom: If your teams and the market have been waiting for the right kind of change, implement it quickly. Most of my key decisions were triggered by feedback from my teams and retailers. Montblanc France saw deep restructuring and some downsizing, but any knowledge loss was more than compensated by an increase in motivation and commitment from retailers. There was, in fact, pent-up expectations for the changes I made. Today, the Montblanc brand has a very strong position in the market. More than anything, we needed a boost in motivation.
When you reorganize, find the people you can trust for support
Trust is the foundation on which everything must be built. When you reorganize, recognize and reward honest, hard-working people. In so doing, you will earn their trust and support. Trust is about letting people work without interfering, and accepting minor mistakes as long as the commitment is there. If a team lacks some level of expertise, I will boost their skills sets rather than backing away from difficulty. In the luxury sector, knowledge of the brand is key.
3 - You started in the Richemont Group as a director’s assistant. How did you make your way up the ladder?
My mentor was the president of Panerai, an Italian. I started as his assistant and learned two basic rules from him: put yourself in the client’s shoes, and be pragmatic. That’s it.
“I am an introvert leader, my way of making a difference is about listening
Jean Sébastien Gerondeau, on the left
I am an introvert leader, which means that I rarely do long public speeches or TED-like storytelling like to motivate my teams. My way of making a difference has been to listen to clients and to our teams, all the time.
I have kept this habit all along, from Italy to China and France. I informally talk to people at every level of the ladder to see how they are doing and to get their opinions on problem fixes. At the same time, I am careful not to interfere with middle management.
4 - What is the biggest lesson you learned in your career, and what do you share with team managers who want to become better leaders ?
Three things come to mind, and I would break each one down into a warning, and an action plan.
Always be careful about your estimations, whether it’s revenue, growth, or number of unit sold
Warning: I had the tendency to always look at the glass as half-full. That subtly distorted my vision and led to me overemphasize positive forecasts and good news.
To do: Review the numbers constantly and give the hard truth right away to your stakeholders, investors and managers. Don’t say that things will get better when you don’t know if that is accurate, otherwise you are uselessly adding stress [and creating the potential for greater disappointment later on].
Don't assume that your ideas are as clear to others as they are to you
Warning: Your ideas may seem self-evident because they have been maturing in your mind for days, weeks or months. But it usually takes time for others to understand your logic, and even more for them to adhere to it.
To do: Add structure to your presentations. Proof them with people unfamiliar with the subject to get feedback. Add explanation and background about what you are going to do, along with why and how you are going to do it. Even if you think you have sufficiently communicated, you may be underestimated by a factor of ten!
If you announce something to you team, get it done in six months or less
Warning: I used to hint at projects or ideas to my teams before they were a sure thing. But sometimes I became so swamped with operational matters that the projects never materialized.
To do: Start with one simple idea, get feedback, and then implement it quickly. An example: We did a pop-up at Gare du Nord. It was the first time Montblanc has ever been presented at a railway station. It worked, and helped to boost confidence and motivation.
4 - You have three children and a wife with strong family ties in Italy. How do you balance your private and professional lives? Any secrets?
I spend a lot of time with my family during the weekends and holidays. I really engage with my daughters -- I am fully present when I play with them, and put my mobile phone away during parts of the day.
I love Italian and Thai food. Maybe a little too much, so I run two or three times a week and set goals – such as a couple of half-marathons a year – in order to stay fit. To relax, I do stretching classes and read the news a lot.
5 - MontBlanc launched a new product series featuring “Le Petit Prince”. Is there a quote from Saint Exupéry classic you would like to share with us?
My favourite one is this: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.” This can be translated this way: “It is only with the heart that one can see clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Sometimes, even in our business lives, we should think this way in order to make good decisions.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint Saint-Exupéry