EP01 - Core Principles of Purpose-Driven Growth
There is a lot said about growth, usually in numbers.
Forecasts. KPIs. Investor slides. I have created those too. But often, what is not said matters more.
Because beneath every target is a different kind of conversation. One that asks:
What are we trying to build?
Who believes in it?
And who is just nodding along?
In this Episode:
Francois Jacquemin shares reflections on clarity, alignment, and sustainable leadership in complex organisations. A calm and precise take on growth, purpose, and strategic execution.
Purpose begins before the plan.
One of the most effective goals I ever set was not elegant. It was not visionary. It was a number.
One hundred million in premium, five years, organic.
It became more than a financial target. It became a way to align people. A reason to say no to distractions. A language we all understood.
Purpose is not something you invent. It is something you discover when everyone starts moving in the same direction.
You cannot navigate complexity with vagueness.
The reality of executive life today, especially in insurance and reinsurance, is complexity.
Fragmented ecosystems. Competing stakeholder interests. New regulation. Legacy systems. Short-term pressures.
But complexity cannot become an excuse for being vague.
The more uncertainty there is around you, the more clarity your team needs from you.
Who are your real allies? What is the single outcome that matters? What support do you need, and where must you reduce friction?
Alignment is more durable than ambition.
You can chase ambition without alignment, but you will exhaust people.
It is tempting to keep building new goals when the old ones stall. But often, what is missing is not energy. It is coherence.
Alignment does not mean everyone agrees. It means everyone understands what we are trying to achieve, and what their role is in getting there.
That cannot be outsourced. It has to be earned.
Leadership is not about setting direction once. It is about holding the space so others can follow it.
The best goals I have led were the ones that were simple, visible, and shared.
If you are growing something meaningful, the first question is not "how big?"
It is "why now, and with whom?"
That question still guides me.
If it is guiding you too, I invite you to listen to the latest episode of COVERED.
Not because I have the answer. But be
Timecode:
00:00 Introduction: Growing vs. Rebuilding a Business
00:12 Setting Clear Goals for Business Growth
01:09 The Importance of the North Star
02:19 Identifying and Communicating with Stakeholders
03:26 Establishing and Communicating Your Plan
04:04 Navigating Internal and External Competition
04:38 Communicating with Your Team
04:56 Setting Clear and Simple Goals
05:25 Achieving a $100 Million Target
06:40 Importance of External Communication
08:37 Building Trust and Long-term Partnerships
09:09 Steps to Grow Your Business
Francois Links:
Apple Podcast
Transcript:
Growing and rebuilding the business are actually, from my perspective, two different concepts.
Growing the business is, um, a motorway. So you have, you have to set your goal: what are you going to grow, but where are you going? And this goal has to be very simple. Rebuilding the business requires a lot of homework before identifying what works, what doesn't work, and then setting your goals.
But let's start with growing the business. Put in a situation as a CEO, where the shareholder or the mission of, of the company, the shareholder is a requirement, is to expand a company or a unit or an idea into something which is successful on the market. You have to assess what is it that you're gonna sell, to whom you're gonna sell it. Most important, what is your goal? Is your goal 5 million, 10 million, 200 million, or a billion Euro, dollars, or whatever?
And then once you've assessed that, this is your North Star. I would to to use a term which is, is known by everyone, but let's say this is your ultimate goal. It's even more than your North Star. It's, it's, your ultimate goal. So the North Star is what you look at to go somewhere. To go to America, like Columbus or wherever they were going, those adventurous, uh, sailors in the past where they had, uh, no way, no no compass, uh, almost, almost nothing except the stars to orient themselves. Um, the, it's, it's, the journey is important. The the path is important, the guide on your journey, but you need to know where you're going to. And Columbus, an example I took before was going to to India. Of course you go, you went to America. But that's exactly what happens in business. Usually you think you're going to go somewhere, you, you, you, go there. But at some point things are happening and are changing. So this is, uh, this is, this is a key element, uh, to be aware of.
Once you've assessed that, what your North Star is. Key is also to, to be able to communicate to the stakeholders. Who are the stakeholders? They above you, next to you, behind you and outside your own environment. You're never alone in, in in, in, doing this. And, uh, you need to be able to assess who your key stakeholders are in a large ecosystem. And this large ecosystem is made of a few friends, a few pillars that you're going to rest on to push forward and a lot of species of this eco ecosystem that actually competing with you. Competing maybe for the business, but also there are forces that are going to try to push you. And, um, you need to identify those: North Star, identifying the forces, the pillar you're gonna rest on, and those element that are going to try to put you off course or slow you down or make you fail. You can't identify all of them, so you have to cluster them somehow.
It's time now to establish the plan and to communicate it. Once you've assessed your environment, you've assessed you allies. You need to establish your plan and start. Communicating this plan. Communication, the plan is different when you communicate to your team or when you can communicate to your shareholders or you communicate to your fellow colleague in a group, in an insurance group, um, coming from that or whichever group, of companies you are in. And, uh, if you work as a group, you also need. Are the companies of the group to support you, not to stop you. You will go, you will compete for time, resources, attention, et cetera, et cetera. Um, for, for your own unit. So you need to have lies everywhere so that this competition is, uh, not too strong or that you can rely on them to push you forward, to put you back on course to mentor you, and to help your team to go forward. It's also very important to communicate to the team. Um, a unit. You're never alone unless you start your company by yourself. But normally, um, there is, there are a, a, large number of individuals, divisions, department unit that are making up your your company. And it's very important also to communicate with them. Where are you going to in a very, very simple way. The key message that needs to transpire from the, the presentation to, team is, uh, a very simple goal. A very simple message. Few words. It has to be not necessarily badass in the way it's, it's, it's, it's given, it's as, as, a, as a, as a target. But it has to be something which is very snappy, very clear, and, uh, has no, um, way of misunderstanding.
The last one we've done, or no, one of done was a hundred million. Um, Um, that's simple. Basically, it was to grow a small department into a uh, a lar, much larger company, so more than tenfold. And, uh, The objective was to be a hundred million premium income over a period of five years or reach that organically. And, and, uh, there was a lot of element into how we could get there, the journey. What was important is to forget about all that and just to remain in with a hundred million as, as, as the, uh, as the target, and then you can complete your vision with how, where your customers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the whole team and the whole management, they were in ground, we pushed very hard into making sure that this was the target. This is also a message that transpired board meeting and in every presentation that were to be given internally, but not only internally was important to give that message externally was also very important to give that message. What externally means is that, um, although uh. we are, um, a unit based in Luxembourg at the time, it's very important that we rely on a lot of. Element outside. You rely on element outside that are distribution partners, clients, group clients, individual clients. I can detail this very much, but the message is: a company cannot be successful all by itself. It needs also to rely on a lot, a large part of the ecosystem. This ecosystem, as said before, needs to be, um, aligned with the goal. And the goal that we need to give is this north star. So the a hundred million was also key to give it to them. Although at the beginning I hesitated because, you know, it was a it's, it's, it's a bit internal. It is a bit shareholder oriented. It's, uh, it's, it's more like. For board, um, presentation and, and, and convincing about where we're going and get the budget to achieve it. But if you are true to your own goal and the team is not, uh, uh, very large team of 10,000 employees, but uh, a small or medium sized company, it is very important that. It's not watertight. The conversation between company and the dis the partners and distributors is not watertight. So one way or another, that goal, that message will transpire between employees and, and, and, uh, and, uh, the distributions. In whichever, wherever they are in the world, whether they're very close where, or they're very far, they could be on the other side of the planet. You know, nowadays it makes no difference, uh, in terms of distance, how the information is, is transpires.
So it was much better to, or I find it's much, much more compelling to be very transparent with distribution and convincing them to work with us is to say we wanna grow and we have a long-term view. What it creates trust and also, uh, the ability to project itself ourself into the future and establish a long-term partnership as opposed to a short-term partnership. So it's a bit double trust, you know, trust in the person, trust in the fact that, uh, this is, this is going to stay. And, um, and off we, off we go.
So going back to, um, grow the business first, identify your North Star, make it snappy, create the plan, rely on executing the plan, and base that, um, on, on, on some pillars or use some pillars to push the plan forward.