EP06 - How I Begin Leading When I Take Over as CEO
The first step is not to act. It is to see.
When I take over as CEO, I do not begin with execution. I begin by understanding the environment where the company stands. What people feel. What they fear. Where trust is missing.
In this Episode:
Francois shares how he begins leading when taking over as CEO. A method grounded in presence, trust, and strategic observation, built to align teams and move organisations forward.
It is a form of SWOT analysis, yes, but not the theoretical kind. It is lived. The external situation. The internal culture. The political undercurrents. And my own limits. What can I realistically bring into this mandate?
The recruitment process gives you a preview. But the real landscape only reveals itself when you are inside.
On day one, I do not make announcements. I meet with the management team. Privately. No audience. No filter. Just an honest conversation. The objective is not consensus. It is a connection.
You cannot expect commitment if you do not show up as a person first.
From there, I meet the wider team. If the team is large, I find a way to signal arrival. A message. A small gathering. A note. Something that marks presence. Because there must be a before and after.
If the organisation is misaligned, you will feel it. Sometimes, tensions are visible. Sometimes, they live under the surface. In one case, two sales channels were in silent competition. No one had addressed it. We named it. We accepted it. And only then could we move.
Leadership is not about removing all friction. It is about choosing which friction to face and when.
I do not believe in the 100-day rule. I believe in motion. But motion without clarity is chaos. You must first set the direction. Then create the environment where people can follow it.
It is not the plan that delivers results. It is the people who carry it. They only do that when they trust you.
How you show up shapes what is possible.
Timecode:
00:00 Introduction to Company Takeover
00:09 Understanding the Environment and SWOT Analysis
01:30 Challenges and Personal Strategies
02:59 First Day in the Office
04:11 Building Relationships with the Team
06:12 Creating Motion and Setting Goals
08:21 Addressing Internal Conflicts
09:26 Delivering Results and Leadership Choices
10:30 Conclusion and Personal Reflection
Francois Links:
Apple Podcast
Transcript:
How do I take over a company comes with a first realization of the environment. So where I need to, for myself depict what environment this company is operating. And um, there is also the internal element. So it's, it's a simple SWOT analysis that. Would be done, but not in a way, like you say, you know, I've done an MBA, so, uh, when I, at the end of my MBA, I believe that, you know, Jack Welch, general Electrics Easy pd, I do that on Monday morning and the rest of the week, you know, I just go and play golf.
Right? So there is a theory of everything that you can and can't do, but taking over a company comes with. The, the, the, this, this, this multidimensional swat, let's say there is, um, um, you, you have to do it business good wise. You have to do it also your own in that environment. Realize what you can, can't do, what, what, what do you bring into this, this company. But that's something that would normally naturally happen during the recruitment process. So you don't recruit it and you don't say yes to, to take care of a company if you don't have a. Minimum and understanding of the challenge that you are going to be to be facing. Those challenges for me, need to be quite high.
I know that, uh, other people need to have lower challenges or if the the challenges are too high for them, they will try to hedge them. I will try to find ways to build a. A solution for those challenges that push the, the company forward. That, that, that's more my, my, my, my thought. So I'm going to take the example of the, the last one I took, which was to take a, a, a small department into a, uh, a firm with global market. And, um, I have done strategy, what I've achieved my own, what I can and can't do. And that was. The first basis, then I needed to also simplify the message, simplify the strategy, simplify the goal so that the team needs to be able to, or was going to be able to see where we were going to go. Because if the strategy is very ambitious, that there's been transpiration of the strategy to the team.
The team is not aligned, then it's not going, is going to fly. So I come back to the heavy lifting, that was a hell of a challenge and he needed a hell of a number of, uh, shoulders to, to lift that, that stuff and, and move forward. So when I've defined that the moment was, had come to, uh, to meet the team, to my first day in the office, and my first day in the office is.
I speak to my management first. You know, I, I, I don't, I don't see anyone, I, I don't want to see anyone at this stage. I want to speak to the management, and I want to speak to the management alone. Without the stakeholders, without the, the previous managers or whoever is going to be supporting this. It has to be, you know, like a one to a one to five or, you know, that, like creating the, the, the, the situation that.
Is going to be a positive step, an assessment of the people, assessment of myself, you know, in the situation. And start building the, the, the, the relationship. The emotional link is important. Doesn't have to like the people, but it has to be an emotion. I have to see emotion from them and from me at the end of my. 10, 15 minutes. It needed to be clear that for them and for me, we were going to be together in that journey. They were with me, I was with them. And then, uh, you need to, you need to, uh, we need to build on that, this, the second element is to be able to create a link with the team. I used to, I mentioned also Juju Caesar, who went in the first line to, to fight with his guys.
If he doesn't know his guys before, he wouldn't have never have been there. So his campaign is, is a moment of truth there came from months and months of hard work of working with those guys, sometimes sleeping better than them. That's clear. But you know, there was a lot of moment that created. The touch points with his team, team members, high up and lower, lower down.
That, that creating the ability to, to to have the trust that, you know, uh, I'm sure some leaders that were badly behaving with the, with their team, if he was going in the first line for a fight, he was going to find himself alone because the other was flee. And then he that, yeah. So. You, you, the, the, the team, the spirit of a team, not the team spirit, the spirit of the team moving forward is, is very important to be created.
And you, you don't have, you know, many days to do that. If you do that on day 10, it's too late. So once the, the management team was met then, and you need to meet the team, and I met all of. So introducing myself themselves as well. But it's very important that, that, to create that moment, an emotional link with some, it was, you know, there's many people, so you can't, but, and if the team is too big, then make a tunnel.
Make, make, make, make a moment. Gather everyone. And if you can't gather everyone, make sure that everyone has a message on their desk. At some point that you, that you've come that, that you do something. So there is not necessarily a physical moment with people, but there has to be a, a, a, a moment where there was a, before you and after you, and on that you can start building then.
Okay. We speak a lot about the a hundred days. You know, I've been, I've been spoken about that quite a lot and, and during my career, you know, it's so important and so on. I don't measure that way. You know, for me, the a hundred days is, is simply, is, is, is, is, is nice. It's a milestone. You can say it's, it is done and so on.
I think what's important is to create motion, but you can't create motion too quickly. If you create motion too quickly without having hammered in your goal, your vision, where you're going to go, and that's clear for everyone. Then the motion is going simply, uh, to be like, you know, those, uh, um, basket with lot of, you know, little, little things that move or, you know, it's not going to, to be moving in the right direction, like molecules in a, in a room.
It's going all over the place when you hit it. So if you hit the room, like in DY dynamic, you need to be able to, you know, create the motion towards. That the, the, the, the, the right goal, the, the right, the right. So it has to be like a hair dry or something that push everything in the right, uh, in the right direction. And there a very clever person, I'm not going to mention him, but he said you, we were working precisely on this when I took over that company and he said, Francois, you need to slow down, slow things down to win time. Don't accelerate, slow down, put the steps in your milestones and you create the, the, the right environment so that your team will be functional.
Not, you know, you know, the, the, the, the forming, norming and you know, the, there has to be a moment where you create the, those steps. If, if, if the, if, if the team doesn't have the time to start fitting with each other and, and, and being given the. The right guidelines, guidance to start fitting with each other then is not going to going to fly. And, and, and, and, and one very important element at the time was, uh, everything under the rug, you know, they were just like best friends, but they didn't like each other. They didn't speak with each other. And there was so many unaid that it was impossible that they could work. So what the first thing we've did, we've done was spending, um, one evening.
The whole morning until, uh, maybe then lunch and then, uh, three o'clock. And then we need to speak about the elephant in the room was 2, 2, 2 sales channel we're competing unfairly with each other. And it needed to be said. People needed to be accepting it because operationally we couldn't change it, but we need to find a way to make it work.
And then that was the moment. Where, uh, we changed the, the, the, the, the, the approach, the, the, the, the team changed. That was important and needed the time to get there. But at that, on that, the first day, then it would never have been able to work. Yeah. So, uh, and of course after that you start, you need to start delivering, uh, results, uh, growth or money, or.
Integration, uh, or review of strategic plan, which always happen because the environment change. You make assumptions that that don't work and, uh, be transparent about that. The, the choice you make also at the beginning needs to define you. Do you choose to be a distant leader or do you choose to be a, a leader that is going to be with the team?
Do you choose to be diplomatic or do you choose to be. Not diplomatic. And, and, and so your, your, your personality, the way you, you, you want to act and, and will present yourself as a leader is also very important. I think it was pretty clear from the discussions before what I've chosen and what, what I feel at ease with.
But I know some leaders, they tend to different, to have different personality for different situation. And, um, it's powerful sometimes and sometimes it's, uh, it is not powerful. The point there, and if I come back to, uh, the, the SWOT analysis, you analyze the company, you analyze the environment, but you also analyze yourself what works for you and what works for you.
Will, may, may not, well work for another one and, and somebody copying my style may not be successful or could be more successful than, you know. It just, you need to feel it. To make the assessment and objective assessment, but also to feel it. The right amount between emotion and objectivity is going to be what is going to drive you to the, to the right place as a and the right format. As a leader, I.