Reaching The Summit of Global Hospitality - with Jean-Jacques Morin

16:24Jean-Jacques Morin:But that's just to give you a size of the network. And those hotels under the Accor banner employ about 3 ,000 people in the world. So it's a big and large company, which is very, very wide in what it can offer.

16:42Brave Bold Brilliant Host:And the range of brands. So Accor has grown through a combination of organic and inorganic. So there's been a number of acquisitions over the years. And that's not always easy to grow through acquisition because you have a mix of culture. you buy a business, it gives you immediate scale, but then you have to sort of work out how you sit together. And in your 10 years, Jean-Jacques, in the organization, how have you made those acquisitions successful, would you say, so that you now have this beautiful, incredible family of brands, but you've added to the organization through mergers and acquisitions, etc.

17:24Brave Bold Brilliant Host:So how have you successfully achieved that? Because a lot of businesses don't. We didn't make them all work.

17:34Jean-Jacques Morin:And I think some of them have been extremely successful. And notably, all what we do today with Lifestyle, the brand called Ennismore, is immensely successful. and we did it at a time where nobody believed into the capability of the customer to be willing to go for those experiences. But the short answer between the one that worked very nicely like Enispor and the one that failed is to be able to keep the spirit of the entity that got initially developed. And let me explain that. we constituted Lifestyle, which is a great success, from the merger of 12 companies. And what we've done is we kept the guy, we invented the concept of the brand in those companies, still today, in the environment, in the perimeter of Fennismore, with quite some strong power.

18:33Jean-Jacques Morin:If you want to go and get a 25-hour hotel, for example, in Accor, and if the original founder of 25 hours doesn't like the property, has got a vetorite. That's a pretty strong height. And that helps you keep, in fact, the DNA of what you acquire. And some of the failure were notably in the digital world into which we bought solutions that were super smart, very different from what we do because digital by nature. And we were not able to keep, in fact, the core team. And so we had the technology, but we lost the brains. And that's, I think, what you want to try to do. And it's super complicated because on the one side, you will want to integrate the company so that you get all the synergy and the ways of working and the understanding from the rest of the company of what's going on.

19:31Jean-Jacques Morin:But if you do that, there is a high probability that you're going to basically dilute that entity and it's going to end up being nothing.

19:38Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yes. Yeah, it's a risk. And I've done lots of mergers and acquisitions through my career as well professionally. And it's always trying to strike this right balance between, as you correctly say, the efficiency that you can get, but actually protecting the heart, the true heart and the DNA of the brand. And it's almost front of house, back of house to a certain degree. So I think, you know, the portfolio of brands that you have within premium mid-scale economy, Ibis right the way, Pullman, Swissotel, Novotel, Merckx. When you list off the brands, people go, wow, I almost had no idea that all of these brands were part of the Accor family.

20:15Brave Bold Brilliant Host:And I think that gives you a real unique position.

20:18Jean-Jacques Morin:We do. We do. In fact, you know, as part of the 10 years I've spent with Accor, mostly of what we've done is transformation. It's only the last, I would say, two years that we kind of stopped changing the perimeter and basically started to reap the fruits. I tripped the benefits. For eight years, what we did is basically move from a model which was asset heavy to a model which is asset light. Significant transaction, selling all the hotels throughout the world to a conglomerate of financial investors. That was one. We tripled the number of brands. And this is to your point. We used to have like 15 brands.

21:06Jean-Jacques Morin:We've got 45 plus. And so again, here, a huge advantage in the world post-COVID, where everybody tries to be instamagrable, having an experience that nobody else has. And so I think on this one, we were heightened in advance of phase. Then we moved to be much more international. It was quite a French company in history. I mean, the company was founded in France. The brands that you quoted are very, very famous. We have 1 ,600 hotels in France, just to give you an idea. So it's a huge part of who we are for now 60 years. And so we basically said, no, no, we want to be much more international. So we tripled the volume, which is non-European in nature.

21:53Jean-Jacques Morin:And we also decided to go and acquire some luxury, a more luxury. We are more a premium-made scale economy. What I do today is the art of what Accor is. It's really the beating art. That's where the company grew up, and by the way, very successfully. But I think we wanted to balance. We wanted to balance the geography, but also balance the portfolio. And today we do three times more luxury than what we used to do in 2015. So a very significant balancing. And so transformation was what we did. And I think we've built today something which is well-edged in the sense that, you know, you are in various places, you're in various segments.

22:33Jean-Jacques Morin:You've got all kinds of bands on to which you can rely and not to talk about, you know, the day to day that we've been significantly improving also the day to day of the operations. But that gives us, in fact, in the world as we know it. And this world is full of surprise. Isn't it just?

22:53Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yes.

22:54Jean-Jacques Morin:In the world that we live, I think being balanced on edge is an immense advantage. Immense advantage.

23:00Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yeah, diversification, because if we have one part of the world which is having some challenges, we're able to balance that out a little bit more. So I think when it comes to, again, optimizing risk, this gives you a definite advantage.

23:15Jean-Jacques Morin:And you are talking about the results. I mean, we stopped transformation fundamentally three years ago. And since then, we've been focusing on execution. and it's 10 quarters in a row that we're basically meeting the numbers that we promised at the Capital Market Day. And it's not as if the last 10 quarters have been easy quarter in this world. There is politically and geopolitical unrest everywhere. And, you know, things kind of balances themselves and the results that we just produced are absolutely record.

23:47Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Absolutely. You know, those results, 1.2 billion in terms of EBITDA at the group level. I mean, these are big numbers. These are big numbers. So huge congratulations again. And if we look back a little bit, you know, our industry is very volatile. We know that, right? We have to deal with everything. I was presenting at a conference on Monday and I was going back to anyone remember the Gulf War? Anyone remember, you know, all of these sort of situations that kind of go on? So we get tested. We get tested a lot. And COVID was very, very tough for the industry, for hospitality, for travel, leisure, retail.

24:22Brave Bold Brilliant Host:There are lots of different industries that are affected, but hospitality, I think, and travel in particular. So you came through COVID and came through stronger than ever, actually, when we look at where we are today. So having gone through that experience, Jean-Jacques, what do you think is harder, recovering from a very difficult scenario like that, or growing from the platform of stability? What do you think is either harder or what are the differences in terms of the approach that's needed in those situations?

24:58Jean-Jacques Morin:I mean, there is one big difference that I can see, which is that when you are growing, your mindset is ultra positive, right? Because you're growing. So it's difficult, but you're growing. When you are trying to recover and one must remember what was happening, you know, we forget. Human nature is such that we forget. And by the way, it's better this way. But we forget. But, you know, we lost 80 % of the turnover in three months. Basically, there was no more turnover. And the cost base never reduced by 80%. So the real question was, are we going to survive? And the mindset when you are in that survival mode is much, much more stressful and much, much more, in fact, difficult because you have no view.

25:47Jean-Jacques Morin:You have no blue sky. And so it's much tougher to manage that part of the equation than the heptych. But people really, human nature is such that you go through things which are very difficult and then you rebound and you forget. And we should not forget.

26:07Brave Bold Brilliant Host:No, no, you're absolutely right. It almost feels like looking back at a movie or something. When I think about the COVID period, I think, oh my gosh, it was almost surreal looking back. but it was very real. And, you know, you talked about people and the heartists that you have. For you, when you're building your team, Jean-Jacques, what are the things that are most important to you to create a high-performing team? Yeah.

26:36Jean-Jacques Morin:You know, I was just thinking as you were asking the question I was applying your rule, which is I don't listen to what you say and I listen to what I think. back to the COVID point one point I would like connecting to the question that you asked on failure one of the things that was very difficult was to basically work on that cause base still motivating people and figuring out what could be a timeline which is reasonable in a world into which you had no data and I think one of the things that people realize or don't necessarily realize is that many of the success that we've got today on what I have called the operational excellence of Accor, you know, I mentioned it briefly, is in fact coming from realization that we're done at a time where nothing was working.

27:27Jean-Jacques Morin:You know, everything was a failure. And so we notably realized that everything we're doing were done in-house and were done on-premises, if you will, to start with distribution, IT, and all of that. and the advantage of having the capability to think is you realize, my God, why am I in a fixed cost business? Why don't I move everything on the cloud like many businesses do? And so we started that journey in those days. And today, part of the success that we've got is that as we initiated the transformation at a very difficult point in time, everybody was supportive because we had to survive. And so we did something which would have been extremely difficult to do in normal circumstances.

28:09Jean-Jacques Morin:the benefit of which we see every day of our life today. And so we've built an environment, if you will, which is way more optimized in terms of how it works with better solution because of the self-solution. And this is, in fact, a failure or an accident in life that has been giving us, in fact, a lot of benefit for many, many years to come. So, you know, another way of looking at the discussion But to come back to your question on what do I look to people when we hire them, I think I answered it partially before when I said that I wanted people that really wanted the job. I think the number one thing is to get people that are really motivated at dealing with what they're going to have to deal with.

29:04Jean-Jacques Morin:because, in fact, if you've got that envy, you will find the path. Contrarily to what people believe, there is this hedoncing way of creating your talent pool, which is you go and you get somebody with a cookie cutter of what you need in your organization. That works, but you're not going to get great results. On the other hand, if you apply that theory, then you don't have a lot of downside. And so the question then again is what are you looking for? But if you're looking for performance, you want to take some risks. I.e., you go for somebody who really wants it versus somebody who really has got the profile that looks perfect on the resume.

29:52Jean-Jacques Morin:And so that's one thing that I definitely look at. I think in terms of the human, I would say, characteristic, I think the authenticity is a big one, especially in our world. You know, we're discussing COVID. I think the manager that have been striving in that environment were the people that were able to communicate understandably where we were, i.e. not lying, not building things that were unbelievable but not being either in the doldrum all the time. So I think the fact that you are able to say the things as they are and get credibility through your actions is a very, very important element so that authenticity, which is linked to integrity, in fact, of the person, you know, never lie, don't do things that you don't understand, all these very basic principles, if you apply them, you have a sound company.

30:53Jean-Jacques Morin:And last but not least, you also want to have people that connect together. If you have a series of electrons who are all very brilliant and able to move along and find their path being auto-motor, you know, auto-tracted, I don't know how you say it in English, you have not resolved it because you need to get that unity in order to get the progress in the company. And at Accor, it's extremely, extremely true. You know, we are everywhere. It's very diverse culture. And so if people don't share and don't work together, this is never going to work. It's less true in a company which is more processed, more structured, where in fact production is in one place in the world.

31:36Jean-Jacques Morin:R &D is in another place in the world. And you can very easily manage what gets produced. This is not what we do.

31:42Brave Bold Brilliant Host:No, no. And a winning team wins together or not at all. You know, I think that mentality of we have each other's backs. when the times are tough, we come closer together, we don't scatter. And I think this is a really interesting, interesting and so important in leadership. And we can learn a lot from sport. I know you like your sport, Jean-Jacques. We were just talking about rugby and I was fortunate enough to interview the chairman of the Six Nations Rugby, a wonderful man called Ronan Dunn. And I think, you know, with sport, when we win in sport, we can learn a lot, a lot, and apply it to business, can't we?

32:17Brave Bold Brilliant Host:You can. Yeah, what happens on the pitch. actually, you know. So what do you take from when you're watching a game and sports? What are some of those lessons that you bring into business, would you say, and with your team?

32:30Jean-Jacques Morin:I mean, I think rugby is a perfect illustration of this team cohesion that, you know, makes a great team. I mean, we have very good examples of teams in collective sports into which you had a lot of individuality, extremely well-paid, extremely talented, but were unable to win together because they were not working together. And so I think the number one rule here is, as you said, I hold my back, you hold my back. And in sports, it works definitely very nicely. I think the other element is you don't only have collective sports, you have sports that you practice on your own, like, I don't know, running or bicycle or whatever.

33:19Jean-Jacques Morin:And again, here, it comes back to that notion of être engagé, being willing to do what you said you were going to do. And I do what I say, I say what I do, and I do it better the next day. Kind of those kind of statements, which were very much what Elstom was about in terms of the spirit of the company, a continuous improvement and willingness to push your limits. And I think in sport, you find that. I think in sports, you learn to push your limit. Things that you are thinking you wouldn't be able to do, you make it.

33:50Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yeah, and the power of incremental gains. I think sometimes we have the big strategy and we have the big initiatives, and that's fantastic. But actually, it's often just 1 % better every day. We'll be 37 times better by the end of the year. That is right.

34:03Jean-Jacques Morin:Right?

34:04Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Compound growth, there we are. Compound growth, yeah. Which you will like. So for you, Jean-Jacques, you've obviously moved from the role of CFO to CEO as well over the last couple of years. How has that been different? What's the big differences for you and how you've had to adapt as being a CEO versus a CFO? Because they are very different roles, actually.

34:24Jean-Jacques Morin:Yeah, they are. They are. One is more a role of great eminence, especially if you find the right partnering combination with your CEO. And I'm talking here of being the CFO. and again back to the values that are important, the capability to be courageous, to be integral and the capability to say no is a very important, in fact, trait of the CFO. So CFO are people that people are afraid of because you need to ask for permission and you may not get a yes. And by the way, they don't understand the business and they have some rules that you don't even understand what they try to resolve, things that you don't understand what they're trying to resolve in a way that you don't understand.

35:12Jean-Jacques Morin:So that's the typical way that people may look at an old finance organization. And then on the other hand, when you move to CEO, you need to be able to take those risks because the strategy is in fact risk-taking. Strategy is basically saying what you're not going to do. And so you basically say what you're not going to do. And when you do that, maybe some of the things that you're not going to do, you should have done. And so there is an element here which is very different in the two jobs. One is to say no. The other one is to say yes. So it's really a different. And I would say also one of the big difference is the CEO must be obviously much more like in a strategy positioning.

36:05Jean-Jacques Morin:He must think about the future, be a little bit more remote from the day to day, not be entangled into the day to day. Whereas the CFO must deliver the numbers. Obviously, he's not doing it, but he must enable the delivery of the numbers. and hence you know that capability to also take some some hates be able to look at things 50 ,000 feet is is is a big difference you know if if the CEO gets too much in the day-to-day I think he's not doing his job if the CFO gets too much into developing the strategy of the future

36:41Brave Bold Brilliant Host:he's not doing his job yeah you have to be like a helicopter I was thinking leadership be here hovering above as a leader, as a CEO, you need to know when to land, get involved and then take off again. This is constant adjustments, isn't it? And for you then, that transition from CFO to CEO, was it a natural move? Was it an easy transition? How have you had to adapt personally then to be successful as a CEO as you have been?

37:06Jean-Jacques Morin:You know, I don't think there was any easy move. I think there was just move where I did not realize what I was doing. I think many of the things you wouldn't do if you know what they really entail. Hence the fact, again and again, be curious, take the risk, move on. Because if you try to basically think that you know how to do the next job, then you're never going to do it. So it was difficult. I think there is an element into the CEO job, which I probably underestimated, which is an element of getting the cohesion of the team, which means traveling all the time, talking all the time, repeating all the time some messaging, making sure that people align to what you thought was clear and isn't when you go down.

38:01Jean-Jacques Morin:because as much as you think you communicate, you don't. You know, you think you've done a great job at creating all the media and creating all the instances into which things are, but it's never enough. And so that's a big lesson from the COVID, by the way, but it's also a big lesson of the day-to-day life, which is when you think you've communicated, start again.

38:23Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yes, yeah, you can never over-communicate.

38:25Jean-Jacques Morin:Start again.

38:25Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yeah, no, that's fantastic.

38:26Jean-Jacques Morin:And in the CFO position, you've got much less that to do. You've got to deal with different populations, populations which are extremely technical, just like the banks and the investment communities. Much, much different than dealing with everyone in the organization to start with the counter.

38:45Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Absolutely. And, you know, as a leader, as a CEO, you know, you're in the spotlight. Everyone's looking to you for the answers sometimes, you know, to make the decisions. And I think, you know, to keep yourself in good shape mentally, physically, you know, because at the end of the day, work is one thing, but our personal lives and our human aspects of our life is important as well. How do you keep yourself in the best physical, mental shape possible so that you're able to do a great job, but also still be Jean-Jacques when you're out of work?

39:21Jean-Jacques Morin:it's definitely a very important element of the equilibrium I read once that being a leader is just like being an athlete you need to get some kind of an ethics in order to keep your mind but also your body in shape so the way I deal with it is I try to have rituals things that I know I have to do and that I cannot basically not do easily said But if you put it as something which is systematically on the agenda, just like some sports, for example, or some planning and ensuring that you keep some specific time for things or for people that you like, I think it's an absolute must. People would always tell you, yeah, but I don't really have time.

40:15Jean-Jacques Morin:You do if you do it early enough. So I think the discipline here is to just say that this is something that is intangible, that you have no choice. You put it on the agenda or you put it in whatever format. And then that's the way by which. But if you don't do it, you're never going to survive because it's basically a marathon. And especially the, I mean, first off, you grow older. So you must admit you've got, you know, the quality of seniority and some of the drawback of seniority, i.e. less patience on a few things. and fundamentally not the envy to do things that you know are going to get you nowhere, right?

40:52Jean-Jacques Morin:And so you need to manage that. And then the other thing that I learned is that if you don't structure it, it's never going to happen.

41:01Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yeah, and you're so right. I fiercely protect my mornings. That is my time. I'm an early bird, so I'm quite lucky. You know, I'm better in the morning, but between I'm up at five, maybe six, later the first 90 minutes of the day, exercise, my meditation, I spend some quiet time on my own thinking about the day ahead and it keeps me sane, it keeps me balanced and then I start the day and I'm like, I'm ready to go.

41:27Jean-Jacques Morin:You're better than I am.

41:28Brave Bold Brilliant Host:I don't always get it right, but I notice if I go for any period of time when I don't do it, I'm not on my best. What keeps you there is the traveling. Yes, yes.

41:40Jean-Jacques Morin:What keeps you there is the traveling and the jetpack. I know. But I understand.

41:44Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Our trainers go everywhere with us. That's why I always put the trainers in and then whatever it might be, even 20 minutes or something, it helps. That's good. Yeah, so I'm with you. But it's important. And of course, you're a busy man outside of work as well. Proud father of four children, I believe. Yes. And a grandfather.

42:02Jean-Jacques Morin:Grandfather, yes.

42:02Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yes. A little one, yes. How old is the granddaughter you have, right?

42:06Jean-Jacques Morin:Granddaughter, nearly two. A little bit younger.

42:09Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Nearly two, nearly two. And your face lights up when you see, you know, the family. They must help you as well. Keep you grounded. Keep you, you know, actually focused on what's important in life as well. Business is business and that's important. But family is obviously a big thing for you too, right?

42:25Jean-Jacques Morin:Yeah, they've tried hard. I must say they've tried hard. And I have been only listening lately. So I, but yes, they are a strength. You know, you never succeed if you don't have a good support environment. And I am very lucky from that perspective. I have a great support environment.

42:45Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yeah, it makes a big difference, doesn't it?

42:47Jean-Jacques Morin:You know, moving, I don't know, I think I moved 33 times in my life and I've lived 15 years outside of France. So if you don't have like a strong, you know, family, you can't make it.

43:01Brave Bold Brilliant Host:No, and you said actually earlier when you made the decision to come back from the States, it was a joint decision. Oh, it was. It was a team decision. It was.

43:08Jean-Jacques Morin:Yeah, we did not want to. We wanted to educate our kids with the family in France.

43:13Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yes. So that's what we wanted to do.

43:15Jean-Jacques Morin:I mean, life in the US is great. I mean, don't misunderstand me, but we just wanted to go back to roots.

43:20Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yes. Yeah, exactly. But very much important to have that balance at home as well as work. So Jean-Jacques, you will have had lots of advice over the years, I'm sure.

43:30Jean-Jacques Morin:Yeah.

43:30Brave Bold Brilliant Host:How do you think of the best piece of advice that you've been given?

43:37Jean-Jacques Morin:I think the best piece of advice is probably to be truthful to yourself. In reality, when you really sum it up, you are what you were when you were 10 years old. If you really think through it, you improve. And we've been discussing a lot on how you can improve. And marginally, as you said, marginal makes a lot at the end. But your true DNA, you know, the envy, for example, that I had to, you know, see other people, learn languages, visit countries, get experiences. I had that when I was a kid. And so the worst thing that I could have done is go the typical way of people from my generation 30, 40 years ago in France, which is to go in one of those big companies and stay there forever.

44:26Jean-Jacques Morin:I listen to myself and I think you should do that. And it's not always easy because you will have a lot of people telling you that you don't know and you'd better listen. But I think stay truthful to yourself.

44:39Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Great advice. And those early years of moving around with your father in the army, military family, must have really influenced you over the years.

44:49Jean-Jacques Morin:You always see something different. It's beautiful, different food, different people, different languages, different culture. You're on the move.

44:56Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Yeah, yeah. Well, you've certainly been on the move, that's for sure. So Jean-Jacques, if you were to describe this year in one word, what would that word be and why?

45:07Jean-Jacques Morin:Well, that's this year.

45:13Jean-Jacques Morin:I think what the teams and what we've done and what I've tried to push for is to never give up. You know, be relentless. less. There is always, always great reasons for why this is not going to work. And I told you about the Capital Market Day and the fact that we took some commitments, which were, you know, significant commitments. We said that the BDA of the company would go every year by 9 to 12 percent. I mean, to do it one year is one thing. To do it every year, three years in a row, is another story. And last year was not an easy year. You know, you had currency situation all over the world because of the geopolitical, you know, situation.

46:00Jean-Jacques Morin:And so I think, you know, sticking to what you said and basically being relentless at what you committed for is probably one of the reasons for why we are where we are as a group.

46:13Brave Bold Brilliant Host:I love that. Relentless. That's the word for the year. Fantastic. I like that. So Jean-Jacques.

46:19Jean-Jacques Morin:Never give up.

46:19Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Never give up.

46:21Jean-Jacques Morin:Never surrender.

46:22Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Absolutely. Yeah, no, you're so right. You're so right. And we have a lovely playlist on Brave Bold Brilliant. We're nearly up to our 600th episode. So we've got a great choice of songs. What song are we going to add to our playlist?

46:38Jean-Jacques Morin:You have 600 songs? Oh, my God.

46:40Brave Bold Brilliant Host:We have 600 episodes, but, you know, about 300 songs. But I'm sure you're going to give us something different.

46:47Jean-Jacques Morin:Well, there is a lot of music that I like, candidly. a lot of music, but many of them were written by one group, which is the Rolling Stones. So I hate to say it because I would have preferred to take a French group, but I must admit that part of the world, the UK in the 70s, in the 80s, was really dominating music. And the music I like very much is Gimme Shelter from the Rolling Stones. And why I like it is because obviously there is the music element, but there is also the messaging. and one must remember that time of the world, you know, the Vietnam War and all of that, it was very, very long and difficult and I think it's good to see that musicians can help at getting people united in the right direction.

47:35Jean-Jacques Morin:So I like this one.

47:36Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Excellent. Well, we've not had that. So there we are, a unique song added to our playlist and a classic. I like the fact it's a British band. so last question to Jean-Jacques if I may the podcast is called Brave Bold Brilliant as you know so when you hear that what does brave bold brilliant mean to you?

47:58Jean-Jacques Morin:I think brave we discussed it's this ability to take risk you know just be curious and curious means that you're going to go for something that you don't know and you need to be brave in order to get something better. So you never get anything without anything. I said it before. And so brave is, I think that's one element of it. It can be declined various ways because I also mentioned that a very good CFO is somebody who is brave. He's somebody who can say no. Saying no is very difficult. Very easy to say yes. Very difficult to say no. So I think that's brave. Brilliant?

48:40Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Bold, let's have bold in the middle. Bold is, you know, I think when I look back, many people had great ideas,

48:58Jean-Jacques Morin:but they were never able to push them to the height size. And I think what you learn from the American culture versus the French culture or the European culture is that the risk taking is taken with a bold view, i.e. I do believe that I'm going to be able to be number one. I do believe that I'm going to be able to triple my results, which are bold statements and statements that are not always totally fully substantiated. But to piggyback on what we discussed, you know, like the sports analogy, if you don't push yourself and if you don't put to yourself a stretch, which is such that it is bold, you're always going to remain normal.

49:44Jean-Jacques Morin:And so that's what I would say by bold. It connects very much with the first one, which is brave. You need to be brave in order to be bold. And if you're brave and you're not bold, you're going to get nothing because you're going to do a lot of things for not much results. So that's what I would say bold is about and brilliant Brilliant could be, you know, I'm such an intelligent guy that I know how to resolve any complex system that you give to me. I don't think that this is really brilliance. I think brilliance, as I was talking to you about what makes a good leader, I think brilliance is also about that capability to get a good stomach.

50:27Jean-Jacques Morin:And so, again, it starts with data. You know, there is this statement again from the Motorola days, which is that we believe in God, but for all the rest, we believe in data. You know, so it's a very, very, very good statement to push people to think in an analytical way. But that doesn't suffice because if you just trust data, you may do a lot of mistakes because you can have faith to use somebody that you can't really stomach and that is going to make you fail. So I think that capability to judge situation on top of data is what I would say is brilliant.

51:10Brave Bold Brilliant Host:Fantastic. Well, what a way to finish the podcast, Jean-Jacques. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed the conversation.

51:15Jean-Jacques Morin:Thank you, Janet. Thank you. It was a pleasure.

51:18Brave Bold Brilliant Host:I really hope you've enjoyed this episode of Brave Bold Brilliant. Remember, check out our new website, www.brave-bold-brilliant.com. You're going to find loads of resources on there that's going to help you with your leadership journey and with the businesses that you're trying to scale up and grow. So take care, everyone. And remember, there are no limits to your growth, but it is by being brave and bold that you're going to unlock your brilliance.