HIGHLIGHTS: Christel Heydemann - CEO of Orange

0:01Hi, everybody. Tune in to this short version of the podcast, which we do every Friday. For the long version, tune in on Wednesdays. Hi everyone and welcome to In Good Company. I'm Nikolaj Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and today we have a very special guest, Christelle Edelman, the chief executive of Orange Group. Now Orange is one of the largest telco companies in Europe and in the world actually with 290 million customers and Christelle is an engineer by training, transformative leader and an avid mountain tracker. So we're going to learn about a lot of things, Christelle.

0:38Big welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Why is the telecom sector interesting? Actually, what's interesting is that we are in everybody's life in actually in good moments, and we don't realize it, but we rely on connectivity all the day. I mean, as companies are humans, we're always connected. We look at our phones. And so the technology is surrounding us, and that's what we do. So we are here in the life of the citizens, the people, our families. And then, of course, where it's actually more impacting is, of course, we are here in times, in good times. The Olympics in Paris, for instance, were the great experience where everyone was connected and everyone could see.

1:18But it's also the case when things go wrong and that's, I mean, you've seen a number of blackouts in countries or when there's extreme events. And that's when actually connectivity is more important than ever because you want to reach out to your family, you want to connect. So I think that's why the telecom sector is so fascinating because we are here, people don't realize that there's a lot of technology behind it. It's simple. You turn on your mobile phone and you see the connectivity. Actually, you're not happy when it's not connected. So the European competition regulator has thought that, you know, we need big competition in every country, right?

1:57You need three players and so therefore you get the prices down, but you have no European champions. Exactly. And that's what, I mean, the Mayo Draghi report was clear. I think it's going to be very difficult to combine to one single telecom market for various reasons in this environment. You take, I mean, security, I mean, country debt, where, I mean, and spectrum, for instance, is a big topic, but this is something that the member states will hardly, I mean, transfer to the European Union. That being said, I think as a telecom operator, to our job is to be this platform because we operate in many countries in Europe.

2:32And we can have this platform that helps, I would say, unify the customer experience. And we benefit from the scale, actually, of being across multiple countries. But it takes time. And for the time being, we are so focused on competing in every single market with, frankly, deflationary prices. Many other sectors, including utility sector, you take energy, water, food, everything, the prices have increased in the past years. That's not the case in telecom. Just coming back to the security and so on, how should we think about supply chains? So, for instance, Chinese providers of infrastructure.

3:12Well, I think supply chains are really interconnected these days. And we've seen that during COVID. And we see that today, the technology. And of course, we follow the rules when in some countries where, I mean, we are instructed not to use some vendors. And that's especially true for 5G, for instance, Chinese vendors for 5G in Europe. That being said, when we see the speed of innovation in China, we work as well with Chinese vendors, of course, more in Africa than in Europe. What's difficult is that, of course, I mean, Chinese vendors or European vendors, when there's scarcity, and we've seen that with all the supply chain disruption, I mean, whether it's a chipset, whether it's energy, actually, which is a big, big, important item for the continuity of our activity.

4:02Of course, all the equipment, the devices, we don't like to have one source, one vendor. So we tend to have this policy where we, of course, want to rely and diversify our sources. But in some areas, it's very difficult. and mobile network is an example where there's, I mean, China vendor or two European vendors. But if you just look at the technology, how does the Chinese technology compare with European and American? Well, I mean, is it better or worse or same? I've worked 15 years at Alcatel-Lucent. So I've seen the Chinese vendors growing. It's actually cheaper. I mean, the more advanced, more efficient from an energy standpoint.

4:44So it's actually a very good technology. I don't think European vendors are far behind, but they're actually not benefiting from the size and the investment that Chinese operators make in China. And so Chinese technology, when it comes to mobile network, are very good. How safe is my communication? Depends. What's your routine? Make sure you update your OS on your phone whenever there's one new. Because most of the, I mean, there's a lot of training we have to do. And that's true for company leaders. that's true for individuals. But there's a reason why you get a node whether you're on the Apple environment or Android environment.

5:25But there's a lot of investment from tech companies on security, I mean, on protecting consumers. And so make sure that you update it whenever there's a new OS coming on your phone because most of the time it's to fix a security issue. So if you speak French and I speak Norwegian, what would that conversation look like if we had live translation? What kind of delays would there be? Well, that should be the objective, to have a natural conversation with people using their natural language. And when will we have that? Well, that's, I mean, today the technology is not at the right level. Or today the technology starts from voice, translates with text, translate to it.

6:14So you have voice, text, text, voice. For that to happen, you need voice, really a voice type of direct interface to get the low latency. So there's, I mean, you have some experience, but to get it at scale on our networks, it's going to take a few years. But it's not decades. It's really... It'd be cool, huh? I think for Europe, if you think of it, I mean, the US or the China market, they benefit from one language. One of the issues in Europe, issue strength, let's put it that way, the diversity of languages and culture. If AI could help reduce the barriers between people, that would be cool.

6:55Now, I don't think we should stop studying languages because it's also studying cultures and understanding each other. How has your leadership style changed with age and experience? I think I'm still genuine. I mean, some of it, of course, experiences, I go faster to addressing issues. When I was a younger leader, I would sometimes say, look, politics, things you can say, things you cannot say, etc. And now I've learned that time is really the scarce resource in my job. And so making sure that every time I see a small issue, I address it with can be even the people relationship in my team or with people I work with.

7:41And so I'd rather pick up the phone and say, look, is there an issue here? And sometimes you realize there's a big issue that people are trying to hide. And so you can address it. So I think being probably more direct and addressing things more openly is even more present now than it was when I was a young leader trying to figure out what are the things you can say. Are people generally direct in Orange with their feedback? I think they were not. And actually, we had our leadership meeting where we gather a lot of, I mean, all our leaders in the company. And I've been very explicit with them that I want people to come to me with, don't tell me what you think I want to hear.

8:20And when I say something, I expect you to say, I disagree. Because we need to have debates. How long time does it take to get that type of attitude into a company? of years i mean culture is something that we're working on but it takes years to change a company culture and and and by the way it starts from the top totally what part of the orange culture are you are you still trying to change well i think you know we've we've defined our company values and there there's one that's very important which is boldness and i think as a company we we're very good at managing risk. But this boldness, which means willing to test, willing to learn from failures, accepting failures, and speaking about failures.

9:02We tend to have a culture where we talk a lot about the things that work well, but we don't talk about the things that do not work. And that's my direct style, but also making sure companies grow only. You learn more from actually failures and mistakes than from things that work well, because sometimes you're just lucky and things go well, but actually you can learn a lot more from failures. What's the best career advice you ever got? Actually, I've had a lot and I did not follow all of them because I tend to, no, and I've worked with a lot of great CEOs. What's the ones you haven't followed, which you are glad you didn't follow?

9:40You know, I've had a lot of advice. Actually, I had one advice, which was don't join the orange board of directors because I had a proposal to join two boards. I would not be the CEO of Orange today if I had not joined. So I did not follow that advice, which was - Because you were on the board for five years before you became the CEO. I was on the board for five years. And my instinct was I should join this Orange board because I've been in the telecom industry for 15 years. So I'm going to bring value as a board, as a director on the board. But I mean, that's one example. But I think sometimes I've had advice on don't take that job too risky.

10:16and actually I'm like, well, maybe if it's risky, that means, okay, I can fail, but I'm going to learn. And if I succeed, then I'll be more visible because guess what? Nobody would expect me to succeed.