Amit: You’ve had a long and successful career. How did you stay up to date with the latest trends and innovations in the industry? And how did you leverage this knowledge to stay ahead of the competition?

Alain: When working as a leader, you need to lead the way and to innovate. Therefore, I think it’s very important to be curious and to nurture your curiosity. How do I do this continuously? By reading a lot. I read three to four newspapers from various parts of the world. I also love people, and I make the time to connect with them.

I had a so-called diet to ensure that I regularly met my customers. Even at the top of the company and with a presence in 60 countries, I was meeting four customers per week. I did that because meeting customers was not just checking how we were doing, but hearing what their pain points were, what their needs were and what their trends they were focused on. When I traveled, my team also knew that I had to meet all internal staff as well as external stakeholders (policymakers, governments, and so on) because that’s where I learn a lot. I was also part of the World Economic Forum for more than ten years in Davos, it was also a wonderful place to learn about different industries.

Besides being curious and nurturing your curiosity, I think lateral thinking is important. I spent a lot of my time observing some examples within my industries or following adjacent industries. This can help anticipate what will happen in your own industry. For example, in staffing, I’ve always looked at retail banking because I knew with digitalization, they were probably seven to ten years ahead of us and studying their trends was a way for me to anticipate how our industry would develop with digitalization. I would also look at the macroeconomic development of Australia because I knew a lot of commodities were coming from there and when a recession is starting, it always first hits in the commodities field. So, I always anticipated a recession to come when Australia was going into recession.

Finally, I also looked at the share price of UPS because, again, when a recession is starting, companies are transporting less, which means that the volume in logistics is going down. You can anticipate then that companies will need less people.

As leaders, it is our job to take all the curiosity and knowledge and embed it into our strategy and action. This is why we made acquisitions such as Vettery, Hired, and QAPA because we were anticipating that parts of our business, like recruitment, would digitize quite fast. We also anticipated the need for upskilling and reskilling and acquired General Assembly. Thus, part of this curiosity is to get the vision, the right vision.

Amit: Despite the constant traveling that you do, what daily routine do you prioritize, that has remained consistent for you and which you consider sacred?

Alain: Sleep! It is very important to sleep.

It was public knowledge in the company that I wanted to sleep seven hours every night, and I was motivating everybody to sleep seven hours per night. This is not just for the sake of sleeping. There was this one time when I was traveling from Colorado, and I was on a plane with a couple, a man and a woman. The woman was one of the top doctors in Alzheimer’s, which at at the time was new to me because twenty-five to thirty years ago, people did not really talk about it. I inquired more on its causes, and she explained how people, especially the younger generation, was sleeping less, and as a result the brain and brain cells were not getting enough time to recuperate and regenerate; this lack of sleep is what accelerates the onset of Alzheimer’s.

Upon landing in Zurich, I went for a Christmas dinner at work, and said to everybody that, from today onwards, seven hours of sleep is a must. I made it clear that if I received a deck at ten in the night for a meeting at eight in the morning, don’t expect me to have read it. This prompted us to change the way we prepared for meetings. Henceforth, I asked my team to deliver all the presentations and information for the next week by Thursday evening the week before. That way, people could have a free weekend. That’s one of my key routines, besides many others, but this is an important one.

Amit: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, what new skills and qualities do you think will be essential for professionals in the post-pandemic workforce? How can organizations prepare for and respond to these changes in the workforce to stay ahead of the curve?

Alain: What I see going forward is that there will be a huge need for specific hard skills and soft skills. The hard skills we speak about are STEM skills, and I think those are highly in demand. However, they are not enough. Going forward, companies will look at skills that AI cannot deliver, and that’s where soft skills become important. Today, chatbots cannot work together with all the other chatbots and be creative. They can have a certain amount of creativity, but they are not collaborative. Besides these, it’s important for individuals to have the resilience, the willingness, and the ability to learn in a company. There is such an acceleration of technology that one needs to constantly upskill and re-skill themselves and remain agile.

For companies, it is important to have a strategic workforce plan; this is also true for a startup that is scaling up. Take the time to reflect and to make sure you know exactly what kind of talent you will need in 12 months, 24 months, and 36 months because you need to develop them or find them and eventually retain them. Most companies are unaware about the kind of talent they will need 24 or 36 months from now. If you are not anticipating whether you will have the right talent at the right moment, when you see the acceleration of technology, you won’t be successful. Which is why, I strongly believe in vocational training and in upskilling and reskilling offerings.

Amit: Diving in a little specifically on AI, With the increasing automation brought about by AI, how do you anticipate the talent space evolving? In particular, what opportunities do you see for workers who previously held jobs at the lowest levels if those roles are automated and disappear?

Alain: I’m both positive and optimistic. This kind of revolution already took place decades ago with steam, electricity, and others. If my memory serves me well, I think that 40% of Americans were active in agriculture at the beginning of the 20th century. And today, it’s at 2%, and with very low unemployment. I think it will be the same with AI.

Yes, some jobs and industries will be displaced because technology will replace what human beings have been doing, but in a lot of cases, it’s good news because it was a repetitive job or it was a heavy-duty job, and robots will solve for those. This paves way for new industries and new jobs to be created. However, I do think that the jobs that will be created will require more skills than there are today. This is the challenge that governments and society have, which is to make sure that the talent needed for the new industries exists so that jobs can be created, not only replaced.

Amit: We share your belief in the positive impact that AI can have on helping more people discover meaningful work. On a related but separate note, one of the changes we’ve seen in recent years is the rise of the gig economy and fractional work arrangements. With new entrants to the workforce seeking greater work-life balance and more flexibility, how do you see this trend evolving? How have you seen Adecco respond to this shift in the labor market, including the increasing comfort with fractional C-suite roles?

Alain: I think that this shift is here to stay because it is demanded by both the companies and the staff. Companies are living and developing in a so-called VUCA world. It’s very volatile, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous, and if you want to survive in that type of environment, you need to be extremely flexible. In countries like the US or UK, you can adapt yourself at a low cost very fast, but in some older geographies, especially European countries, it’s not possible. Thus, for companies to remain flexible and agile, they need new ways of organizing the workforce, such as temporary staffing, outsourcing freelancers, and other amenable solutions.

At the same time, when you look at the younger generations, they want to be more autonomous. They don’t want to join big corporations; they want their work to be more project-based, they want to be free, and to have a work-life balance. This balance is not because they want to work less, but rather because they want to work hard at some point of the year or age and be free at others.

I see that with my own children; my eldest son is working between 30 and 50 percent of the time because he’s raising two kids, and his wife is an entrepreneur and working hard. My second son is upskilling in data science. He was living in London and is now spending six months in Mexico, and from there, he will see. So, you see, the younger generation is really free and autonomous, especially if they are skilled. They know that they have the talents and skills that are in demand, and so they are not afraid. It’s not the same generation as we are.

Amit: As someone who has sat in the role of a Fortune 500 company, what advice would you have for an early-stage company trying to secure its first contract with a Fortune 500 company?

Alain: First, there is a big difference between transactional selling and consultative selling. Transactional selling is a short cycle, and you realize your sales act very rapidly. With big companies, it takes more time, and you must be ready to invest more time in the sales process than you are used to.

What I always recommend is to start with a deep dive into the profile of the industry or any company you want to win over. First, understand how the company is organized. What are the chances for the product? Why is the product relevant to them? Make sure that you know the decision-makers, the opinion leaders. Is it procurement, HR, or manufacturing making that decision? Do you have ambassadors? It is important to have a good understanding of that and then start with pilots so that you can demonstrate the value of your product. Once you have one reference in one company or industry, replicate and move on to the competition or other companies to sell your product. And there are excellent sales methodologies and examples that you can learn from for consultative selling. I always invite people to look at Salesforce methodology or MEDDIC [Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion].

One last thing to consider is that, in most cases, you need different people for different types of selling. A transactional seller is not a consultative seller. Make sure that you have the right person with the right experience to do the work because they require different skills.

Amit: One topic I’d like to discuss is your approach to mergers and acquisitions, particularly with regard to the acquisition of General Assembly. How did you evaluate M&A opportunities, and what advice would you give to early-stage companies considering inorganic growth for the first time? How did you approach M&A in your role at Adecco?

Alain: We had a clear resource allocation policy and strategy, and we were open to acquisitions based on three criteria.

1.

First, an acquisition should accelerate your strategy. Thanks to the acquired assets, you win time and size that accelerates the deployment of your strategy.

2.

Second, you are convinced that you will be a better owner of the company than the previous one. This is clear to you when you either have better domain knowledge, data, or a distribution network that the other company does not.

3.

The third criterion is to have clear synergies, not just cost synergies but also soft synergies such as customers, products, services, or geographies.

Amit: On that point, do you have any advice on setting up the integration for success?

Alain: The integration process starts even before the due diligence. You should already have a clear view of what you will do with this asset and how you will do it. By day one, you know exactly what will happen and how you will create value. The best companies have a really clear plan; from day zero, they know what they will do. There are two key questions for everybody in the organization. Who will be my boss tomorrow? And what will be my role? And these two questions must be answered ideally from day one so that there is no confusion, no loss of concentration. Giving clarity to these two questions as soon as possible is critical.

Amit: As we wrap up, what advice do you have for individuals at different stages in their careers, and what qualities do you believe are essential for success as a leader in the business world?

Alain: In the end, it’s all about people and making sure that, first of all, you are a very good person, and that you are surrounded by great people because this will make all the difference. I think you must stay humble because life is a marathon; being authentic and vulnerable makes you stronger.

For more than two decades, I’ve had a formula, which is called the three Ps. I’ve always said it starts with people and making sure you have the right people, having a clear purpose, and then working with extremely efficient processes. If you have these three P’s, you will have success, you will have profit, and make money.

But it’s a multiplication. If one of the three Ps is zero, you won’t be successful. It’s people’s times’ purpose, times’ process. I’ve always looked first at these three Ps to make sure I have answers to the following questions: Do I have the best people? Does the team has a clear purpose with a clear objective? Do they know where we are going and working in an efficient way? When the answers for the group or for some of the units were yes, yes, yes, then we had great success and results. This is a strong belief I keep with me; whatever the industry, whatever the country, whatever the business, it’s a valid formula.

And to close, I’ve had a lot of people come to me and ask what is the recipe to be successful or what should I do to be promoted and move up in the organization? For this, I have another formula. It’s called TSR. When I look back at my 35-year career, I have found that it’s really important to have a track record and results. The second is to have a successor. People don’t think about that, but even if you are in a startup, it’s important to nurture people who will be able to succeed you in an even better way than you have done it. Third, and an extremely important one, is reputation. For me, it means, have you been a good person when dealing with your customers, with your people, with your stakeholders? Are people willing to work with you? Or are people avoiding working with you? Are you able to attract strong people because of your reputation?

Leadership is about being followed; that’s the recipe. That’s the true track record of a leader. It’s not about ARR or NPS, or EBITDA. It’s about having a strong purpose and vision that motivates stakeholders and people around you to follow your lead.