Episode #113: Philippe Jardin, Country Manager, Pierre Fabre, Japan

Philippe Jardin is the Country Manager for Pierre Fabre in Japan. His interest in the global world was greatly inspired by his parents who had an interest in Asia. Mr. Jardin learned Judo in school and during business school he had an opportunity to learn Japanese. As a part of the curriculum, which included doing internships, Mr. Fabre chose to do all of his internships in Japan. Mr. Jardin chose the marketing route after his undergraduate degree which led him to do an MBA and enroll in the Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) which was partially in Singapore and France. This led to him furthering his career with various organizations in the corporate world in Japan before coming to Pierre Fabre.

One thing that helped Mr. Jardin with his job was his intuition. He explains the importance of reading the room or reading between the lines. Sometimes in Japan, not everything is explicitly said, and being more intuitive has helped him greatly. Understanding without explicitly asking is a soft skill that he says has been essential in his career. Mr. Jardin faced some challenges with his first posting to Japan including how to improve profitability. He said he overcome this by identifying exactly what the issue was and reinforcing to his staff that they need to break even and make a profit.

When starting a new leadership role, Mr. Jardin takes a systematic approach to evaluating the company. He sits down and talks with everyone on the staff and asks some questions. The first type of question is their personal evaluation of the power of the company by rating the company out of 5 or 10. The second question would be their opinion on the power of the brand. This provides them with some valuable findings regarding the strengths, weaknesses, and issues that the company is facing. Then they are better able to tackle them as a team.

Advice that Mr. Jardin would give to someone who is being sent to Japan for a posting is to be open. By being open he means don’t judge too quickly. He also suggests being patient as Japanese work culture can be unexpected and taking things slowly is beneficial. He suggests learning the language to the extent possible, though he knows that someone younger may be able to learn the Japanese language faster than someone older. Regardless, Mr. Jardin would still suggest for people to learn a few phrases in Japanese for a more comfortable daily life.