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.