I recently interviewed Javier San Juan who is the President of the Latin American region at L’Oréal. I first met Javier several years ago when he was the President & CEO of L’Oréal Canada. He’s incredibly entertaining and always puts a humorous spin on things. After doing this interview, I couldn’t help but notice that he’s probably experienced more adventures in one lifetime than most people will have in multiple. For all those who are aspiring for the top job, this interview can be of great value.
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Here are a few snippets from the interview:
- At the age of 10, he would regularly monitor the stock market while waiting at the bus stop. As a child, he didn’t want to be a soccer player or a firefighter, instead he wanted to be a stock broker.
- His first job was not in the Consumer Goods industry. He was a junior tax professor. After switching from Arthur Anderson with a job in finance, he worked for Sandoz (now Novartis). His career in the Consumer Goods industry did not start in marketing but instead in finance.
- He interviewed with L’Oréal and Novartis at the same time but elected to go with the latter because of a boss who he really admired and looked up to. Eight months into the job at Novartis in Switzerland, he was asked to move to Japan to be the assistant (to the assistant, to the assistant) of the Finance Director. Two weeks before leaving for Japan, they changed their mind and asked him to move to the Philippines instead.
- While in the Philippines, his father paid him a visit and ended up getting kidnapped. This was just one of the many adventures that he experienced while in the Philippines.
- L’Oréal kept an eye on him as he rose through the ranks at Novartis. He was also growing frustrated by the limitations of not being able to switch out of finance and into another division. When L’Oréal came knocking on the door asking what role he wanted, he responded by saying that he wanted to one day be the President and CEO. They shared that it was possible but that he would have to follow and trust their process. This meant that he would have to start at the bottom. He traded a private driver and the top finance job at Novartis in the Philippines and ended up in a sales role driving around in a Renault 5.
- He set two conditions when he started at L’Oréal. The first condition was that he did not want to be in Eastern Europe, Pakistan and South Africa. The second condition was to not be in a finance role. And so when the first international opportunity was presented to him, L’Oreal offered him a posting to be the COO and CFO in Russia. They were clearly trying to make him uncomfortable but he had to respect the process.
- One important lesson he picked up while in the Philippines and Russia was to have zero tolerance with corruption. If you get into the cycle of corruption, you will eventually lose all control of the business. In exchange for the zero tolerance on corruption approach, he had to live with bodyguards who gave him protection and surveillance for 24 hours a day. It was the personal price that he had to pay for making that choice.
- He was very honest in saying that he didn’t have any mentors. Instead, he had people who took a risk and placed a bet on him.
- In terms of how he has approached his career, he’s convinced that things have to be done well and he refuses to take shortcuts. While he probably could have done certain things in his career to move faster, he doesn’t think that he would have necessarily gone further.