WHY HE’S WORTH IT

Simon Hobbs interviews Lindsay Owen-Jones, Chairman of L’Oréal and Lifetime Achievement winner at the European Business Leaders Awards

Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones is the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s European Business Leaders Awards, presented by CNBC Europe in partnership with the Financial Times. Now the Chairman of L’Oréal, Owen-Jones built L’Oréal into the largest beauty products group in the world. In his first major television interview, he explains how he managed to deliver a staggering 23 years of unbroken, double-digit profit growth.

SH: What did you set out to achieve as CEO?
LO-J: I had to transform a very good, small French company into a large international one. I had a very special mission to do that, being non-French. I also had an ambition to make L’Oréal one of the most successful companies in the world – and that just goes on driving me.

SH: Are you satisfied that you’ve achieved that?
LO-J: I am never satisfied by anything, particularly because my successor needs to create the same success over the next 20 years. That is the challenge of managing a company like this: constantly wanting more.

SH: So, you’re a perfectionist.
LO-J: Yes, though my wife would find a ruder word than that!

SH: Does that make you hard to work for?
LO-J: Probably. I see myself as pretty evenhanded, very loyal, rather sentimental and attached to my people. However, I’m sure that my team sees me as extremely ambitious, difficult, demanding, hyper-competitive, never satisfied and impatient. I’m sure all of those things are a little bit true.

SH: What is your image of leadership?
LO-J: There’s a great photograph of John F Kennedy on the bridge of his ship during the war. My father was in the navy during the war, too. What appeals is the idea of the fearless leader taking his army through the storms and the battles and safely out the other side.

SH: You were born British, in 1946, and you studied modern languages at Oxford. When did the love affair with France start?
LO-J: I’d always been attracted by the idea of life abroad. It was easy to dream of bright and sunny places when you were brought up on Merseyside in the 1950s and 60s.

SH: How did you come to enrol at one of the most elite business schools, INSEAD?
LO-J: Total coincidence. I met the brother of the founder of INSEAD, who came to give a talk at Oxford and said to me: “Young man, you shouldn’t be wasting you time with an academic career, you should come to my business school.” Incredibly, the next day he sent me all the documents.

SH: That’s very lucky.
LO-J: Yes, extremely so. Then I was lucky to hear about L’Oréal and join. I often stress this to students – that there is a huge role of luck in finding your destiny. It somehow corresponded to my combination of talents at L’Oréal.