In the world of business, positive disruption is very much the theme of our times, and François Lançon is dealing with it from two perspectives at once.
The senior vice-president for Oracle Asia Pacific is spearheading a major push to transition 80,000-odd clients to cloud computing, convincing them of the benefits it brings in terms of cost, convenience, flexibility and security.
Doing that, though, also entails a root and branch transformation of his own team. It means getting them to think and work in new ways, being more customer-focused and solutions-driven, with clearly defined objectives and full awareness of what is now most important.
“Mostly you come into a senior role to ‘make the numbers’, but my job is to transform the culture and the business, to disassemble and then reassemble something much better,” says Singapore-based Lançon, who assumed his current position early last year. “The company knows how important and how hard it is to do this. It’s a massive commitment and investment, but they are giving me all the tools needed to succeed.”
Raised in a small village around 100 km south of Paris, where both parents and numerous other relatives were teachers, Lançon felt no inclination to follow in their footsteps.
“As a kid, I loved technology and was always taking things apart - the radio, the TV - to see how they worked,” he says. “My dad scolded me if I couldn’t put them back together, but that didn’t stop me fiddling with things or wanting to do something a little different, a bit more adventurous.”
In due course, he went on to study at the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris for three years from 1979, followed by two years at the École Supérieure d’Éléctricité. But when the time came to find a first job, one overriding consideration took precedence: it had to be somewhere with easy access to good spots for skiing and windsurfing, both consuming passions at the time.
With that assured, Lançon opted to join an IBM R&D lab in the south of France and, against expectations, found himself writing code for telecoms equipment.
“It was a new concept for me and, after a while, pretty boring; it’s not that complicated,” he says. “That’s how I ended up in IT. It was a sequence of events, some voluntary.I didn’t have any career plans; I was just taking one year at a time, but I was 100 per cent sure technology would be the way ahead.”
The real spur came when his then boss assigned an 18-month project, which was all but finished in two. The need for a bigger challenge was obvious, so Lançon engineered a move back to Paris to run IBM’s product management and marketing and never looked back.
“Working with customers was more dynamic,” he says. “When you come from development, you assume nothing you build works - you only see the bugs - so it was also a pleasant surprise.”
The next 20-plus years saw him take on a succession of increasingly prominent roles with some of the biggest names in the industry – Bay Networks, Convergys, Nortel, Avaya and SAP. Various reasons prompted the moves: ambition, opportunity, or the simple desire for a new environment or a different boss.
“The most important moves are not always between companies,” he says. “For example, in 1999, I had a fantastic job with Nortel and got a call at 7am asking if I wanted to run Japan for them. I had never been in Asia, but I like big challenges and soon fell in love with the region.”
At that juncture, the specific challenge was to fix a “broken business”. Lançon began by doing a lot of listening, learned some Japanese, and took a structured, analytical approach to improving the operation’s alignment, communication, culture, personnel, and execution.
“After six months, when I saw a smile on people’s faces, l knew things were going right. With progress, you can then give more autonomy and empowerment.”
On joining Oracle, the task was that much larger, but many of the same fundamentals still applied, in particular getting the right people and aligning them with the right culture. In essence, that now means evolving from an incumbent IT provider, which has sold products for the past 40 years, to a cloud environment where things work on a different scale.
He likens it to moving from “farming” to “hunting” with all the relearning and self-examination that entails.
“The power of computing is now in the cloud, so I’ve given myself three years to transform things,” says Lançon, who oversees strategy, performance and profitability in 25 countries around the region. “In philosophical terms, the model of consumption is replacing the model of ownership, and the cloud is the IT manifestation of that. Customers are realising the cloud is better and safer than their own IT, so there are more and more reasons for going there.”
On the ground, the company is building out key digital hubs in Bangalore, Sydney, Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong. Most recruits are hired direct from college, and the general plan is to open more hubs in China to keep pace with business expansion.
“So far, everything is on track. Our numbers are growing at the right speed, key initiatives are getting traction, and there is good customer feedback. That said, though, I’m also absolutely convinced the cloud will be superseded by something else in the next 10 or 20 years.”
To stay sharp both mentally and physically, Lançon likes to sail and occasionally competes in triathlons.
“It keeps you in shape, and I want to challenge myself,” he says. “I do the competitions because then you have to train – and show up on the day.”
MAKING IT WORK
François Lançon’s career advice
Find your field “When choosing a career, make every effort to find something you are genuinely interested in and can feel excited about every morning.”
Take risks “Don’t be afraid to try and fail. A lot of people are conditioned to just go for the safe option, but that’s not the way to test yourself or really make the most of your abilities.”
Be versatile “Be prepared to move around to gain broader experience. Some people start in sales and stay in that world. It’s much better to try new things. Some you’ll be good at, some not, but you’ll learn more along the way.”
Be true “When it comes to questions of integrity never compromise. Certain values will never change so, for example, don’t lie to customers and don’t get involved in partnerships, deals or schemes which don’t look or feel right.”
Value your free time “It is important for all staff to have a proper work-life balance. That’s the key to better performance and enjoying your job.”
(Photo: Lau Wai)
This article appeared in the Classified Post print edition as Transforming tech.
