#123 The Hard Choices Behind True Transformation with Karim Chaiblaine

Welcome to the Proteus Leader Show, a podcast for forward-looking leaders driving transformation in their organizations, within their teams, or for themselves. Your host today is a senior leader at Proteus International, a firm that partners with companies around the world to make true transformation easier through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching. If you're looking for fresh perspectives and practical insights, can take back to work today, you're in the right place. Enjoy the episode.

Transformation sounds exciting in theory, but in practice, it usually comes down to a few hard leadership choices: what to build, when to partner, how fast to move, and when to walk away. And in volatile markets, getting those choices right can be the difference between momentum and wasted years. Hello and welcome to the Proteus Leaders Show. I'm Marie-Olive, CEO of Proteus and your host. Today, we're diving into the heart of transformation. From Silicon Valley to the Middle East, we'll explore how to evolve in volatile environments, whether you're scaling a startup, driving innovation within a global organization, or shaping your own career trajectory. My guest today is Karim Chiblen. A senior executive with over 30 years of experience across Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. He has led organizations through complex transformation, strategic pivots, and high-stakes partnership decisions across industries and cultures. Karim is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Passionate about technology and innovation, he also serves as an advisor to Skydeck, UC Berkeley startup accelerator and incubator. Outside of work, Karim is also deeply passionate about sports and has played ice hockey for many years, including in the French first division. Karim, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Marie.

And before we begin, I'd like to warmly congratulate you on being named a Knight in the National Order of the Légion d'Honneur, France's highest civil and military distinction Recognizing more than 30 years of contribution to France's international business presence.

Thank you again, Marie. I'm very excited to be here with you today. Receiving the Legion of Honor is a great honor. I've been grateful to be close to inspiring leaders I've met throughout my journey and have the constant support of my family. So the Legion of Honor is also a strong motivation to keep on moving forward.

It's a big honor for the French people. So Karim, let's start with innovation and speed. When you're operating at scale, how do you stay agile without creating chaos?

I think it's a great question, Marie. In my career, I've had the opportunity to work with very large organizations, up to 200,000 people, while also startups and initiatives. I've created and scaled innovation units. At Forvia, I was leading Cockpit of the Future in Silicon Valley, and also I developed and scaled startups in the Middle East. I've seen both sides, the need for speed and the weight of scale. And what I've constantly observed, Marie, the companies or the organizations that balance speed and weight of scale are truly, deeply customer-centric. Customer-oriented. And the reason is that customer-centric organizations, they have clearer priorities, they make faster trade-offs because decisions are guided by real user-added value, right? Less internal politics, less excessive processes. And let me give you an example. I've been grateful to deal with different customers in Silicon Valley and also in the Middle East with government organizations.

Okay.

Let's deep dive into one specific example. Tesla, for example, they have contributed to reduce the development cycle of vehicles from 4 to 5 years to 2 to 3 years. And the way you can do that, you have different pillars to reduce those development cycles. But one example of customer-centric approach, if you look at Tesla Model 3, you can pick 5 to 7 colors for a given vehicle. And if you look at other car manufacturers, you have 20 to 30 colors. And the reason why Tesla does that is because 70 to 80% of customers, they pick 5 to 7 colors. So you reduce complexity. Because you reduce complexity, you allow to improve your processes and get a better development process.

You've asked a simple question of what color do customers want?

And if you have 80% of customers picking out of 7 colors, why would you do 20 to 30 colors? So that's a very interesting way you can see that, but also in the way trade-offs are done is always oriented towards the real customer value. Even if you're a large organization, if you're able to be customer-centric, you can still move fast. And move with purpose. That's really my takeaway for being able to balance the need for speed and the weight of the scale of large organizations.

I love that. Have the customers be a compass. From your experience, where do organizations most often go wrong when trying to launch or scale new ideas?

Let me reflect on that. I like to put some framework in when those type of discussions, I'd like to step back and maybe look through the lens of the Dynamic Capabilities Framework of Professor David Tease, University of California, Berkeley, which is based on 3 pillars: sensing, seizing, and transforming. And from my humble experience, most organizations focus heavily on the seizing part of action, which is about building business cases, allocating resources, And then the transforming, which is about changing structures, processes. And I think the sensing part of things is most of the time underestimated. And I think that too often organizations put ideas forward because they fit with existing capabilities, not because they address real emerging customer needs. And that's what we need to be looking at, whether you were in small or large organization, is that we give time enough to the sensing phase so that we can make sure we open our ears to weak signals, customer needs, existing capabilities, development of new capabilities, and that you can do that in a timely manner. My experience of leading Cockpit of the Future for North America for Forvia was a very interesting tool that allows us to sense startup VCs, new customers, and that allows you to bring forward to the larger organizations some innovations that could really adapt to future projects.

That makes me curious about what do you do in that sensing phase? What is it?

What you do in that sensing phase is basically you listen to weak signals by addressing different types of ecosystem stakeholders. You have to listen to, of course, the customers. You have to listen to new technologies, startups. You have to listen to the academics understanding the major trends. And you need to connect the dots as part of the sensing. It's not one pillar that will bring the full idea, but your role as a sensor is to connect the dots and bring clarity on what could be a future opportunity. And I think that being able to connect the dots is a critical capability in those days of volatility and emerging technologies.

So aligned, Karim, with what we believe at Proteus, because often we feel that when we support transformations, that the human side is forgotten. And here, when you're talking about listening to weak signals, it's really taking the time To listen to all the stakeholders, to see where people are in relation to the change and embark them on that journey at the pace that is needed.

That's exactly that. I think it's all about a human-driven process. If you have organizations truly customer-centric and focus on the sensing part of this process, they have a better chance to focus on the right Next opportunity. And it's really a human investment at the start of any type of endeavor to make sure you grab the right opportunity and you have people who are aware of what's happening around and that are able to connect the dots because you will have weak signals from different fields and you need to be able to have this ability to do that. And those type of tools, like the one we had at Forvia on the cockpit of the future, is one example of what could be done. But through my career, we've decided 15 years ago to set up a Middle East branch for Keolis SNCF, which was something which was based on the anticipation of what would be the business in the future. And now SNCF is operating multiple rail projects in the region. It can have different types of forms which can embrace the company's culture. And this is what leaders need to think of in order to make sure that this phase is not underestimated. Compared to the seizing and transforming side of things.

It gives me the picture of the incubator, right? Where you bring all those relevant people together and then better ideas come out.

Absolutely.

And sometimes you can't do this alone. So that leads me to the next topic, partnerships. When choosing a strategic partner, what matters most beyond technical expertise or That's another very central part of doing business.

You're totally right, Marie. Once you have identified that for a specific project you don't have all capabilities and you need to partner, and that you have some alignment in the commercial or technical terms, from my experience, the key areas of discussion with the partners is really to align on short-term agreements on What it means to learn and have small failures, and also what success looks like in one to five years. In the Middle East, we invested a lot of time, six to twelve months, not addressing those topics, and eventually wasting time because the risk profile on us as a company and the partner were not aligned. And in fact, the initial discussions on the specific project were aligned, but the long-term vision and risk profile and what means success in terms of projects, profitability, revenues was not completely aligned. So I think if I had to give a piece of reflection on my experiences, ask early on with partners what success looks like in 1 year and in 5 years. I think it's really an efficient tool that I'm using now. To make sure that you don't waste time on both sides.

So practical. And it sounds obvious as you say it. Often we just look at the present. Oh, let's do this together. But then the critical success factor in this case is to agree on the measures of success and what success will look like on different time horizons.

Absolutely. And then aligning on the risk profile of whatever endeavor you have in a project with a company.

Yes. Now, I imagine that sometimes you feel you need partners, maybe because you don't have the capabilities, and sometimes you want to build that internally. So how do you decide when to build, when to partner?

Yeah, that's a critical question. In my role at Nesma today, this is one of my key activities to develop partnerships in different forms, whether partnerships can be a startup agreement, it can be an acquisition, it can be any forms. The core of this question is about whether organizations can adapt to change. And maybe if you allow me to also step back a little bit here and reflect on the concept that is adaptability of Charles O'Reilly, which is called the ambidextrous organization. And the principle behind this concept is that successful organizations, they must do 2 things at once: exploiting the existing capabilities while exploring new ones. And successful organizations would need to do both at the same time. And for incremental innovations, it usually makes sense to build internally because the organization already has the assets, the expertise, and the scale to execute internally. So for incremental, that would make sense. And for the disruptive ones, because the existing culture, the incentives often become a constraint, then In those cases, you would look outside. But to look outside, you have different tools. You could do partnerships, joint ventures, acquisitions, startups, partnerships, startups, acquisition investments, venture investments. So you have all different types of models in order to complement your capabilities. And I think that successful organizations are the ones that are not choosing, but they're doing both at the same time. And in my current role in Saudi Arabia within NESMA, there is this strong culture of building partnerships in order to develop the complementary capabilities. And I can see that through the lens of internal partnerships as well, building bridges not only on capabilities from an international perspective.

2 critical points emerge. First is by doing a partnership, you can go faster because you can get those capabilities overnight versus having to learn with the internal team. I think another point that I've seen at NBCUniversal, where I had a kind of traditional business linear network and I needed to create the digital part, the existing business could be quite resistant to change.

Yeah.

And just getting that business to cannibalize their own business could be challenging. But this is where I think partnerships will help you bridge that gap.

Yeah, definitely. It's a way to accelerate the acquisition of capabilities in order to position yourself in a given market. And it goes along with developing this company culture where you're able to work with international partners. There's some kind of DNA to grow, to be able to develop that. And I'm grateful to work in a company like Nesma where you have this DNA of international partnerships where we work with international organizations all over the world.

Yes, because in a way you need to not have too much of a big ego, right? Because you acknowledge your weaknesses and then you look for the right partners. So it's also culture that you need to have. Now, sometimes those partnerships might fail. And I think another critical aspect of transformation is to know when to stop them. So what signals do you look for? To be able to make that difficult decision?

The important exercise is to really early on define what success means and what failure means for any type of endeavor, especially when it involves, you know, a second party. This exercise brings clarity on when to decide to stop a given endeavor. It feels like it's so obvious. that everybody would do that. The reality is that defining success or failure is defining different types of metrics and signals. And you need again here to be able to connect the dots to see what kind of signal was green and is becoming orange and then red. And then being able to say, oh, this is not moving forward, the risk is too high. We should probably stop. And I think what we're expecting from leaders is to be able to anticipate and make sure that the pivot is coming at the right time. And I think that defining those key metrics to what success looks like is a good way to not only to make the decision in an organization, you have multiple stakeholders. So you need to communicate internally and externally with stakeholders in order to make your position clear on that. And in my recent role, Here at Nesma, I already had to pivot from one project to another because I identified some signals which were changing. And if you communicate clearly on that, you can pivot in a very efficient way.

It's back to your earlier point. At the time of choosing a partner, you need to define what success will look like at different points in time. And at the same time, that gives you a bit of a roadmap to tell you if Those metrics are not met, then maybe we should consider picking up.

And I'm sure for people who will be listening to us, they will materialize the type of signals which are specific to any given project that they need to be looking at. I think probably the other key element is communication, making sure to be clear with the ecosystem, the stakeholders. On what's happening.

Yeah. On an ongoing basis also, because maybe you do a great job at the beginning, but then you never talk about it again.

Absolutely. I think here the metrics and the communication are the 2 key parameters.

You gave us a ton of practical tips along the way, but I'd love to recap. And when you think about leaders that are about to turn around a venture within a large organization, Especially in fast-moving markets like the ones you've been in, like Silicon Valley, Middle East, what can they do in the next 30 days?

Yeah, I like your way of concluding this conversation, Marie. I think everything has to be looked at. What should I do next? I think the first topic is probably the sensing part of looking at different options, not grabbing the first option that you look at, is something you should dedicate time for. So maybe making sure that half a day Per week, you have in your agenda a rock-solid time in order to make sure that the option that you pick is picked for good reasons. You took your time and you have the appropriate organizational setup to sense what's around you.

Yes.

Right.

So I think that's—

yeah. The second practical tip is really looking at whatever project you have and make sure that you have a clear definition of what success means. For your project, what it means for you, what it means for your partner. Is it the same? And I think that's something that I would recommend as a practical tip.

This one is so important. As you said earlier, maybe you're very clear on it, but also you need to communicate. So everybody that is impacted by that will also be very clear and aligned with your vision.

Exactly. And if anything changes, because as we said, the world is changing fast, very volatile. And if any external factor is changing a key success factor of the project, it needs to be identified as early as possible. So I think that's the second one. And because whatever endeavor, we don't do it alone, but we do it with a team, I think anyone should look around to make sure he's around people with the mindset. And I think mindset is everything, which is key to get success in your projects. And for me, based on my experience, I focus on 2 key characteristics: people which are deeply customer-centric. So as I said at the introduction of our conversation, and curious people, right? Customer-centric, curious people. These are the 2 key skills I'm looking for people working around me, because whatever success we have, it's not like a one-man show. Whatever organization we are, we're in a team and we succeed as a team or we fail as a team.

Yes. Can I add a third one?

Please.

Because you just inspire it. And we've known each other for a very long time now, 15 years, done our MBA together. And I think it's humility. And that impacts all the practical points you said, because in the sensing phase, you need to listen. The team is that acknowledging you can't do it alone. Same with a partner is acknowledging you have some weaknesses and you need help. Thank you for exemplifying that.

Thank you so much, Marie, for this very inspiring conversation. I really enjoyed discussing this morning together. Hopefully our viewers will enjoy the conversation.

Absolutely. I'm taking away so much from it. True transformation isn't about having the boldest vision statement. I think it's about making those clear, deliberate choices, what to build, how to Govern it with the metrics, with the communication, how to partner, and how quickly you learn. So then ventures can earn trust and scale.

Yeah, absolutely.

And to our listeners, if you'd like more leadership insights and practical tools to make true transformation easier, visit produce-international.com. Thank you for tuning in, and until next time, Here's to creating the transformations you truly want.

Thank you, Marie.

Thanks for listening to the Proteus Leader Show. We hope you're leaving with ideas you can put to use on your team, in your organization, or in your own career. To learn more about how we support true transformation through change consulting, leadership development, and executive coaching, visit us at proteus-international.com. Until next time.