Benoit Jolin

Benoit Jolin is the head of Global Supplier Experience at Expedia. I first met Benoit when I was asked to run an interactive project leadership session for Expedia in spring 2013. Ben immediately stood out as a project leader, embracing many of the 7 keys that I describe in the book. When I interviewed Benoit he had so many great insights that I wanted to share with you. 

Less is definitely more

My recent experience has led me to believe that two factors are contributing to a change in what executives expect from project management. (1) Urgency and the need to deliver tangible results in shorter and shorter timeframes, often due to investor/shareholder pressures for rapid returns and an increasingly competitive landscape, and (2) return on capital as we expect more from each dollar invested. As a result, what we are seeing is a growing distaste for unnecessary ceremony and planning, and a growing appetite for lean project management principles: early project de-risking through test and learn methods, fast failure models, high fidelity demos or prototypes, etc. It’s about keeping it real (read: data driven decision-making) and focusing outcomes over outputs (read: useful, usable and tangible results). Less is definitely more today and wasteful procedure is making way for more experimentation. – Benoit Jolin, Head of Global Supplier Experience, Expedia Inc

Courage

Making the right decisions requires courage, even more so when the right thing to do is to course correct or halt an investment. Too often, pleasing key stakeholders supersedes rational decision-making. Data and the insights resulting from a test and learn approach are powerful allies and will help product leaders who make (and sell internally) the right decisions. – Benoit Jolin, Head of Global Supplier Experience, Expedia Inc

Don’t ask, rather try to live their reality

Spend time with your clients understanding their world, their preoccupations, their pain points, their hopes and desires and what is important to them. Don’t ask, rather live their reality. Spend a day in their shoes, shadowing them. Feel what they feel. They will like you for it and it will make you immensely successful. You need to continuously focus on how you can increase your contributions to their success. When you become a subject matter expert and understand the customer, you gain so much more authority in the eyes of others. This also helps you to become more assertive and to say no. More than anything, your ability to influence will come from your ability to be perceived by others as a subject matter expert. – Benoit Jolin, Head of Global Supplier Experience, Expedia Inc

Reduce risk during early stages of the project

Despite a good appreciation of the customer’s problems, many of the initial product assumptions will be wrong. This is not a bad thing as long as care is taken to validate these assumptions early on – something which requires that management allows and encourages rapid failure. An effective way to do this is to clearly define key metrics that would indicate if an assumption is valid and to test each assumption before any material investment of resources and cost is made. Data should inform product investment decisions and help refine the solution. At times, it will be necessary to course-correct or halt an investment, but too often, pleasing key stakeholders supersedes rational decision making. In such situations project leaders must find their courage and do the right thing. Data and the insights from a test-and-learn-approaches (such as fast failure models, high fidelity demos or prototypes) are powerful allies that will drive the right decisions. Continuous testing is a great way to eliminate HiPPO (Highest Paid Person Opinion) decision making, reduce risk and make the product stronger over time. – Benoit Jolin, Head of Global Supplier Experience, Expedia Inc

Don’t panic

At some point, the pressure, demands or deadlines mount and it becomes easy to give in to emotional reactions. Don’t. When overwhelmed, take a step back and pause. Be aware that stress will affect your leadership style. Assess what circumstances are under your control and ignore the ones that are not. Divide complexity into small, bite sized tasks and ask yourself: “what would happen if we didn’t do X, Y, Z?” Then only focus on the areas that would severely impact the outcome of the project. By tackling the discreet areas that matter most, you stand the chance of identifying and resolving the root causes that are contributing to the urgency. Your sense of cool will also calm others and increase odds of a favourable outcome in periods of stress. – Benoit Jolin, Head of Global Supplier Experience, Expedia Inc

Your drive will drive others 

Ideally, find a project you are passionate about. Your passion will be contagious and help drive others involved. This will draw out peoples’ natural creative and curious side that often leads to innovative thinking and the building of great products and services that people love. – Benoit Jolin, Head of Global Supplier Experience, Expedia Inc