David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…That's not the best search process to run, and yet it works. I don't think it's this magical bloodline. I think it is a deep understanding of the tradition of the business, of exactly what type of chutzpah the team has to rally and take on, having the political clout to find the right people, and empower them to make the change, to have a sixth sense for where you sit in the marketplace versus competitors and what people may want out of your brand next. It's all the intangibles that come from growing up in the business make you able to be the right person to transform it. I really do think that there is an element too of the successive generations, they apprentice in the ateliers with their hands. I think there is an element of that. They also apprentice, especially these days on the business side too. Axel talks, all the time, about dinner table conversations between his uncle, Jean-Louis, who we're about to talk about now, who is the fifth generation CEO of Hermes and his mother, who was head of production at the dinner table growing up. You can't not absorb that. I think that's the flip side of nepotism, which makes it such a challenging topic. On the one hand, obviously limiting the universe of talent. On the other hand, how do you replicate those dinner table conversations? It's funny. I called it a sixth sense. I think the right way to describe it is actually a je ne sais quoi about what you absorb from those.…

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