We're all-SET

This week we announced that I’ve joined IDEMIA. If you’re not familiar with us we are the leader in Augmented Identity and we are addressing two market segments: Government and Enterprise. I have the privilege of taking over as CEO of the Enterprise division (Secure Enterprise Transactions, or SET). I succeed Pierre Barrial who has become our group CEO. Congratulations Pierre and thank you for your trust.

If you’re not aware of SET, or IDEMIA, you’ve almost certainly used our products or services without even knowing it. SET is a world leader in creating payment cards, SIM cards and transportation cards, has a truly differentiated set of biometric recognition devices and has a range of digital solutions in connectivity, payment, identity and trust. For the government segment, IDEMIA is a leader in issuing identity documents (passports, driving licenses etc.) and provides services such as TSA-Pre-check and systems such as those that you go through when you enter a country through an airport.

As I began to consider new opportunities last year it was an obvious choice to me that IDEMIA represented a great fit. The industries that we operate in, and the technologies we provide, are very familiar to me, but represent a larger market, and the journey we hope to take as a company is similar to the one that I recently experienced, but on a larger scale.

I joined at the end of January with two months to onboard before taking over as CEO of SET on April 1st. I had a six month plan of touring the world, intending to visit nearly 50 key locations, where the Division is operating, covering every region of the planet.

My first week was in Lisbon with approximately 300 of the leadership of my new team. It was a phenomenal experience, reinforcing that I had made a great decision as I consistently met impressive and energized people and had the opportunity to introduce myself. From there I went to Colombia and Brazil to see our LatAm operations before going back to Europe to spend a week at headquarters in Paris. I returned to the states in early March visiting our manufacturing facility near Philadelphia, and our service center in Los Angeles. It then became apparent that the world faced a pandemic like one we hadn’t seen for a very long-time, and it was going to be a unique time to take on the leadership of SET.

This meant that we needed to pivot the plan. We went into crisis mode to ensure continuity of meeting our commitments to customers whilst ensuring that we protect our team members. Our monthly rhythm became weekly, and our weekly routines became daily. The pace intensified which made the outcomes my team achieved even more impressive. Although no one would have wished for the situation, it did provide me the opportunity to see my new team operate in the most extreme conditions, and they were absolutely remarkable. I was proud for them as I saw their efforts be repeatedly recognized through testimonials from customers who were recognizing them for going above and beyond.

A focus on business continuity was soon followed by deep diving the business to understand the implications for the rest of the year, and I count myself fortunate to join what is evidently a very resilient business. By mid-May we were beginning to start to return to our regular routines and rhythm and I’ve been pleased to be able to get back to a more strategic agenda over the past 4-6 weeks.

However, for the team and I it made the challenge of a leadership transition all the tougher. We went ahead with the SET transition as planned on April 1st so that Pierre could commence his preparatory process for taking on his new role. This meant that I now needed to lead a team of 7,000, most of whom I’d never met, and even for those that I had met, it was only once or twice. This was a challenge for me as I tried to understand the business sufficiently to add value whilst trying to provide guidance and direction to people I didn’t know well and whom were operating at a much faster pace than normal. It’s been hard on my new team too, transitioning from a leader they knew well to one that they did not and experiencing working with me for the first time almost exclusively through a screen.

Although we’ve been able to now return to a more strategic agenda, we are yet to be all-together in person. I hope to spend the majority of this quarter in Paris and I’m excited to get to know more people at HQ. I’m equally hopeful that I’ll be able to resume the world tour in the final quarter of the year to meet with my teams in the other regions of the world but we’ll have to see how things go.

Despite the unique onboarding experience I couldn’t be more delighted to be part of the team. We have great products and impressive technologies that will be arguably even more important in the new future. We have amazing people that have demonstrated their agility, resilience and expertise in very tough conditions and we have a compelling purpose to enable billions of consumers to connect, authenticate and pay, which is even more important today than it was yesterday.

I’m energized to spend this quarter putting together the vision and strategy for SET, build our team and culture further, and to explore in-depth how we can further the value we create for our customers and at the same time look for opportunities to develop new solutions and services.

We have a bright future ahead of us and I’m honored to be able to support and serve my team as we take on our journey. We have a saying that “we are all-SET” and it’s a privilege to be able to now say I’m all-SET! It’s going to be a lot of hard work but it’s also going to be a lot of fun. I’ll post more about it along the way. In the meantime, do you want to come be part of it? If so, check us out: https://www.idemia.com/step-inside-idemias-world