We Sat Down With Audemars Piguet CEO Ilaria Resta To Talk Leadership And The Art Of Perfect Timing

I really believe your brain is like any other muscle, right? The more you push it, the more you train it, the more in a way resilient it becomes, and it's a sponge to new stimuli, to new ideas.

Well, thank you. Very happy to be here.

I'm a big believer that in life and as well in your professional life it's good to manage the expertise, the comfort, at the same time to put yourself in a learning path and explore new ventures. Every time I've done so in my career—multiple times, changing country, changing type of job, changing position—it's a bit of a stretch at the beginning because of course you do not know where you land. There is the discomfort of learning but at the same time by doing so you develop new muscles, new expertise, and as a manager you become much more rounded by having been exposed to different categories, different business models, different realities. So I see the benefit of bringing in business a fresh view. I think the fresh view removes all the bias that you might have on a certain category, on certain clients, and it makes you really in a way ingenuous to the ideas that can come from outside. And there is this power that lasts for a certain period of time. That's why when I hire people from outside the industry, I like to really feel this fresh point of view constantly. I ask them, while it's still fresh, please note down all the ideas that you have now because it's inevitable after a while you become blind just because you have been exposed for so many years to the same type of category. But, you know, it's great. I really believe your brain is like any other muscle, right? The more you push it, the more you train it, the more in a way resilient it becomes, and it's a sponge to new stimuli, to new ideas. So I truly believe the agility and the learning ability is a muscle that needs to be developed by leaders, and that's what I ask for all my leaders—to continue being alert, open and keep learning.

Difficult because you need to constantly really assess how you're doing vis-à-vis of course the external context and vis-à-vis your team. And of course there are the business results, right? Business results are the easiest because they're either green or red and it's clear if you're doing well. But what's even more important than the business results is the pulse on the organization. Are you really moving the organization towards the destination that you thought for that organization in the external context? Because a company is a living organism, right? And that's why I really believe the best way to test is having an open dialogue with the people of the company but also with the broader ecosystem around the company.

That's a real change in my mindset that happened already 10 years ago when I started leading bigger organizations. When you move from leading a team of 20, 30, 50 people all the way to hundreds or thousands of people, you realize that the biggest enemy is the distance from reality and the distance from the people who do the work. Now it's very difficult of course to be closer to everybody, but if you position yourself as a leader which is in the center—a leader that tries to remove the unnecessary hierarchies, especially in communication, because hierarchies are needed to be efficient and effective in driving a company. You cannot have a horizontal company, but at the same time you need to have access to the leader and you as a leader need to have access to the people closer to the reality and the business. It's a philosophy but it's also an organization designed for me.

Well, you know, this decision to increase, if you want, the family members to people who are from outside was a decision taken years ago that has been in a way part of the history of Audemars Piguet. Ever since the company was created, it was built on collaborations with other brands, with designers externally. And then as we grew our family and our interest into music, into art, but also into pop culture in general, we realized that this collaboration fosters creativity, fosters our sense of new development, new ideas, exploration. So for me, the best ideas are the ones that push in a way our creativity, that push our limits and make us see things that we didn't see before. But at the same time we like the collaboration to be beneficial to our partner because otherwise it becomes uneven as a relationship. And at the same time we like to learn from our partner and we like to offer a learning opportunity to our partner as well.

Indeed. It has to do with being open-minded and courageous to accept, let's say, something that is outside of your limits in a way of what's possible. When you think, 'okay, let me try, I don't know how to do it but maybe I can do it.'

You know, every time I made a choice that didn't make sense in the moment, I took it, and I took it out of heart rather than out of planning. It ended up being a tough choice but a transformative choice for me. It's a moment where you leave your comfort zone and you go into the unknown. On the personal professional side, has been the most transformative times for me.

I don't know. I never knew. I just jump.