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CEO Dialogue podcast series

Antoine de Saint-Affrique

March 30, 2023 • by Jean-François Manzoni in CEO Dialogue podcast series • Podcast availablePodcast available

Danone CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique talks about his quest for constant learning, and his drive to create room for budding talents within the organization....

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Antoine de Saint-Affrique is a man who doesn’t let himself, his employees, or his investors get too comfortable. Since becoming the CEO of French food and nutrition giant Danone in September 2021, the 58-year-old executive has delivered some uncomfortable truths.

It is about preserving your freedom - your intellectual freedom and your emotional freedom - to be able to be at your best. You play at your best when you are free - not when you are afraid
- Antoine de Saint-Affrique on his attitude to work-life balance

Saint-Afrique has clearly called out the company’s underperformance compared to peers while remaining confident that Danone is operating in the right categories and has what it takes to win. In conversation with IMD President Jean-Francois Manzoni, he talks about his quest for constant learning and renewal, and his drive to create room for budding talents to emerge and thrive within the organization.

Authors

Jean-François Manzoni

Professor of Leadership, Organizational Development and Corporate Governance

Jean-François Manzoni (JFM) is Professor of Leadership, Organizational Development and Corporate Governance at IMD, where he served as President and Nestlé Professor from 2017 to 2024. His research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations and corporate governance. In recent years JFM has also been increasingly focused on finding ways to ensure leadership development interventions have lasting impact, particularly through the use of technology-mediated approaches, and on closing the growing managerial “knowing-doing gap”, i.e., the gap between what managers kind of know they should be doing and the extent to which they actually behave that way in practice.

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