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Claire Isnard can trace her 40?year career\u2014including 17 years at fashion house Chanel\u2014back to one bad exam. Had she passed, she\u2019d likely still be in a classroom, grading essays on Italian literature.<\/p>\n
Looking back, in her first-ever sit-down interview ahead of her retirement, Isnard says she feels like she\u2019s come full circle. Despite having zero HR qualifications, she wound up as Chanel\u2019s chief people and chief organization officer. \u201cWhen you draw my story back, the first compelling and meaningful thing that would end up spread across everything I\u2019ve done is helping people become who they didn\u2019t think they can become,\u201d she told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, teaching was not about the speciality of French or Italian, it was about helping those young people\u2014especially the ones who were having difficulty unleashing their skill set and couldn\u2019t find themselves internally, I could help them become larger, bigger than what they thought,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I loved it very much.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Isnard took that career plan \u201cvery, very seriously\u201d and was giving language lessons to teenagers in both Italy and France while studying, which made the final exam failure that would have cemented a lifelong academic career all the more confusing.<\/p>\n \u201cNot only I failed,\u201d Isnard said, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do. I had no clear path ahead of me. I had no clear goal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n With no plan B, she went back to school and threw herself into student forums and networking events. It led to a chance encounter that would drag her from the classroom into consulting\u2014and eventually, right into Chanel\u2019s corner office.<\/p>\n 40 years later, Isnard still remembers how crushing that first experience of failure was\u2014but she refuses to let younger generations see similar setbacks as the end of the story.<\/p>\n Now, the lesson she reminds her millennial children (who are 30 and 33) is that failure is simply \u201ca roadblock on the road, not the end of the road.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt hurts, it\u2019s very uncomfortable,\u201d Isnard said. \u201cIt can be very frustrating because you worked hard. Although it may not feel like it in the moment, this pause could be a blessing in disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n Isnard recommends using failure as an opportunity to reassess the direction you\u2019re going down\u2014as well as whether you\u2019re even enjoying it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a signal here that either you\u2019ve not worked enough\u2014if you really want to do it again, work harder, and you will get it\u2014or maybe there was something that was not for you,\u201d she said. \u201cLook at what you enjoyed in doing that, but also look at the thing you don\u2019t enjoy, and go where your passion is\u2026 I\u2019m really convinced that we cannot be good at something we don\u2019t like doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, passion alone is not enough to land a big break after a failure. It doesn\u2019t matter how much you love talking about luxury brands or coding\u2014if you don\u2019t get out of your comfort zone and show them, no one will know. That\u2019s why Isnard recommends Gen Zers simply get out into the world.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you stay in your room, or behind your computer, you just don\u2019t get those moments of connection that spark a different conversation, or open your mind to possibility, or let you meet someone who finds something interesting in you,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n She would know. Just one \u201clucky\u201d conversation with the founder of a boutique consultancy at a student forum turned into a two-decade career in the industry, including climbing up Aon Hewitt\u2019s ranks (formerly known as Hewitt Associates) to managing director.<\/p>\n \u201cI was present in all forums, in all networks, where I could meet people that I would not meet otherwise, and it was a series of encounters that brought me to the woman who hired me,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I really believe in connection. I really believe in going outside of your comfort zone\u2014open that door, be curious, meet with people, enter the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n Isnard says you don\u2019t need a slick five-year plan, or even a full-to-the-brim contacts book\u2014just the courage to start up conversation in a room full of strangers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone knows someone,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I didn\u2019t hesitate to say, I\u2019m hungry for work and I would like to do something that has to do with writing, thinking and being helpful to others.\u201d<\/p>\n Being courageous worked out in Isnard\u2019s favour when Chanel was a client of hers. Soon after the company had hired its first-ever global CEO, Maureen Shekels, she directly asked Isnard one tough-to-answer question: Do I have what I need to act as a global CEO?<\/p>\n The answer, Isnard gave her, was brutally honest: No.\u00a0<\/p>\n For eight years, she had partnered with the fashion brand on \u201cdifferent, strategic problems.\u201d And that proximity became vital when its new boss asked her to carry out a no?nonsense diagnosis of her leadership and how to bring the luxury brand out of an outdated, fragmented structure.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we designed together a global model for the future,\u201d Isnard said. \u201cIt\u2019s easier for a consultant to tell [the harsh truth] because you have objectivity, you don\u2019t have the emotion of being inside. I was not losing anything; I was helping my client to see through what she needed for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n But what Isnard perhaps didn\u2019t expect was to get poached by the CEO herself, just two years later in 2008: \u201cI was very surprised, because I\u2019ve never been an HR in my life before,\u201d Isnard recalled, before adding she didn\u2019t think twice before accepting despite feeling a mixture of honoured, intimidated, and frankly, a bit scared.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to move with my family to New York from France,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to learn how to be an insider\u2014I knew everybody, all the leaders, but from the outside. I had to build a team. There was no global team in HR. I had to do everything from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite her lack of formal HR credentials, Chanel\u2019s global footprint has expanded dramatically over the past two decades. Today, the brand operates in roughly 70 countries worldwide with over 600 boutiques. Under Isnard\u2019s watch, its workforce has more than tripled, growing to 38,400 employees worldwide.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s another story of someone placing trust in you,\u201d she added. \u201cTake risk, pivot, but do it with people you trust\u2014who trust you too. And check that you have the passion for what is to come.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, as she prepares to step down after over 17 years as Chanel\u2019s chief people and organization officer, Isnard faces a familiar uncertainty\u2014the same feeling she had after that first failed exam. Only this time, she\u2019s looking forward to it.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next chapter for me is to be invented, which is also back to the first conversation, how will I take risk\u2014or not? Am I going to meet with other people? It\u2019s all about the new possibilities that will unfold.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The outgoing exec, who\u00a0says she\u2019s been reflecting on what her purpose is and will take some more time to ponder, already knows she wants to \u201ccontinue being contributive,\u201d even in retirement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe worst is if you feel lost and you feel abandoned. But I think the other worst is that you get another kind of frenetic<\/em>, but it has no meaning. It\u2019s just a bunch of activities for the sake of not being by yourself. These are the things that I want to absolutely avoid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In the end, she hints she may just go back to where it all began: In teaching, some way or another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Arrow #Button #Icon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Claire Isnard can trace her 40… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3816,3817,2005,542,924,372,2704,2633,300,3818,4499,1981],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Gen Z: Failure might be your lucky break\u2014but not if you don\u2019t get out<\/h2>\n
The brutally honest answer that got her poached by Chanel<\/h2>\n
What comes after Chanel\u2019s corner office?<\/h2>\n