President, The Travel Corporation Canada
In my early teenage years, like every good Canadian kid, I played hockey. My days were busy with practices, while my nights are remembered fondly as filled with streetlight-illuminated games of pick-up in front of my house. I had always thought that hockey was the sport that would carry me through adulthood, until my high school principal hired a judo instructor to come teach a few after-school lessons to the brave students who signed up. At fifteen, I was just curious, and possibly competitive, enough to join in. Less than two years later, I quit hockey and have never looked back.
Throughout the years, as I’ve worked towards a second-degree black belt, judo has taught me a great many things that apply in everyday life as well as in my role as president for The Travel Corporation in Canada.
Judo isn’t about being the strongest in the class, but about timing and intelligent in your actions. In its most basic translation, judo means gentle way, and the craft of the sport is intended to focus your attention on letting your opponent make an ill-fated decision, which will allow you to maintain control and ultimately prevail.
Judo isn’t about being the strongest in the class, but about timing and intelligent in your actions. In its most basic translation, judo means gentle way, and the craft of the sport is intended to focus your attention on letting your opponent make an ill-fated decision, which will allow you to maintain control and ultimately prevail.
What follows are four major practices in judo that take form whether it’s in the dōjō or boardroom.
Discipline
As with every sport (and profession), it takes practice to become proficient and comfortable in your abilities. Most people will lump judo into a broad range of fighting techniques that mostly just translate to kicking and punching, but it’s much more composed than that.
Judo is about self-control and maintaining a sense of calm in all situations. You can’t go into a match with your adrenaline pumping, hoping to see some blood – that will be your own downfall. With any situation that arises on the mat or in the office, a loss of control can be the difference between success and failure.
Judo is about self-control and maintaining a sense of calm in all situations. You can’t go into a match with your adrenaline pumping, hoping to see some blood – that will be your own downfall. With any situation that arises on the mat or in the office, a loss of control can be the difference between success and failure.
Timing
The phrase “timing is everything” is applicable in almost all aspects of life, but it’s one of the most important lessons in judo. An early thing I learned was that it’s very hard, near impossible, to move an opponent who’s standing still; it can be like trying to move a mountain.
You need to wait for them to move on their own – a quick step to the side or an advance on you – to be able to use that momentum against them and knock them down. When it comes to business, even the best-laid plans need to wait for the perfect moment to be introduced or can run the risk of falling by the wayside.
You need to wait for them to move on their own – a quick step to the side or an advance on you – to be able to use that momentum against them and knock them down. When it comes to business, even the best-laid plans need to wait for the perfect moment to be introduced or can run the risk of falling by the wayside.
Respect
Regardless of whether you’re dealing with a partner, an associate, an assistant, an intern or an opponent, respect is monumental. From the time I was a teenager, it was drilled into me that by respecting myself, I would learn to respect others, which translated into always competing in a clean suit, arriving on time and following the customs that had been set way before my time.
To be seen as a worthy opponent or partner, you have to act like one, and nothing could be truer about the business world. If I want to be taken seriously and respected as the president of a company, I need to present myself in a respectable light and extend that to everyone I encounter. That’s a philosophy I try to impart in every aspect of my day-to-day life.
To be seen as a worthy opponent or partner, you have to act like one, and nothing could be truer about the business world. If I want to be taken seriously and respected as the president of a company, I need to present myself in a respectable light and extend that to everyone I encounter. That’s a philosophy I try to impart in every aspect of my day-to-day life.
Community
It’s funny to think that judo, which really isn’t much of a team sport, can be so ingrained within its own community, but it’s true. Once you get to a certain level in the practice, it’s expected that you will turn around and teach it right back to the next generation, something I quite enjoyed.
You’re given the opportunity to pass on your experience to people of all ages who are new to judo. That same sense of community is vital in an office where expertise, ideas and solutions need to be shared and passed through the ranks to have a continuously learning and cohesive environment.
You’re given the opportunity to pass on your experience to people of all ages who are new to judo. That same sense of community is vital in an office where expertise, ideas and solutions need to be shared and passed through the ranks to have a continuously learning and cohesive environment.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/leadership/article-what-learning-judo-taught-me-about-being-a-leader/
Sept. 10, 2018 The Ladder: Jean-François Côté: Today I found this article by Karl Moore in the Globe and Mail:
Jean-François Côté is the chief executive officer of District M, a digital media company offering diverse programmatic advertising solutions for publishers and advertisers. He has more than 20 years of experience in the media industry and holds an MBA from the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM).
Growing up, I lived in a small French village, working in farming. My grandfather was a well-recognized entrepreneur in farming, and I learned a lot from him, observing his business deals and client meetings.
I understood early on the importance of speaking English to doing business in the global context, and my father encouraged me to pursue learning English in school. Learning English in 1998, in the absence of the internet, posed different challenges from learning English today, including struggling to finish exams while flipping dictionary pages.
The job search was vastly different before the internet – I remember printing 40 CVs per day. I would borrow my dad’s car, and drive around to submit my CV to different companies.
I learned from incredibly powerful mentors during my time at Pratt & Whitney. John Di Bert, now chief financial officer of Bombardier, was one of the greatest influences and educators that I had there.
I spent 20 years working in the corporate world, before I pursued entrepreneurship, at PricewaterhouseCoopers in consulting, then at UQAM to pursue my MBA, and at Yellow Pages in Business Planning.
The shift from print to digital affected both publishing agencies and advertisers. I determined that if you were able to optimize on supply and demand for these stakeholders, you would be able to leverage technology to best help both.
Creativity in advertising is incredibly important, and in the wake of technology’s impact on business, companies sometimes forget to be creative. District M enables advertisers to maintain creativity while leveraging technology.
“What do my next 10 years look like?” This is a question I asked myself, after spending almost 20 years in the corporate world. I did my MBA, and was uncertain whether I saw my future at the C-level of a large corporation.
My first venture into entrepreneurship was when I was 15 and I ran a hockey-card business on [Montreal’s] South Shore; my grandfather gave me a $10,000 investment to turn this into a business. A few childhood ventures and many corporate years later, at age 35, I was faced with whether I would return to my entrepreneurial roots and try something on my own, or accept a good, stable, corporate job.
Because of my corporate background, I really prepared to fail, and thought of what the “worst case scenario” would be. From the day I started District M, I put a huge focus and priority on planning.
I knew that even if I were to be a C+ in strategy, that I would have to be an A+ in execution – and District M operates at a level of A+ in execution.
I knew that even if I were to be a C+ in strategy, that I would have to be an A+ in execution – and District M operates at a level of A+ in execution.
Sometimes you have sleepless nights and there is a lot on your mind and you’re tossing and turning and you can’t get any rest – you know that feeling? That’s the entrepreneurial mindset: You never really rest, there is always something else to think about.
I’m very proud to be in Montreal and go toe to toe with Toronto, New York and [Silicon] Valley businesses. Our costs are lower in Montreal, the people are very talented and we have the advantage of language, speaking eight different languages in my office. Language enables global reach, with business 80 per cent outside of Canada.
I’m very passionate about leadership. Getting to Yes changed my life, and I give it to all my new sales representatives to read. Growing up, I was always captains of my sports teams, and maybe it was coming from a large family, but I love to work as part of a team – win as a team and lose as a team.
Leadership is my mindset and I love to be a leader, talk about strategy, execution, get to know teams and manage the people based on their strengths and needs.
Intense workouts energize me and refresh my energy and a clear mindset – and this has a huge impact on how I run my business.
Balancing work with a family, I often end my day at 6 p.m., go home to be with my kids and then come back online at 9 p.m. until around 11 p.m. or midnight. It is incredibly important to me to tend to my e-mails. People can always expect to hear back from me within 24 hours.
The luxury of being an entrepreneur is that I’m able to spot potential in people and train them. Someone coming from the restaurant industry and a former DJ, are now managers at District M because they had the aptitude and proper training.
We manage the company like a corporation, but with the culture of an entrepreneur. If you want to have the right culture in place, you can’t go top down – it needs to come from the employees themselves, bottom up.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length. With reporting by Elaina Yallen.
My opinion: I looked up the book Getting to Yes:
Getting to Yes is a straightorward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting taken -- and without getting angry.
It offers a concise, step-by-step, proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict -- whether it involves parents and children, neighbors, bosses and employees, customers or corporations, tenants or diplomats.
Based on the work of Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deal continually with all levels of negotiations and conflict resolutions from domestic to business to international, Getting to Yes tells you how to:
- Separate the people from the problem
- Focus on interests, not positions
- Work together to create opinions that will satisfy both parties
- negotiate successfully with people who are more powerful, refuse to play by the rules, or resort to "dirty tricks"
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