In this episode of The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast, Nathalie Collin, Deputy CEO of Groupe La Poste, Member of Senior Executive Committee, CEO Retail and Digital Division, shares her philosophy of leadership rooted in vision, purpose, and care. Drawing on her experience leading transformation across multiple industries, Nathalie discusses how aspirational leadership, adaptability, and empowering teams are vital for navigating change and driving organizational success. The conversation also explores the essential qualities, ongoing learning, and strategic mindset needed for CEOs to lead effectively in today’s evolving business landscape.

Welcome to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of diversified solutions across senior-level executive search, leadership assessment and development, team and organizational effectiveness, and culture shaping. Every day, we speak with leaders around the world about how they’re meeting rising expectations and managing through volatile times, thinking about individual leaders, teams, organizations, and society. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Ahmad Hassan: Hello. I'm Ahmad Hassan, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles, a global firm focused on executive search and leadership consulting. Today, I'm interested to welcome Nathalie Collin. Nathalie has had an impressive career. After leading EMI Music France, she went on to head Libération, then Nouvel Observateur, before joining La Poste, where she's now deputy CEO, overseeing the Consumer and Digital Division. Nathalie, thank you for being with us today. 

Nathalie Collin: Thank you, Ahmad. It's a pleasure for me to be with you, and I'm happy to have that conversation. 

Ahmad Hassan: Fantastic. The first area we'd love to have your insight about is transformation and innovation, because you have led organizations across diverse industries, music, media—now postal and digital—each facing its own digital revolution. Can you share insights from your journey and the key lessons you've learned from these transformations? 

Nathalie Collin: Well, that's a very good question, because when you make transformations in businesses as different as a music industry, media, newspaper, magazines, and now post offices, obviously it's difficult to have something in common. So maybe what I could say is that probably the first thing is to have a vision, and the vision would be the goal—the aim of the journey really is where you want to go, where you want to be in 10 years’ time or something like that. And I think that that's the most important. And once you have your vision, definitely you have to build the way you're going to reach that goal, and probably it's about technology. Because, as you know, I've been very much into digital transformation, and I would say that to reach that vision, you have a sort of a road, and the road is the technology. 

And then you need the people, because if you want some people on your road and if you want to reach your goal, definitely you have to work with the people, rally them to your cause, and make them work together—and probably change the culture of those people. So, I would say that probably it is a journey. You will have a road, which is technology. You must have a vision which is bigger than you, maybe sometimes bigger than the company, and you rally the people to your cause, and you change a culture to achieve that journey. 

Ahmad Hassan: Thank you, Nathalie. An interesting part is transforming an institution as iconic as La Poste. It requires balancing innovation with respecting the culture and the history. So how have you tackled this challenge? 

Nathalie Collin: Yes, it is a challenge. You know, La Poste is a 600-year-old company—institution, we could say. 

Ahmad Hassan: Exactly. 

Nathalie Collin: 240,000 people. We are across the territory, really across the country, every year. We know we have a public service obligation to be at less than 5 kilometers or 20 minutes from anybody in the country. 

Ahmad Hassan: Wow. 

Nathalie Collin: And we have 17,000 post offices, just to give you an idea of the range and where we are. I think when you want to make a transformation of such an institution, what's really important is to understand deeply the DNA of the company, and to understand deeply why the postmen and the postwomen wake up in the morning and what is their purpose in life. Those fundamentals at La Poste are definitely trust, that's for sure. We say confiance in French, but it is trust. Public services, we say territoire in French, which is definitely big everywhere across the country. The link, proximity, be close to the people. And when you understand that you can set up a strategy that perfectly fits with those fundamentals. 

If you take what we did at the post office’s network, we definitely built a strategy around, first of all, care. Care about customers, care about employees. And that's certainly the first pillar of the transformation, how when you care about your employees by a sort of symmetric phenomenon, it makes that they care about your customers, and it enhances their experience. So that was definitely the first pillar. 

Then you have our public service obligation, being close to the people across the whole country. And it's important, because this is a reason why we have 17,000 post offices. And all that leads you to developing your business. So, it's a transformation because we use a lot of technology, because we bring you new services in the post offices, but it's a transformation around the DNA of the company. 

If you take an example, I was a few weeks ago in Corte in Corsica, and in Corte we brought the capacity to take the exam of the Highway Code, which wasn't present in Corte at all. And if you can, when you see the young people are passing their exam because it's good if they pass them, not only if they take them, you see that it's all about trust. Because we can take the exam at La Poste; it means that it's a national exam. It's very important. It's all about proximity, because we bring a new service somewhere. Corte is a very important city in Corsica because it's where they have the university, so it's important to be able to take the exam of Highway Code. And then it's a business, so it's development. It's just an example, but with this example you can see how it changes clearly the way you use the post office.

And if you take another example, it's how you change the culture of postmen and postwomen. When we built the branch about all the post offices, we decided to give a smartphone to all postmen and postwomen, and it totally changes the gesture they have toward the customers. Which means that, for example, now you have no more desk, more or less, they are in the commercial space, and they clearly do things with you, close to you, next to you with their device, so this is a big change as well. I think that it's all about being in line with your DNA, and then people come with you to the journey of transformation. 

Ahmad Hassan: These are excellent examples, thank you. Can you share a little bit more about how you foster this culture of innovation to overcome internal resistance? Many times, people are resistant to change to major transformations.

Nathalie Collin: Yes, that’s for sure. Resistance is a big issue, especially in a large company where you can imagine, with 17,000 post offices, how can you clearly manage locally if you don't have managers who are locally empowered to do it? You can't control 17,000 post offices from Paris. You can't control 240,000 people from Paris, really. What is very important is to give them part of the power. It means that you embark them in the journey, you rally them to your purpose, and then you give them the power to do things locally. 

If I give you an example, we decided to have a diversification offer with many new products and corners in the post offices where we sell, for example, Asterix, but as well devices, telephones, and so on, and postcards and whatever. So, this is a sort of national strategy, so it's in all post offices. But we decided that part of this corner would be dedicated to local offers. For example, you can see a young boy buying a calisson in Aix-en-Provence, if you go to the post office of Aix-en-Provence. And it's very interesting because by giving them the power, part of the power, you embark them in your move and then they are much more motivated. Because, OK, they will sell you postcards or your devices or whatever, but they can decide locally that they want to sell a Lavon if it's somewhere else or Calissons or Bêtise de Cambrai if you're in the North of France. 

And I think that's very interesting because you never get people as motivated as when they do it, because they really feel it's important for them, and it’s their own decision. And I think that to be able to delegate part of the power on the ground and in the post offices, is one of the keys to embark the whole team. 

Ahmad Hassan: And as we move toward the topic of leadership, my main question is: What kind of leader are you? How do you define your leadership philosophy? How have you adapted it to companies you've led? 

Nathalie Collin: That's very interesting. I think a leader is to be aspirational, and I think that's probably the most important. And you're aspirational only when you fight for something which is bigger than you. And I think that if you really want to be a leader, you must have inside yourself something that tells you that you have a purpose, this purpose is bigger than you—sometimes bigger than the company—and you fight for it. If you take, for example, the post office’s network, it's interesting because it's clearly not only just postal services or bank or insurance services; it's how we are a way to be there for people who are left behind. And when you see the role of post offices, clearly, we are everywhere in the country. We deal with all the social spectrum, across all the social spectrum, and we sit down with people, we help them step-by-step to fill in the unemployment office file, for example, or to find a password that they forgot. 

And we are clearly fighting against division of the society and at the first, the level, digital divide. We work on digital inclusion. Maybe you don't know it, but at La Poste we train to use the digital tools about 2.2 million people a year. So, it's very, very strong to be able to push back the feeling of being left behind, really. And this is a purpose, this is something that make all the postmen, postwomen to wake up in the morning and feel useful to the population and to the country. And when you lead your people to such a purpose, definitely you are a leader. 

Ahmad Hassan: And as a leader, how do you continue learning and staying ahead of the key industry trends? Are there any habits or resources you rely on? 

Nathalie Collin: Yes, of course, I think it's both. You need resources. You need a strategic team. You need to read newspapers, books, and so on. So that's a large part of the job, of course, but everybody can do that. I think that you need as well to hire young people, because they will tell you how the world will be in 10 or 15 years or 20 years, and you don't know. 

And to listen to them. I think if we started listening to people, we would learn much more than in books, really. And we don't listen that much. Maybe people just listen to you in order to answer to you. I mean deeply listening to people. And I think—and it's very, very important, you must have what I call a helicopter approach, which means that you go up 6,000 feet and you understand the economics, the rationale of things, what happens in geopolitics, and what Mr. Trump will do tomorrow. And it's not very stable, but at least you have an idea of what will happen tomorrow. 

But you must as well go on the ground and understand what the action is. And if I give you an example, I was this morning at the post office in La Trinité, and they told me well, we're very happy because the number of customers who get into the post office per day grew by 5% from last year. Which is very good because, as you know, we have a decrease in mail and it's difficult to keep the same level of recommendation. And I said OK, but why do you have this result where it's not the case everywhere? And then you start to understand, and you understand that they have Vinted Parcels in the post office, they have La Poste Mobile telephones in the post office. They have, as well, a very big space for bank and insurance, and they have a lot of diversification products. And then you see everything you did at a central level, you see your strategy, but you see it on the ground, and you see the result of it, and the outcome is that they have a gross implementation of 5%. And, I think, this is what I call the helicopter view and then the implementation, understanding in detail, being in the room, understand what it means really on the ground. 

Ahmad Hassan: Nathalie, we're hearing a lot regarding emerging technologies, especially AI and how it will reshape companies, organizations. In your view, should a CEO be well-versed in technology or is it more important to surround themselves with the right expertise?

Nathalie Collin: You must surround yourself with the right expertise. You must clearly hire the best people and have the best team and train your team. If you take AI, for example, at La Poste, 100,000 people have been trained to use AI. It's huge, and everybody will be trained to AI within the next three years. So, you definitely need to have the best with you. And it's the reason why, for example, eight years ago, I decided to acquire Probios. Probios was a spinoff of INRIA. They are clearly fully dedicated to AI. And it was a bit strange at La Poste to acquire a spinoff of INRIA eight years ago, but that they help us so much to be very, very efficient. 

If you take, for example, the way they use AI to recognize handwriting and all the productivity gains we can have in reading letters automatically, it was very important. Three years ago, the same way to have the two, the competencies with us, we acquired Openvalue, which is a generative AI company. And same thing, we learned a lot with them. So definitely we need to have the competencies. 

But you need to understand as well, I mean, you need to listen to them, you need to understand, and you need to experiment. There is no way you can decide what you're going to do with gen AI if you don't use gen AI on your day-to-day life. So, it's both. And this is the reason why it's the best job in the world, because you need to be always adaptable and up to the new technologies and understand them and be able to inspire the people who are leading those technologies. I need to know, for example, that we need open source LLM bricks to do our products, because it's important for me to know that it's better to do that rather than, for example, making a deal with one or the other. So, you need to understand, you need to listen to the people who know, and you need to recruit the best people if you can. 

Ahmad Hassan: Great. And what do you see as the biggest challenges that CEOs and businesses will face in the next five to 10 years? 

Nathalie Collin: I think there are many. Maybe the challenge of the challenges would be probably climate, because we are talking about, well, the end of humanity potentially. So, climate is the biggest challenge, definitely. And we work on that very hard at La Poste because we were the first to set up a whole electric vehicle fleet, for example, or we are working on adaptation of our offices, adaptation on our HR policy, in order to make that people, when it's very hot outside, they still can deliver their job. So, climate is definitely above everything. 

I think AI, you talk about AI, but AI is going to deeply change, transform the way we work. I still believe that human relationships will be, will be key, but AI will change even the way we will deliver human relationships. So, I think I would put it as a number two. 

I think HR is absolutely determinant, because we haven't yet the solution after the Covid period to deal with what we call we call les cols blanc (white collars) in French, the managers, let's say people in the headquarters who can work from home, who have all sorts of advantages. And what they call les cols bleus (blue collars), who are in front of the clients. And I think that the gap is wider and wider, and if we don't find a way to reconcile that gap, we will not have any more cols bleus in the coming years. And I think that's a very, very big challenge for a company like La Poste, and for all the companies in sort of care and services, it's very, very important. And obviously, we experiment quite well with this issue right now: it’s a geopolitical state of the world. And it depends on days, but we have our surprises and must adapt to all the changes, but obviously it's a big concern as well.

Ahmad Hassan: And what skills and qualities do you think will be essential for a CEO in the coming years?

Nathalie Collin: You have good questions. I think that I would put above everything, act for a better world. If as a CEO, you're not able to try to act for a better world, I think you are not doing your job really. Inspire, because if you can't be an inspiration for your team, it's very difficult to lead them and make your company useful. So that's very important to me. Then, probably it's caring about people, caring about your employees, caring about your customers. And due to all the changes we are experiencing right now, it's definitely adaptability.

Ahmad Hassan: Thank you. Our last question is regarding advice to up-and-coming CEOs, so what are the career elements for becoming one? Can unconventional profiles stand out? Do they need to prepare themselves to become a CEO? What's your advice?

Nathalie Collin: It's very interesting to be an unconventional profile, but it's very difficult. So, if you be more conventional, I would advise you to be more conventional. To start with, and I'm sure you will find that strange, but I think that you must understand finance, definitely. I don't think you can be a good CEO if you don't understand finance, because finance is the way to understand your business, and you must understand your business and the way you have to manage it. I think that's clearly a no-brainer.

Then you have to lead businesses. You can't become a CEO, in my view, if you don't lead businesses—if you're not able to show that you made development, you can grow up your turnover, and I think that’s very important. That's for the skills. Obviously, you must care about people. If you don't care about people, find another job, be a consultant, for example, or whatever you want, but not a CEO. And you must be able to adapt as well; that's very important.

And maybe above everything, it's very important that you want it because it's tough; you must want it very, very strongly. And my view, but it's very personal, but it's a personal interview, obviously, that you want it for a good reason, and the good reason is to make something have a purpose which is bigger than you, much bigger than you, even better.

Ahmad Hassan: Fantastic. Nathalie, thank you so much for this inspiring conversation. I look forward to seeing you again soon and hopefully have you on other podcasts that we have on other subjects, maybe. Thank you, Nathalie.

Thanks for listening to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. To make sure you don’t miss the next conversation, please subscribe to our channel on your preferred podcast app. And if you’re listening via LinkedIn or YouTube, why not share this with your connections? Until next time.

About the interviewer

Ahmad Hassan (ahassan@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Paris office and a member of the Global Technology & Services and Leadership Consulting practices.