A masterclass on how to lead organizational change

Making others see the need for change when they either can't or won't is a significant obstacle for many executives. In this episode of Toughest Call, Luc Mongeau, President and CEO of eSolutions Furniture, talks about a tough call he made in a previous leadership role: tackling a massive strategic shift that few others saw the need for.

Weeks into his position as President of Mars Canada, Luc recognized several early indicators that the company was slipping into decline. But others didn't see the situation the same way and were resistant to change. What Luc shares in this episode is a masterclass on how to lead significant organizational change.

Luc Mongeau: We had a couple of tough discussions with customers where we were able to pass pricing, and the margin started going up. But most importantly, was the energy in the building, the way people were relating to each other.

Chaz Thorne: Welcome back, or welcome to Toughest Call, a podcast for organizational leaders where we hear stories from your leadership colleagues about career defining decisions. I'm your host, Chaz Thorne. 

In this episode, I'm talking with Luc Mongeau, President and CEO of eSolutions Furniture about how he tackled a massive strategic shift that few others saw the need for.

Luc and I met five years ago after he became president of Western Foods and engaged my team and me to help them define their organization's purpose. I found Luc to be a genuinely collaborative leader who cared deeply about authentically engaging his executive team. 

At the time of the story he shares in this episode, Luc had just been promoted to the role of President of Mars Canada, considered young to have received the promotion, and now leading several others who felt they should have received the top job. It was a daunting challenge. 

It was made even more complicated when he recognized several early indicators that the company was slipping into decline. If drastic action was not taken immediately, Luc believed that contraction could continue for several years. 

But others didn't see the situation the same way and were resistant to change. Making others see the need for change when they either can't or won't, is a significant obstacle for many executives. What Luc shares in this episode is a masterclass on how to handle this process. 

Luc Mongeau: This happened around the time where I had just been promoted to become president of Mars Canada. So as you can imagine, it was a very important milestone. In my career, it’s very exciting. What made it stressful is that it was a very quick promotion and early promotion, and even more so that I've just been promoted to VP level a year before. And even back then people thought it was early for me to be promoted. So very excited to be able to be the leader of a $600 million operating unit. At the time, we're about 1,000 people, but lots of pressure, and lots of eyes on me to see if I was going to succeed. The context was pretty dynamic. So early promotion, as I just mentioned, was promoted over a group of individuals who strongly believed that they should have been the leader of the operating unit, and in some cases, they had been promoted. They have been, they've been promised the leadership of that operating unit; two, the second piece of context was Mars Canada, at the time was an extremely strong performing unit. 

I'd been a very strong performing unit for about five years, and it was held within a Mars Inc. universe as the role model, performing unit in the world. And I remember when the CEO of Mars Inc. gave me the job, Paul Michaels, Paul said, listen we're giving you this job, don't mess it up. Everything's been done with this unit. And actually, if I was you, Luc, I’d think twice about taking the job because there's nowhere to go now except down because his business has done so well over so many, so many years. Wow. And, and on top of that, the business was starting to actually go down. 

What Paul didn't know is that in February of that year, we're in the first week of February, the business years to date, calendar year was, was behind objective actually sales were declining and profits were, it's out. And the fertile element is that we have just gotten in a fairly big fight with our major, our number one customer Loblaw. So lots of pressure was on me, a lot of eyes were on me to really see what I was going to do with this business.

Chaz Thorne: So, you were jumping, jumping into this and in terms of the points of view of your colleagues, and also in terms of your boss, things were going quite well. But you saw these early signs that, wait a second, we're actually moving towards a bit of a cliff here. 

But that wasn't appreciated necessarily by either your colleagues who were reporting to the executive level or by your boss? How were you able to recognize where things were potentially heading and the need for change? Before others did.

Luc Mongeau: There was a kind of complacency of the organization where people were very comfortable, the organization had grown. So, we had added a lot of overhead, and there was a certain complacency. And we were like four or five weeks into the year, and we were, you know, the early, early signs were, you know, profitable, we had not made our profit number. And the first four weeks, sales were not only behind plan, but they were behind year, year ago, and there was no, you're looking ahead, quarter ahead a few periods, few months ahead. There were no signs, no indicators that would indicate that this would turn around. So for me, I saw this, you know, the asker, when you go up and at one point, you reach a plateau and they start going down, I strongly believe that we were at the start of the the next curve that would drive to a year’s or a couple of years of the line. 

And for me, it was like not under my not under my leadership. So, what was really important was for me to convince a couple of key individuals that we were really at the start of that downward part of the S curve, to really allow to take some bold, courageous, action moves, shifts, whatever you want to call them, to really quickly pivot to another growth phase of the S curve.

Chaz Thorne: You're looking at the fact that you see the organization heading for this, this potential cliff, and the need for change. This is a very tough call to make, given the context that you gave us of being a new leader being promoted above colleagues of yours that actually expected to receive this, a bit of a legacy of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

At any point, when you were thinking, Okay, we need to make this change. At any point did you go, I can't do this, this is going to be so difficult. It's going to be so hard to change hearts and minds. It's really exposing myself as a new leader. Did you have any really significant point of pause where you were just like, yeah, maybe I should just go along to get along? And keep along this, this trajectory? Because obviously, a lot of people don't necessarily agree with how I am seeing things at the moment.

Luc Mongeau: Actually, no, and I'll tell you why. So, I thought all my career, I had worked really hard all my career to get to a place where I could be in a position to create an amazing environment where everybody could be and do their best that I've wanted this position for so long in a leadership position where I could create something, that for me, failure was not an option. And in my head, I was convinced that not doing anything equated failure. And for me, I pivoted so quickly, I remember that I, of course, had moments where I had knots in my stomach and everything. And for me, the only way to, to really get rid of these knots was really to have the courage of my convictions, and to move full steam ahead, not like a bully, you know, move full steam ahead and enlisting the right individuals spending the right amount of time getting people to see things my way and then just move forward. I mean, it wasn't for the faint of heart. I mean, I have to tell you, there was a level of stress because I was aware of the impact of the tough calls I was making as a team and as an organization. But for me, I still wanted to succeed. And I was so fueled by a desire to build a movement to create a strong legacy, not only for the organization, but for the individuals in the organization that there was very little hesitation on my part.

Chaz Thorne: What was the first major thing that you did, after you made the decision to make this tough call? What was the first major thing that you did to move things forward?

Luc Mongeau: Now, the first one was building the right team. And it was clear that the team I inherited, which I mentioned earlier, a few individuals have either been promised the position that I was in or they thought they should be there, it was really important to make it relatively easy for these individuals to either select them, or self select out, and, you know, great individuals, individuals that moved on to great careers elsewhere. 

And it was really important that first 30 days, to take a few actions that made it easy for these individuals who wanted to self select out to self select out. And, that happened quite swiftly actually. And that was one of the best moves, best personal moves I made in this. This allowed me within 60 days to have my team in place a team of the like minded individual and by like minded I don't mean style approach or anything, but it was fueled by the same same fire, the same energy, the same desire, create something amazing, and not only amazing in terms of business results, and bonuses and all that stuff, but create a movement, a legacy, a culture where everybody could do their best, and we did minute voting, and I did this within the first 60 days. That was really instrumental to what happened after that the successes we were able to achieve.

Chaz Thorne: How would you summarize the strategic focus areas that you use to align your team on the shifts you understood were needed in the organization.

Luc Mongeau: So, as we are, we took three sets of decisions that really changed the face of Mars, and the first one was an organizational set of decisions. Mars Canada had gotten way too heavy from a structural standpoint, you know, after years of great results overhead climb, the organizational structure had become more complex, more hierarchical. So one of the one of the first set of actions we took was eliminate two layers of middle management, which one allowed us to as a side benefit to save a lot of money, which allowed us to reinvest in some capabilities that we really wanted to push. But most importantly, allowed to bring the management team much closer to the consumer, to the customers to the operation. But as importantly, eliminating these two layers really gave space for people to spread their wings and gave middle level leaders the ability to really lead because now they weren't under this every year. 

The second shift that we made from a commercial standpoint, used to be extremely customer centric, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it was at the detriment of consumer centricity. So we rebalance, they're so invested in research on capabilities, consumer insight, customer insights, capabilities, product development capabilities, and the third one, the first ship was all about moving to an organization where that used to be used to reward results and not necessarily behaviors. So there were a lot of bad behaviors and plays, but results were praised ultimately, to an organization where results and method approach were equally rewarded. And for us, we call this you know, the, the number one success criteria at Mars Canada is now great people leadership. So you get people promoted, you enlist your people, you create an environment where people can do their best and so on and so forth. So, to go back to your question, for me, we started seeing traction. Actually, quite quickly, after we put the right action, the set of actions are in place.

Chaz Thorne: What was the first big win for you and your team after you assembled this group of individuals that were on board with bringing about this significant change?

Luc Mongeau: We decided: What would be the shifts? Few shifts we would be known for more. So, what were the one or two degree shifts? Because we knew we didn't want to throw away all the strategy. I've been out of business, I've been performing well, for some, obviously, for some obvious reasons, but we weren't going to throw the baby in the bath water and was like, Okay, what are the few shifts that we're going to take and we decided, we would do three shifts, you know, shifts at the organizational level, at the commercial level, and cultural, we would do a shift at cultural level. 

And we went away as a team. And we spent quite a bit of time debating identifying what these one or two degree shifts would be, where we would bring more energy, where we would change the face of the organization. And I remember, we invested ourselves very, personally, we invested some of our personal self in this site. And you know, it's very easy to design a strategy in a boardroom, and it's all intellectual and everything and when you present it to the masses, to the teams, if they reject the strategy, it's okay, you know, there's nothing, there's none of your personal side to this thing. But for us, we invested so much personal energy into being open about the type of environment we wanted to create, the type of culture we wanted to create, the art, we wanted to relate to each other and how we wanted to feel emotionally about the organization. 

So we invested quite a bit of our individuals in there, I remember, Chaz, and I'm getting to the point. The first one is, I remember we all got on a stage and never been done at Mars Canada, we put everybody in one room and we presented this new, this new vision with the few chips that we wanted to, to put in place and, and we were very nervous about the the acceptance, the reaction, the response we would get from from Mars Canada. And the response was overwhelming. And for us, it was a great, great validation that the type of energy, that type of organization, the type of culture, the way we want to work that we will not compete, resonate extremely well with the organization. And that gave us the energy to really move forward with these, the staff decision in the shifts that ultimately allow the organization to really elevate its level of performance to a level that people did not think was possible.

Chaz Thorne: I hope you're enjoying this episode of Toughest Call at OnePagePlans.ca. My team and I get organizations aligned in just two days with strategic plans that fit on a single page. And since strategy is all about making decisions, we created a suite of free decision making tools for organizational leaders like you. So to get some assistance with your next tough call access these complimentary resources at ToughestCall.com.

Luc, I know you as a very in the conversations that you and I have had, I find you to be a very humble and authentic leader. Like I noticed the fact that and I noticed this from the very first time that we met Oh, goodness, I think it's like seven years ago now. That you, you always talk about your team, you always put attention on your team. You give credit where credit is due. I also saw moments where you held people responsible and what do you think? What do you think are your attributes as a leader personally as a leader that helped bring you through this change process at Mars?

Luc Mongeau: It's funny because the people played back a couple things to me. The first one was fearless courage. And my ability to really stick to a vision and the level of resiliency that is associated with this that allows to power through a big transformation or big a big shift and that combined with visionary abilities that allow us to see through all the obstacle or the trees and the forests or whatever it is all the the emotional baggage that people bring to the table when you're going through big changes or making decisions that are are really controversial. 

So, fearless courage combined with visionary abilities to really see the end goal and stick to it. And having the energy to rally everybody along the way where there's so many bumps and obstacles and everything in the world. 

The second thing is that's been played back to me is that this real participative leadership, my ability to detach my ego and share the leadership and this something like, for me, I so want to build an environment where everybody can be the best that it's not about me, it's not, I mean, I'm not fighting to be on the cover of a magazine or to be that hero that get the gold medal and everybody else gets something else for me. 

You know, Chaz, I think we've talked about that in the past my personal brand, my energy is to unleash potential, the potential of organization of brands of individuals, of teams, of my children of my of my spouse, and for me, I get my energy, I get my kicks when I'm able to unleash potential and when I'm able to unleash the potential of my leadership team by and I give them the space and the support to do this. In an organization led by Mongeau, it's not that emotional show, yeah, colorful and full of energy and everything that I do stand up. But I do say, I don't stand out just for the sake of standing out. 

And most importantly, I'm not afraid to share that leadership and let my direct reports stand out. So when you embark on a tough, transformative journey, or being able to have the fearless courage, determination, the resilience, but as importantly, to be able to bring other people along the way, and sharing that leadership, that climb, life, the rewards, whatever you want to call, it, actually makes it way easier because it's not all on your all on your shoulders, and you create a much stronger movement that way.

Chaz Thorne: When you are in the middle of this change process. Was there any specific moment when you came up against an obstacle, where all of a sudden, you were like, Oh, this could be the thing that stops us in our tracks. This is a really big difficult one.

Luc Mongeau: As I mentioned earlier, we in a big fight with what our number one customer Loblaws where we Loblaw put new demands fantastic retailer, put new new demands on the table that would have squeezed more funds and reduced our our margins and I remember having to go, personally, myself, to Loblaws, and say, “No, we are not accepting your demands.” And then having them say. “Okay, well, perfect. Then we will delist the majority of your products in your pet food business.” And it was a nerve wracking moment with Loblaw being our largest customer and I remember sitting as a team and saying, “Team are we going to live, are we going to have the courage to live our conviction.” And our conviction was we need to move to a consumer centric model, we need to move to a brand model that allows us to have pricing that allows us to make the right margins, allow us to reinvest in our people, in our brands and our facilities, really fuel our organization long term, and we decided, okay, we're living our conviction and we will not back down we will actually double down in investing in our brands. And that was a very nerve wracking moment because remember, I'm at that time and probably two months in two three months in my new assignment to report to Mars Inc. at offices that all of the sudden we're having 60 skus of pet food delisted from our primary, our biggest customer. And remember, I've just let go of a large number of senior executives because they've decided they want to work under a different leadership. So I'm doing a lot of explaining to Mars, always keep in mind that Mars CEO told me not to mess it up. 

We decided to just live our conviction. So this allowed, I mean, obviously, we had to make a few changes to our plan, which means if we're going to be in the penalty box with one customer, we need to pivot and work with other customers to really make up this volume, so we ended up making up the volume, and we rebuilt the relationship with with Loblaw in a much more win-win foundation, but it was a it was an extremely stressful period of time. 

Chaz Thorne: What was the point, when you knew that all of these changes that you brought about had in a way stuck, that this was going to work and you were starting to get that validation from your team, you were starting to get that validation from your customers from consumers. And from the individuals that you were also reporting to?

Luc Mongeau: We started seeing traction, actually, quite quickly, after we, we put the right action, the set of actions are in place. So we put this set of action plays about 90 days into my new leadership of the organization. And within two, three months, we started seeing different business results. So, business got out of the red. Business started on the top line and started growing. Again, we had a couple of tough discussions with customers where we're able to pass pricing margins that started going up. But most importantly, it was the energy and the building, the way people were relating to each other. And remember, we had let go of about 20% of the individuals in the place and we changed the structure a little bit,  to spanning, you could feel the energy in the in the building and, and for me, I remember one day, individuals working procurement came to me and she goes, Hey, look, I just had a conversation with one of our key suppliers and I was able to, to change the dynamic of the conversation because I was telling him that we are not consumer centric. And this commodity of selling to us is not meeting the consumers, centricity of cat owners, for example. And I was like all holy cow if we're able to get an individual and procurement, three levels removed from me to really have the vision, the strategy approach resonate well with this individual, then while we're creating a movement, a movement is so, John's within three months of this set of decision, we really got to an inflection point that really allowed us to get back on that upward trajectory of the the S curve and it was done in such a such a positive and energetic and dynamic and feel good environment that was it was a it was a great reward to to all involved.

Chaz Thorne: When you look back on this now, about 16 years later, is there any part of this process in terms of a decision you made or the way that you handled a particular challenge that with the benefit of hindsight or also with the benefit of almost another two decades of experience as a as a senior leader in organizations? Is there anything you would have done differently about that time?

Luc Mongeau: The very good question and for me, the thing where we did not do enough of and where we've got into a bit of trouble is we did not enlist senior management so Mars Inc. enough and that result in a couple of what the heck is happening. And actually, I remember having to fly down to Midland, Virginia, with my Head of HR and my Head of Finance at the time to go down there and do some explaining. 

For me, that was a bit of a, I mean, it was a sort of a journey of really evolving, developing my ability to engage seniors stakeholders in the business, I always prided myself of being low maintenance. And for me it, you know, my parents having put this into me, it's like, you know, you have to be resourceful, you have to be dependent, you have to be able to be counted on and for me that equated to, okay, I'll be low maintenance from my boss, I won't bother them, I'll be so high on the initiative. Scale, I won't worry them and they won't have to worry about what I do. 

But imagine combining crazy fearless courage with being low maintenance and low touch with your superior. So when the, for lack of a better word, when the shit hits the fan. Above goes, what the heck is happening. So I remember this meeting extremely well, flying down to Midland, Virginia and being I think the Riot Act read not only to me, but to my, to my Head of HR, and our Head of Finance. So for me, it was like, Okay, from that point on, I learned to really to evolve, to develop my ability to engage upward, appropriately. 

Chaz Thorne: What sort of long term results were created from this incredible amount of change in activity that happened over those first six months of your leadership.

Luc Mongeau: The long term results were just amazing. First of all, it allowed us to dramatically get back on an even steeper growth curve for Mars Inc. So, we got to a place very quickly where the organization was growing twice as fast as the industry was growing, and profitability went up by anywhere from 30 to 40%. And that was sustained for many years after that. As importantly, as mentioned, we pushed a cultural change, a leadership change of the way of interacting with each other. And we created an environment where great people, leadership was only rewarded, and celebrated. So, as you can imagine, we foster an environment where great leaders were created, and were exported to many big senior positions within Mars Inc. Universe. And if you look at this, there are many talents that have been exported that are still in place and in very senior positions, globally, within, within Mars Inc. And we actually as well elevated the quality of our relationship and collaboration with customers that is still being celebrated to this day.

Chaz Thorne: You were doing a lot of the cultural piece in terms of change, and it can be can be tempting, as a leader, sometimes strategically to focus on numbers and operational specifics, but a lot of it is managing the culture, managing the emotions of everyone and allowing them to sort of catch up to you. How did you find the essence of Mars Canada changed over this period of time and afterward?

Luc Mongeau: Yeah, great question. Because, as you mentioned, I'd say, strategy is simple. We did very few changes on the strategies that were very easy to understand. But for us, the value that we knew could be really taken to another level was unleashing the potential of the organization and the culture of the organization the way people are related to each other. We strongly believe it was not conducive to superior performance. So we spent quite a bit of time on culture, starting with what did Mars Canada, what do we stand for? What do our products add to consumers' everyday experience and everything we ended up in a place where you know we're about food. What is food about food is food is everyday, food is you serve food when there's a wedding, you serve food when there's a christening, when there was a birth, when there's a funeral, you're safe, you serve food at birthdays, you serve food, when maybe you're you're not having a great day. And there's sorrow for us. For us, I remember one of individual mightiness food is about celebration of life, it's about everyday celebration of life. And we really like this idea and the more we played with it, the more we decided it made sense. For us everyday celebration of life was not necessarily about the food. It wasn't the way we were working with each other, you know, when you have a very positive constructive conversation at work with somebody who works on your team. This is an everyday celebration of life, because you are elevating the individual, when you're having a conversation with a customer and you're trying to build the business. And there's a connection between a salesperson and a buyer philosophy was a celebration of life, because we're partnering together to elevate something and that everyday celebration of life took out such a life of its own, where it really transformed the way we treated each other within the office within our facility, our production facilities. And with our we're stakeholders and customers, business partners, as well as it is intangible, but you could feel it in the office, you could see that relationship or a private and the odd offers that was not necessarily negative, but definitely not conducive to unleashing potential, you could see this gradually gradually change. And for us, you know, I mean to this day, I think that cultural change played as much, if not more, of a pivotal role in creating these multiple, many years of strong growth, then the shift of the strategy.

Chaz Thorne: What words of wisdom would you have for another organizational leader who might be listening to this? Who is facing a similar situation where they're there, they recognize that their organization needs to make some major changes, yet the others in the organization don't necessarily see it the same way they do. What would you share with those individuals about what you learned so that they might be able to get ahead of it? A little bit?

Luc Mongeau: Yeah, for me, I go back to the power of your conviction, the ability to have the courage to live your conviction, and most of the time when you've been in an organization long enough, your convictions are bang on. And you know Chaz sometimes the organization may not be willing to move. And most of the time, it's because of fear of unknown fear of failure. The defier is there inside of the individuals and for me, it's really start with being able to have very open conversations where you're able to create an environment where people can speak freely, without any fear of retribution or punitive actions or anything and most of the time, you find that, listen, I'm not the only one who sees this. I mean, that feeling is out there. It just hasn't been able, it hasn't been allowed to be spoken and, you know, everybody dreams and everybody wants to be part of a winning team. And, sometimes it just requires a bit more. For us, I remember at the time, we had to go down a couple of layers in the organization and really take the time to show people what an S-curve is to show the different phases that exist in the S-curve. What are the telltale signs of a beginning of a negative trajectory? And, and frankly, I remember we spent way more time than I wanted to, because I was ready to go. And I remember I clearly remember one session right now where I was really impatient, where my Head of HR just came to me and says, shut up, and let people see, she said, she said, relatively politely should just be quiet right now and let people express their fear and give them the appropriate period of time, not three months, not three weeks, but the right amount of time to voice their feelings to get to the same conclusion as you're in it's, as you got to. And it's, you know, as a leader, you have to be able and willing to go into that more emotional side of things where people have to reconcile their emotions, their fears, to be able to see clearly and be free to act. So for me, that would be the ultimate advice, I would give us be ready to go into a more emotive side of things to create an environment where people can talk freely think freely, and reconcile their ambition, their dreams with the fears that prevent them from from either seeing clearly or taking the right actions.

Chaz Thorne: I truly meant it in my intro that this conversation with Luc felt like a Masterclass on how to lead a significant organizational change. So, though I often share other resources at the end of an episode, in this case, I'm instead going to just sort of summarize and recap a part of the process that Luc revealed. 

I want to focus on the shifts, as he called them, that he and his team chose. And I really like that I know Luc, Luc is a process thinker, and I really liked that he put these down. So, Luc and his team, they chose three shifts that they identified could change the face of Mars Canada. And he organized these into organizational, commercial, and cultural. In my mind, this is a really great way to bucketize your priorities and ensure that they're crossing across the organization as well. 

The organizational shift was to reduce structural complexity. Now, over the years the structure, particularly the management as he referred to it, has become bloated. And this resulted in a significant increase in overhead without a similar increase in results. 

Now, in the past, that large s had been hidden by overall sector performance, frankly. However, with the cliff that Luc saw the company approaching in the very near future, as he said, that would no longer be affordable. So, he eliminated those two layers of management, which allowed them to reinvest those resources and in the capabilities that he wanted to push as part of this change. 

Interestingly, he emphasized that what was most important about it, though, was that it brought the management team much closer to the consumer, which connects into their commercial shift. 

It also allowed the managers that remained the ability to spread their wings and really lead the commercial shifts. The second shift was to move from being customer-centric to consumer-centric, so being a B2B organization, the company's previous customer centricity, he felt was achieved to the detriment of serving the consumer, so that end consumer of their products. 

So, this meant that they would now have to invest further in developing the research capabilities, and also, this new focus on consumer insights, the cultural shift, the third one was moving to rewarding behaviors over results. I see this a lot in terms of incentive programs, bonuses and so on. You really need to practice some second order, third order fourth order thinking in terms of what behaviors are you incentivizing in your team? And he had observed that the way incentives were structured, prior error resulted in some players engaging in negative behaviors to achieve what were often short term results. So, he wanted to ensure a more balanced approach where results, and the methods undertaken to achieve them, were equally praised. 

Last point on this is Luc emphasized that the shifts don't need to be huge, especially in a company of that size, those one to two degree shifts, as he called them, can have a significant impact. And in fact, if the shifts were too massive given that Mars Canada was coming off a long period of successful returns, there's no way he would have been able to make these moves. The ultimate outcome of this focus on these three shifts was the ability to lift the organization to new heights that would have previously been thought to be impossible. 

If you'd like to learn more about Luc Mongeau and eSolutions Furniture, you can check out their website at eSolutionsFurniture.com and follow Luc on LinkedIn.

And if you'd like some assistance with your own tough calls, we've compiled a collection of free tools just for you. Go to ToughestCall.com to check them out. If you're not yet a subscriber to Toughest Call, please add us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks for listening. I hope this conversation helps you when faced with your next tough call.

Guest
Luc Mongeau

Luc Mongeau is President and CEO of eSolutions Furniture. Prior to that, he was President of Weston Foods, where he was responsible for the strategic realignment and end-to-end operational leadership of a $2 billion North American bakery with over 6,000 associates and 40 plants. Luc also spent 14 years with Mars in various leadership roles. He obtained a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Sherbrooke, studied at Harvard Business School and holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business.