The Chair · Episode 3 · With Marc Jacobs, entrepreneur, author and culture strategist
A contract grows from four pages to forty. The new owner sees stronger protection. A longstanding customer may read it as a loss of trust.
Marc Jacobs experienced this when the company he co-founded was acquired by an American business. The products and customers had stayed the same. Expectations about how to do business had changed.
For episode three of The Chair, I sat down with Marc to discuss how culture shapes decisions—and what boards miss when they pay attention only to the formal rules.
His contract story captures the challenge. The acquiring company had compliance requirements. The existing business had customer relationships to protect. Working with the lawyers, his team separated the essential provisions from the optional ones and found a workable compromise.
For directors overseeing an acquisition or international expansion, it raises a useful question: how will the standards we introduce be understood by the people expected to follow them?
We also discuss:
What sits beneath the procedures: how people actually communicate, make decisions and work across departments.
How to assess organisational culture: understanding current working practices, then asking whether they support the strategy.
What changes as a startup grows: when the flexibility that helped a company get started needs more structure.
Marc draws an important distinction between understanding cultural differences across countries and deliberately shaping the culture of an organisation. The latter requires choices about how the business should work.
His advice to boards is direct: give someone clear responsibility for keeping culture on the agenda. Agreement that it matters needs to lead to action.
For directors, founders and leaders working across borders, this conversation is an invitation to examine the assumptions that feel so familiar we rarely question them.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube →
26 minutes · Hosted by Najia Belbal