Cars & CEOs: Stil Nights at Downtown Porsche
It’s well known that I’m not only a car and style enthusiast, but also have an insatiable desire to learn about strategy, leadership, and technology. But it isn’t very often that I get to bring together all of these things under one roof, but last year at Downtown Porsche, I had my chance.
Interviewing not one, but 4 CEOs of brands and companies that I both admire and respect, on the second floor of a Porsche dealership, in the presence of a classic 356. Somebody pinch me.
Stil Nights was an idea that emerged between the good folks at Downtown Porsche and Harry Rosen. These two incredible brands wanted to host their top tier clients for an evening celebrating style and performance and I was brought on to round off the evening with a carefully curated panel: Marc Ouayoun, President of Porsche Cars Canada; Larry Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Harry Rosen; Victor Royce, Former President of Rolex Canada; and Derrick Fung, CEO of Drop.
After a brief introduction, the panel shared stories of leadership, personal style, and how technology is transforming their business. The full conversation is worth a view, but if you’re TL;DW then here are a few of my favourite soundbites from the evening.
On what makes great leaders
Larry: Empower people and don’t hog the spotlight. Great managers let people around them be recognized for the contributions that they make.
Marc: Management to me is providing a vision and caring for your people. One of the famous sentences from Ferry Porsche goes like this, ‘My workers are building 911s, and my task as a manager is to care for them’. That’s the best definition of leadership to me.
Victor: Allowing people to do their job, be themselves, and picking the right ones to do it.
Derrick: One of my mentors told me, ‘A fish rots from his head’. So if the CEO doesn’t really know what they’re doing or if they’re some kind of way, then the management team that he/she will hire will also be the same way and it will just get pushed down. So my word of advice is it all starts from the top, so lead by example.
On staying relevant in the face of changing technology and consumer expectations
Marc: Autonomous Porsche that’s the question. We sell cars that you want to drive and that will still be the case in the future. While there are certain situations where autonomous driving can bring a lot of benefits and comfort to our customers...But believe me, Porsche will be the last car to have a steering wheel in the market.
Victor: Rolex is a classic. There’s never been a real attempt to change anything, other than upgrade and improve what already exists. Rolex sticks to what it knows best, they maintain their value, they maintain their integrity, they never claim to be able to perform beyond the expectation of what you would expect, even though the testing they do far exceeds the actual testing that is required. So they understate rather than overstate.
What’s more valuable — experience or skill?
Derrick: I think neither. I think just pure hustle, grit, that to me trumps both experience and skill.
Victor: Skill is developed through experience. So you really can’t have one without the other. You need a good combination of both.
Marc: I would say that experience with an ‘s’ at the end. It’s really necessary in life to combine different types of experiences to get out of the frame sometime, to get out of your comfort zone, to try and challenge yourself. Experiences are very important but not many.
Larry: Passion is more important than both.
After the panel, our speakers mixed and mingled while checking out a curated collection of Porsches and looks from Harry Rosen. A personalized notebook courtesy of Mont Blanc was given to each attendee with the line ‘Designed with elegance, Driven by style’ hand painted on the cover. I hope each guest felt inspired after the talk to fill it with their own ideas.
I had a really great time moderating Stil Nights. Themes like caring for your people, staying true to your values, and leading by example are important reminders for those interested in leadership. Thank you to Downtown Porsche and Harry Rosen for hosting such a wonderful evening and I look forward to coming back again for Stil Nights 2.0.
