Meet our game changers: Franck Monsauret

Meet Franck, our game-changing Country Manager for Uber for Business in France. Uber for Business has one goal: to allow businesses of any size to harness Uber’s technology to move their business in new ways, with less hassle. From enterprises that need a seamless global travel solution to local businesses that want to provide courtesy rides to customers, Uber for Business is up for the challenge. We sat down with Franck to learn about his approach to staying motivated, tackling new challenges of his own, and developing and mentoring his growing team.

Q: Describe a time when you’ve been behind, didn’t know how to succeed with what was in front of you, or simply had a seemingly impossible goal, deliverable, or task?

A: I’ve had the chance to start a new business from scratch in France, and as exciting as it can be to have a blank piece of paper in front of you, it’s also very scary with numerous challenges and intense time pressure.

Q: How did you motivate yourself to keep going?

A: It’s a kind of ‘make or break’ scenario. Similar to sports, you have to train hard and always keep your head in the game in order to succeed.

Q: What did you learn from that experience?

A: When you have big goals or challenges to accomplish that look impossible to achieve, it’s important to always split them up into smaller goals in order to find what the path of success looks like. Every obstacle suddenly appears more achievable, and this will give you the necessary boost to hurdle them as fast and as efficiently as possible. By doing so and by adopting that mindset, you can stay laser-focused on your longer-term goals, whilst reaching regular milestones that you can then celebrate with your teams.

Q: In hindsight, what advice would you give yourself?

A: Always stick to the big picture and your ‘north star’—no compromise. Always anticipate, be ahead of the curve, try to see what will be your future, longer-term challenges, not just the next one. Don’t be too focused or distracted by competition, stick to your plan as closely as possible and maintain what will bring success to your business in the long run. When starting a project, always define what success looks like. Before making a final decision, always ask yourself, what’s the worst that can happen?

Q How do you use what you learned in your role now?

A: Learning is like running the same race again; you know where and when it’s tougher but also when and where to accelerate. I’ve also made mistakes in the past, which forces me to always keep them in mind and learn from them. Looking back at these past errors, you, therefore, know where you were too slow, not good enough, and where you can progress and train accordingly.

Q: Thinking of what it took to accomplish the above, how has that influenced your approach when taking on new challenging projects or initiatives? Are you more inclined to take chances in your professional life?

A: Taking chances is part of my DNA; it helps me push myself, it makes me think outside of the box, it teaches you to be creative, to collaborate with new teams to make you better in your professional and personal life.

Q: What is one challenge you took on that paid off?

A: The challenge was to present new projects in front of a large, new audience, who were not in my core business, so I didn’t know them very well. With good planning and strong collaboration with internal stakeholders, and with training and practice, I was able to turn an uncomfortable situation into one under which I thrived.

Q: What did you learn from that experience?

A: It’s always good to stretch yourself and learn new things. Success is the fruit of good planning and thorough execution.

Q: How have the above experiences influenced how you develop, coach or mentor others?

A: People are intrinsically very motivated and constantly want to show that they can deliver quickly, but often forget that success comes with good planning and even better execution. I often recommend to my teams, to my mentees or to my colleagues to look at their career as if they were Tarzan; in order to advance, to progress, you need to go from vine to vine. Each vine enables you to gather momentum and acceleration in the descent to come back up and then catch on to the next vine. Dropping the vine too early or too late, makes you stall. It’s important to hang on to it until the end to gather speed and to grab a bigger, higher one, which will enable you to go further. Think long term, don’t solely focus on the what’s next. I encourage them to collaborate together and keep in mind that alone you go faster but together we go further.

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