A kind of sense of Freedom!

Freedom, a complex topic that is both universal and personal

Where do I start with a topic like this? What freedom are we talking about? What are the keys to freedom? Let’s try to answer these few questions together.

Freedom is a provocative topic in these complicated times:

• With Covid, which curbs our freedoms and this health bubble around us
• In this increasingly controlled and regulated world
• In the digital and instant communication age, with a fear of our freedom being increasingly curtailed,

But in this world that has indeed never been under constraints to this extent, should freedom be defined as the absence of constraints or rather as our ability to circumvent or transcend them?

Can we say that Nelson Mandela was not fundamentally free, having spent 27 years in a prison?

This brings us first to freedom of thought, to strength of convictions, to loyalty without compromising our ideas. My vision of freedom is that of a sailor or a musician, one of personal challenges and vast open spaces. It is no coincidence that these are two of the sponsorship and patronage paths chosen by Arkema. But what I am interested in is not so much personal freedom, but rather a more collective freedom, that of the conductor that I am not, or that of the CEO that I am. Freedom is not just the freedom you build for yourself, it is also the freedom that you grant to other people. Genuine freedom is not self-centered. Collective freedom is far more demanding since it requires winning people over to you. It implies solidarity, generosity, respect.

One of the missions of a company fundamentally is to develop relations between the men and the women who make up its workforce. This commitment relies on empowerment, and therefore on the ability to   give free space to our employees. And to trust them.

The world is changing; today’s pandemic, I believe, will drive this change forward, and only a collective impetus will help us adapt. This requires freeing up energies, freeing up talents. It is a key condition of performance and it is the challenge of the CEO and of the affirmation of his or her leadership. The freedom of a manager is at the service of the group and stakeholders.

At Arkema, by virtue of our history, we are acutely aware of what the term freedom means. Arkema is first the story of a quest for freedom. The Group was listed on the stock market in 2006. The path that was chosen was the spinoff. In no time, we went from a wholly-owned company within Total to a fully listed company, with thousands of shareholders. Leaving a major group like Total, some 15 years ago, was already like taking a breath of fresh air, a kind of freedom to take a step into the open and be part of the world of listed companies. Arkema today is one of the great successes of French industry. At the beginning, however, few people believed that we would make it, and many were convinced that we were going to be eaten alive. We set off from a blank sheet and have been extraordinarily lucky in that we created a group out of nothing and were free to put in place the exact strategy that we wanted in sustainable and high performance materials. Straightaway our challenge was to safeguard our independence.

Freedom is not something that is ever attained once and for all, it has to be constantly reclaimed. A listed company has curtailed freedom. This freedom is based entirely on shareholder trust. The key to this trust is performance and creation of value. In 15 years, we have multiplied our market value and profitability by a factor of 5. To achieve this, from the very beginning we brought our 20,000 employees on board to share a very clear vision of the company that we wanted to be, rooted in values of solidarity and empowerment. A group’s values are key markers in a world losing its bearings.

And finally, Arkema’s freedom is also a freedom of wide open spaces. Chemistry is the mother of all industries. In materials chemistry, the field of play is vast, growth opportunities are boundless for those in a position to seize them in a sector at the very heart of the fight against global warming. Our solutions are all around us as we go about our daily lives, with batteries, wind power, 3D-printing, water treatment, home comfort… More broadly, the industry is ideally placed to meet the expectations and address the challenges of tomorrow. To do this, the solution is not more constraints, bans or regulations, but more freedom in order to put science, technology and innovation at the service of society.

What does freedom means to those of us running companies?

I do not believe in freedom without a strong project.

I do not believe in self-centered freedom.

I believe in responsible freedom, at the service of an ambition and at the service of others.

As CEOs and leaders, we have an increasingly greater societal responsibility. The Covid pandemic in fact has brought this idea to the fore. This is the prism through which freedom should be seen. Freedom requires courage and convictions. Courage to set off on the open sea like a sailor, courage to face an audience and lay bare your feelings like a musician. Paradoxically, it means making choices without which a company runs out of energy by following every feasible path. Being free is of course being yourself above all. It means travelling your own path and speaking up, while respecting others.

In conclusion, what I would like to say is this: Dreams are never big enough for those able to bring people together in their quest for freedom!