March 2020. Global air travel has ground to a halt. I'm running an aerospace subsidiary in Atlanta whose activity is deemed essential. We have to keep operating, protect the teams, and decide fast, in a climate of total uncertainty.
That morning, I brought together my leadership team — American and French colleagues alike. Standing in the middle of the warehouse, we decided together how to organize the work, secure operations, and keep serving our customers.
They came. Everyone whose presence was essential. Not because it was required. Because we had built something together before the crisis: a relationship of trust, a habit of deciding fast, and a shared sense of our mission.
That's the day I understood what leading really means in the United States. Not from the top. Not from Paris. With the teams. On the ground.
That experience crystallized a conviction shaped over more than thirty years of leading international businesses: American ventures don't fail for lack of strategy. They fail, far more often, for lack of transatlantic leadership.
French companies often approach the American market with real strengths: strong technology, capable teams, recognized expertise. Yet many of them struggle to convert that into results. Why? Because the real challenge is rarely just commercial or technical. It's usually managerial, cultural, and decisional.
The first mistake is treating the United States as a single, homogeneous market. In reality, it's fifty states, fifty economic cultures, fifty different ways of doing business. Thinking of America as one bloc almost always leads to the wrong decisions.
The second is believing that technical excellence is enough on its own. French companies are often remarkable at building products and technology. Americans, for their part, are particularly good at turning a value proposition into commercial success. In this market, being right isn't enough. You have to be able to explain clearly what problem you solve, and what value you bring.
The third — and probably the most common — is trying to run America from Paris. I've seen many American subsidiaries held back by governance that's too centralized, decision processes that run too long, or too little autonomy given to local teams. The American market rewards accountability, responsiveness, and proximity to the ground. A subsidiary isn't a forward outpost of headquarters. It has to be able to decide, act, and adapt to its own environment.
My experience of transatlantic leadership actually started in France, when I supported the sale of a subsidiary of an aerospace equipment manufacturer I had led for three years — and then managed its post-deal integration into the American group that acquired it.
That period let me live, very concretely, alongside my teams, the cultural differences between French and American approaches to management, operations, investment, and performance measurement. In an M&A deal, the real work isn't signing the transaction. It's succeeding at what comes after: governance, local leadership, cultural alignment, and execution.
Today, when I work with French executives on their American projects, I return systematically to three questions.
The first is clarity. What's actually at stake? Is this about growth, profitability, governance, market entry, acquisition, post-deal integration, or management? Too many companies treat a leadership problem as a commercial one, or an organizational problem as a market one.
The second is alignment. Between headquarters and local teams. Between shareholders and operating executives. Between French culture and American culture. Performance rarely comes from one culture dominating the other — it comes from their ability to work together.
The third is securing execution. The best strategies fail when they aren't translated into concrete decisions, the right hires, the right governance, and consistent action on the ground.
One of the most valuable lessons the United States taught me concerns the strength of networks. In France, a network is sometimes seen as an address book. In America, it's real infrastructure for trust. Chambers of commerce, business communities, executive clubs, local boards, and industry networks all play an essential role in building the credibility of a company — and of its leader.
That collective logic connects, in the end, to what I observed during the 2020 crisis: no executive succeeds alone.
I like to point out that Delta Air Lines, whose main hub is in Atlanta, was born in 1925 in the cotton fields of the American South. A century later, it's one of the largest airlines in the world, sharing the same global alliance, SkyTeam, with Air France. For someone who spent five years leading an aerospace company in Atlanta, that symbol speaks volumes: French-American ties are also built in companies, factories, warehouses, supply chains, and teams learning to work together on both sides of the Atlantic.
My role today is to be the sparring partner for French executives who want to succeed at scaling into the American market: clarifying their decisions, securing their governance, aligning their teams, and adapting their leadership to a particularly demanding environment.
Because succeeding in the United States isn't just about crossing the Atlantic. It usually means learning to lead differently.
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