José Boisjoli, former chief executive officer of BRP Inc.SAM SINGH/The Globe and Mail
Working on a farm is a bit like being a CEO: You need to be available 24-7. And you learn very quickly to manage the unpredictable, because at the end of the day, the animals need to be fed twice a day. So in a way, I was trained to be a CEO, though I didn’t know it then.
In the spring of 2003, I was invited by Bombardier to a meeting at the end of one day, and the next I was on stage at the arena in Valcourt, announcing to 3,000 employees that we were being put up for sale. I was still in shock. I told them, “Listen, I didn’t expect this—but I think it’s our chance to prove to the world that we can be successful as a standalone company.”
If you come up with the right innovation at the right time, you can really create demand for a product. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing over the years—we’ve gone from selling in 70 countries to selling in 130.
There was a trend in New Zealand where people were buying a watercraft, and they were putting $5,000 to $10,000 of equipment on it to go fishing, because it’s a lot more practical than a big boat. We sent a group of engineers and designers to go fishing with them for two weeks, and a few years later we came out with the Sea-Doo FishPro. It’s now one of the models that attracts the most newcomers to the watercraft industry.
Competition is the root of every high-performing organization. If you don’t have competition, you fall asleep.
Your people need guidelines, but at the same time, you need to give them some freedom, and you need to support them, and if you do that well, they will come up with incredible ideas.
The toughest crisis for me was the cyber attack in August 2022. First, it’s embarrassing. And it touches everybody—the employees, the customers, the suppliers, the bank, the shareholders. The media was calling every day. Even other companies wanted to talk to us to better understand what happened. It took a while before everything was running smoothly again.
I never lost sleep over a crisis, because I was always confident we could manage it.
You cannot adapt a supply chain or a factory in a week. You need time to adjust and react. If investors are there for the long term, they will be patient.
The role of the management team is to keep a balance between the three groups that are essential to the functioning of the company: the employees, the customers and the shareholders. Sometimes you give a bit more here, a bit more there. But if you’re able to keep the balance right, you can survive.
The perfect balance between work life and personal life doesn’t exist. It’s up to each person to define the rules with their spouse and family. My wife knew that I was on duty 24-7, but I always tried to protect our family holidays. I didn’t succeed 100% of the time, but most of the time. I stopped playing golf, because I wasn’t there during the week, and it wasn’t right to go for two rounds over the weekend.
I don’t want to be a CEO anymore. I don’t want to have that 24-7 pressure. Like any good citizen, I’m watching what’s going on in the Middle East, and the crisis with oil and the economy. But I don’t have to make decisions. Not having that pressure is a big change. I don’t miss the alarm at 4:45 a.m.
Road warrior
As part of his job, Boisjoli has ridden BRP machines around the world. A few highlights:
Snowmobiling in northern Finland: “Beautiful scenery with virgin snow and sometimes northern lights”
Side-by-side in the desert of Dubai: “Sand as far as the eye can see”
Three-wheel in South Tyrol, in northern Italy: “The Stelvio Pass road between Italy and Switzerland is breathtaking”