Kind-heartedness that counts

Without a sound, Jean Jobin enters the room. All dressed in black, with a smile on his lips and in his eyes, he stretches out his hand.  My impression of him at first contact is immediately positive. This man exudes action and gives off a peaceful vibe. In conversation with him, it is clear that he works in symbiosis with others. When talking about his youth, his work in Germany or his charity activities, he persistently refers to himself within a group, in relation to others. The evidence is clear: Jean Jobin, FCMA, Executive Vice President, Away from Home Products — North America, Cascades Tissue Group, is first and foremost a team player who likes to do things in tandem with others and considers others when making his decisions.

What fuels him: sports
As someone who has played sports his whole life, Jean Jobin naturally sees physical activity as a way of keeping in shape and staying energetic, but also as a necessary tool for his work. “It gives me an opportunity to think,” he explains. “I take off on my bike with a problem and come back with a solution.” He is the very incarnation of the saying it’s the taking part that counts: he does not aim for first place. “I run marathons with my wife and do cycling tours with friends for the pleasure of being together,” he clarifies.

Sports, especially team sports, have played a key role in his life. He concedes that in his youth — don’t tell his teen-aged son — he had little interest in school. His interests were hockey, badminton and baseball, a sport in which he played receiver at the world championships for boys under 20. Being part of a sports team allowed him to expend his physical energy, make friends and expand his social circle.

“It was pretty much thanks to badminton that I went to CEGEP,” he affirms. “In Secondary 4, I joined the badminton team at my school and picked up the sport so easily that at the end of the year, I was on the top doubles team.” When the time came to enrol at CEGEP, his fellow teammates encouraged him to join them in attending Cégep de Sainte-Foy, which had the best badminton team in Quebec. “Up until then, I never imagined that I would go to CEGEP. My goal was to earn my secondary school diploma. If it had not been for badminton, I would have probably done what many of my other friends did and drop out of school afterwards…,” he confides.

Discovering success
One thing led to another and he ended up studying administration at Université Laval. He would have liked to do a bachelor’s degree in actuarial sciences at the Université de Montréal, but his mother was having financial troubles at the time. Therefore, he stayed in the Quebec City region to help her. Throughout his university studies, he worked full time to help meet his family’s needs. “I would go to the first two classes to find out what they were about and then the very last class and the examination, and the rest of the time, I studied by myself with the books,” he explains.

Up until he began to study at CEGEP, Jean Jobin was content to simply pass his courses. But that was before he made friends with a young studious girl who helped him excel. “She was really a good friend, but she was the exact opposite of me, a true intellectual who did not play sports! So we spent time together by going to the library and studying next to each other,” he remembers. And that is precisely when Jean Jobin discovered the pleasure of learning…and getting good grades! After earning his bachelor’s degree, he began a master’s program with a concentration in operations management and decision support systems.

Once he finished his master’s program, Cascades hired him. That is when Jobin’s career began, a career that he would thoughtfully plan to ensure that he never stopped advancing. “I like to work step by step to achieve long-term results. I am not the type of guy who tries to pull off big feats, where everything falls apart three months later,” he stresses. His superiors were quick to catch on, which is why they asked him at the very beginning to make the plants profitable. He was first sent to straighten out the activities at the Quebec City recycling center, then to the Chicoutimi centre and finally to the Montreal, Ottawa and U.S. recycling centres. These were “small assignments,” he insists, to help him gain experience.

Knowing how to say no
When the paper shortage crisis hit in 1995, he was the Assistant Managing Director of the Recycling Group. Cascades then made the decision to change the group’s annual paper recycling capacity from 100,000 tonnes to 500,000 tonnes and offered Jean Jobin the position of Managing Director, since the acting Managing Director was going into retirement. Anyone would have jumped at the chance to move their career forward. But not Jean Jobin, who turned it down because he was not ready yet.

He explained the situation in simple terms to his superiors, as he recalls. “I get up in the morning and say: ‘I have 100,000 tonnes to manage; how can I go to bed tonight knowing that they are better managed?’ To develop the group the way you want, you need someone who wakes up and says: ‘I have 100,000 tonnes to manage today; how can I go to bed tonight with 200,000 tonnes?’ That’s not me. I am now at the point where I am making improvements, but not developing things.” As a result, he managed the transition within the group and when he had accomplished that task, he was given a new challenge, which was no easy task either!

In fact, his superiors asked him to improve the performance of a huge, yet unprofitable plant that Cascades had just acquired in Germany. The experience was anything but dull. “I was the only Quebecer in Arnsberg. No one spoke French. Out of the 400 people who worked at the plant, only a dozen spoke English.” First, he had to reorganize the accounting in the plant, which had no idea of its product profitability. Then, after analyzing the situation, he concluded that the focus had to be put on a particular product, which accounted for 10% of the production at that time, and redirect the sales force accordingly. “It is not easy to convince people to take a radical new direction in a language that is neither yours, nor theirs,” he points out. “It took a lot of time to convince the director that focusing on that product would maximize profitability, even if, by doing so, daily production would be reduced.” It took around fifteen months to change the plant’s direction but it went from unprofitable to profitable, generating more than $2 million in profit per month. To date, it is still the crown jewel of the Cascades Group in Europe.

Strategy in mind
Today, Jean Jobin still works for Cascades in its Tissue Group, where he heads seven plants and helps manage two joint ventures. A few years ago, he earned the CMA designation, which he considered the next logical step for a Cascades manager who has to coordinate the work of dozens of CMAs.

Over the years, he has received many offers that would have allowed him to make more money. But he would have had to leave the company that he loves and whose philosophy, which is based on mutual trust, he espouses. He considers himself very lucky to have had mentors like Bernard, Laurent and Alain Lemaire, Norman Boisvert and Suzanne Blanchet. “I owe my progress to them," he explains. But does he have any aspiration at all to reach the upper echelons? “Of course, eventually, when the time is right,” he replies, true to his “step-by-step” approach.

For the time being, he feels it is more important to implement the Group’s strategic plan and please his superiors who trust him. “There are so many things in a day that can distract us from our objectives…” To keep his team focused on its priorities, he had an object made out of the same material used for anti-stress balls that looks like a Lego block set. Each of the priorities is written on one of the blocks. “Seventy people have this little reminder in their office. Before they come knocking at my door to have an investment approved, I advise them to look at their Lego blocks to see if their project fits with our priorities. Because each and every one of us must keep in mind the direction we are going in if we want to achieve this strategic plan.”

What drives him: kind-heartedness
Jean Jobin says it himself: “I started from nothing, I had a truly poor childhood, I should not even be where I am and yet, I am in a position of influence.” His father died suddenly, leaving his mother with six children: the oldest was 7 and the youngest were two-month-old handicapped twins. Raised in poverty, he not only learned to recognize the disdainful look that others gave him because he needed nicer clothes and a haircut, but also that he could not participate in the same activities… “That marginalization goes way beyond financial considerations and taints entire lives,” he muses. “On the other hand, my mother was my example. She taught me to never give up, no matter what, and help others.” That is the reason he began to do charity work, in the hope of giving back to society some of the affluence that he now enjoys.

When Cascades began to sponsor the Charles-Bruneau Foundation in 2005, senior management asked him if he would like to represent the company on the cycling tour. That is when he fell in love with the Foundation. According to him, “on the first morning of the cycling tour, I met little Lucas, who was paired with me and had been treated thanks to the Foundation. When I offered to shake his mother’s hand, she threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss and a hug. She started to cry and thanked me, saying that her son was still alive thanks to the Foundation. I hadn’t even begun to cycle yet and my legs were already weak! I had found my calling.” After the event, Jean Jobin realized that all of these efforts had only raised $200,000, which was just enough to treat one and a half cases! “And that was the best result that they had ever had in 10 years! My instinct for improving things kicked into action…”

Since then, the funds raised by the Foundation have grown exponentially, by almost 50% per year, and peaked at $2 million in July 2011. It comes as no surprise that the Foundation wanted to pay tribute to the deep commitment and catalyzing effect of Jean Jobin by awarding him the Foundation’s first Pioneer Award.

Simply together
What magic formula made it possible to raise ten times more funds in the cycling tour in just a few years? “The Foundation chose three people to help it improve its results: François Rivard, a man of vision, who proposed, for example, bringing in Lance Armstrong to the cycling tour. Werner Imboden, an enthusiast who can support projects of that size, and me, the practical one, who said ‘OK, OK, but how are we going to do that?’” Together, with the support of the management, they gave new momentum to the Charles-Bruneau Foundation, so that it stands out among other causes and attracts and secures the loyalty of its sponsors.

To wrap up this theme, which Jean Jobin has developed over the course of our conversation, he says: “It was a wonderful team that had all of the necessary ingredients to make the change that was necessary. Alone, I would accomplish very little, compared to what is possible when I am working with a team. This is a reality that also confronts me in my work as a manager. Whenever a new employee with a “big head" joins my team, my job is to bring him or her back down to earth. I try to be realistic. I know very well that tomorrow morning, I would not be able to perform if I had people around me who did not want me to perform. We succeed as a team. Improvements are made when everyone works together.”

At 45, this exceptional man has known for a long time that success comes from a balance between a sharp mind, a healthy body and an open heart.