Olivier Blum joined Schneider Electric at 22 and has never worked for another company. He runs in the mountains six days a week and says that many of his most important decisions ultimately fall into place there. But when he was offered the CEO position, he did not want to make the decision alone.
He gathered his wife and three children, explained what accepting the role would involve, and asked for their opinion. He says they were good advisers and ultimately gave him the final push he needed to accept.
That was the issue. He had never set out to become CEO. He had spent years working alongside the person who held the position and knew how difficult it was. Nor did he want to accept simply for the sake of accepting: he says the job is a serious commitment and that he is not someone who takes it on for one or two years, like a mercenary.
He took over on November 4, 2024, and describes his first year at the helm of Schneider with one word: tsunami. Before considering a business career, Blum wanted to play rugby professionally. Today he tells the story without making too much of it: he believes he had the ability, but admits that he never trained hard enough to reach that level.
He was born in France in October 1970, studied at Grenoble Business School, and graduated in 1993. His 1993 entry into Schneider Electric and subsequent international career are documented by the company.
Within Schneider, however, he changed roles and countries several times. He began in sales and in 2001 became chief of staff to the then chief executive, a choice he says he still does not entirely understand. He spent close to twenty years between China and India. In 2014, he joined the Executive Committee, served as Chief Human Resources Officer until 2020, and later took responsibility for strategy, sustainability, and energy management. He is now living in the Middle East. Schneider’s official biography confirms his senior roles in China and India, as well as a global position based in Hong Kong.
The episode he remembers most clearly from that entire journey was his first Executive Committee meeting, shortly after being appointed chief of staff. He walked into the meeting with a document he had prepared with the chief executive himself, but as soon as he began presenting it, the committee came down on him. The boss who had brought him into the room did not intervene. He simply watched to see how Blum responded under pressure. Blum left convinced that it had been a disaster, and when he got home he told his wife that he had probably just had his last day at Schneider.
That experience also shaped his relationship with criticism, something he admits he handled poorly for years. During 360-degree reviews, he used to become defensive and find an explanation for every comment, until he realized that arguing with someone’s perception was of little use. If someone saw him in a certain way, trying to convince that person otherwise did not change it.
Close to exhaustion
The hardest period was both professional and physical.
He was sent to run India toward the end of the 2000s, and his description of the country is admiring —he speaks about the resilience of its people— but he admits that someone arriving from the Western world cannot imagine what is coming.
At some point, he says, he came close to extreme exhaustion without realizing it.
In that state, he made several bad decisions. One of them was an acquisition that proved to be a poor strategic choice and did not fit the company. He understood that one or two years later.
That is why he insists so strongly on arriving rested. He does not frame it as a matter of wellness, but as part of the job. A CEO, he says, does not make hundreds of decisions every day, but the few that really matter tend to be large, urgent, and without an obvious answer.
When he was offered the CEO role, what concerned him most was not the position itself, but how it would affect the balance he had built.
The pain cave
His method for finding clarity is running six days out of seven, but he does not run marathons. He prefers mountain ultratrails, including the race around Mont Blanc. In 2023, Blum wrote that he had completed the 170-kilometer Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. What he seeks are long stretches of time: ten hours, fifteen, or even two days. He treats it as a form of meditation and says that afterward he remains in a good mood for months.
His most important business decisions, he says, are made while running.
He also sees it as emotional training, citing American ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter and her idea of learning to survive —and even enjoy— being inside the pain cave. Something similar happens at work. As CEO, he says, something unexpected always appears, from a resignation to an operational problem or even a geopolitical crisis. Over time, he learned that the point is not to avoid that discomfort, but to learn how to function within it. Sometimes he tells his wife and the chairman that there are weeks when he feels as though he is continuously running that race.
The other trait he brought back from Asia is speed. He says that in France he was taught to make a decision when he was 90% certain, while twenty years between China and India taught him that there is always a premium for the person who decides quickly and corrects course afterward. The tool he uses is a distinction he applies to everything: separating what is irreversible from what is reversible. For him, almost every decision can be corrected later. So if a decision is not definitive, delaying it for six months or two years only adds cost.
He speaks openly about his own shortcomings. Impatience is the main one, and he does not promise to correct it because speed is an obsession of his. What he does admit is that he needs to prioritize better: in his rush, he wants to do too many things at once.
With his team, he follows a fairly simple rule. In performance reviews, he prefers to set aside the final score and instead go over what worked, what went wrong, and what each person learned during the previous year. He knows mistakes will continue to happen. What matters to him is what the team learns from each one.
