To Remain the Same, We Will Have to Change

There's a different kind of learning that happens when the case study walks into the room. Last week, HEC Paris MBA students were in the middle of a competitive automotive business simulation, making high-stakes decisions on pricing, strategy, and market positioning under real pressure, with real consequences within the game. Then Katrin Adt, CEO of Automobile Dacia, came to campus, and suddenly the simulation felt a lot less like an exercise.

That collision between the artificial stakes of the classroom and the lived experience of someone navigating those same questions at scale is exactly the kind of tension that makes our learning stick. Adt didn't arrive with a polished keynote or frameworks for us to think about. She arrived with two decades of hard-won perspective and a willingness to share it honestly with a room full of people who are, in their own way, at the beginning of the same journey.

Adt captured something essential about leadership with a single sentence: "To remain the same, we will have to change." For students who are mid-simulation already grappling with the temptation to chase competitors or abandon a positioning strategy the moment pressure hits, it landed as more than an observation about the automotive industry. It was a precise description of what strategic discipline actually feels like from the inside. 

Staying true to something, whether a brand, a set of values, or a vision, is not a passive act. It requires more active effort than simply adapting to whatever the market demands. It requires knowing, with real clarity, what you are and what you refuse to become, and it's one that MBA students will face sooner than later. 

Perhaps the quietest powerful moment of Adt's visit came when she spoke about role models, and specifically about the fact that her first boss was a woman. She offered a key piece of advice: “If you haven't seen someone do it, you cannot picture it; if you cannot picture it, you cannot pursue it.” 

For a room of MBA students at one of Europe's leading business schools, that landed somewhere personal. Most of us are here because, at some point, we could picture ourselves here. The question the next few years will ask is whether we can extend that same imaginative generosity to possibilities we haven't yet been shown, and whether we'll be willing to become, for someone else, the proof that it's possible.

 Adt also offered some hard-earned truths such as deliberately seeking discomfort, because growth rarely happens in places where you're already comfortable. She talked about prioritising authenticity over perfection, as the goal was never a flawless performance but real impact.  Credibility that actually carries you through a career is built through contribution, through giving first, long before any title comes into the picture. None of these ideas are new. Yet, what made them land differently was Adt’s lived experience as someone who has worked in global markets,, led through genuine complexity, and built something real. Context changes everything.

At HEC Paris, we talk a lot about developing leaders who can think and act at the next frontier, but the frontier isn't abstract.. It's a poignant,  moment of pressure when you have to decide whether to hold your position or chase the market, whether to stay true to your founding proposition or drift towards what everyone else is doing, whether to lead from your values or from your anxiety. 

Adt's visit didn't just complement what our students were learning in the simulation. It brought to life the challenges we face as MBAs everyday, in defining who we are and how we hope to contribute to the world we live in. And that, in the end, is what the best kind of business education offers you.

Thank you to Katrin Adt for giving her time so generously and to Professor Denisa Mindruta for making the exchange possible.