Most CEOs dream big. My guest on The Scaling CEO, Sebastien Gendron, dreams in steel and physics.
As co-founder and CEO of TransPod, he’s building an entirely new mode of transportation—planes without wings, in a tube.
Before starting TransPod, Sebastien spent 15 years inside Airbus, Safran, and Bombardier, where he optimized some of the world’s most complex assembly lines. His lesson for CEOs is simple: big visions only scale if you break them into small, relentless wins.
From Precision to Ambition
Sebastien learned from the giants of aerospace that discipline matters—but ambition was lacking.
“I found some kind of lack of ambition within those big corporations… there’s no push to develop innovative aircraft.”
For CEOs, the warning is clear: don’t let comfort zones kill innovation. Big visions need discipline, but they also need the courage to challenge industry inertia.
Breaking Down the Elephant
Sebastien believes the secret to scaling is chunking massive goals into smaller, achievable milestones.
“You can’t eat the elephant all at once. You need to break it down… and tell people this is the objective we need to achieve in one month, two months, no more than six months ahead.”
Short-term wins keep teams motivated. They also create the adaptability to course-correct before small mistakes become existential.
Borrowing From Toyota, Not Just Airbus
While aerospace gave him process discipline, Sebastien draws daily inspiration from Toyota’s lean manufacturing philosophy.
“In the automotive industry… they are chasing waste everywhere… what do you have to do in the next hour? What are you going to achieve after one hour, two hours?”
For CEOs, lean isn’t just for factories. It’s a mindset: daily updates, continuous improvements, and never letting weeks slip away without surfacing problems.
Hire People to Solve Problems You Can’t
At TransPod, hiring is not about filling a job description—it’s about finding problem-solvers.
“We hire someone because we believe this person has the skill sets to solve an issue we didn’t find ourselves… you’re here to tell us how we’re going to solve that.”
CEOs who micromanage or script every role are wasting talent. The job is to set direction, not to provide all the answers.
Culture Is More Than Posters
Sebastien has little patience for corporate “value statements” that live in lobbies but not in behavior.
“We want to walk the talk… how do you enforce transparency in daily processes, not just as a fancy word on a wall?”
The challenge for CEOs is to translate values into operational guardrails so they persist even if leadership changes.
AI as a Time-Saver, Not a Silver Bullet
At TransPod, AI isn’t designing new transport systems—it’s cutting administrative time.
“Where we had to spend a week or two on due diligence, now it’s taking a few hours, sometimes a few seconds.”
Sebastien is cautious about hype. For him, AI is powerful when it accelerates existing work but still needs humans in the loop for complex technical breakthroughs.
Final Takeaway
Sebastien Gendron shows that scaling isn’t about one giant leap—it’s about thousands of disciplined steps. CEOs must set a bold vision, break it into near-term goals, hire problem-solvers, and embed values into daily work. The future is built one milestone at a time.
I’m Glenn Gow. I coach CEOs who want to scale by turning bold visions into achievable wins. On my podcast, I uncover the strategies elite leaders use to grow faster—one milestone at a time.
Listen to the full episode of The Scaling CEO with Sebastien Gendron for insights on scaling from aerospace discipline to startup ambition.
