On 25 November, the Institut de la Sociodynamique held its Campus de l’Innovation Managériale (Managerial Innovation Campus), a biennial event devoted to current management practices – with, of course, a “sociodynamic” lens: principles for bringing human communities to life, within companies but also more broadly, in their “ecosystems”.
What struck me was the affirmation of the need – and often the desire – to create connections, or to strengthen them.
The many talks and workshops (around forty) offered a wide range of applications. And it was not possible to attend them all… so this point of view is, of course, only partial.
Connections to transform
There are, of course, companies. With a variety of contexts and “targets”.
Contexts of transformation, in particular. And because uncertainty is the lot of every company (those that deny it are lying, to themselves and to others), decisions are always taken without being able to be certain that they are “the right ones”.
Decision-making will of course always be a moment of great solitude – particularly if the consequences are negative. But practices that favour connection and relationships make it possible both to make decisions more reliable and to reduce their risks.
Because, on the way to the final decision, processes of dialogue, consultation or even concertation have two benefits:
- They allow decision-makers to feed their thinking – provided they are not just looking for confirmation, but have a genuine capacity for listening and for questioning themselves – with different areas of expertise, viewpoints and sensitivities… All this diversity will feed “intuitions” in the absence of certainties. And also help prepare for what comes next;
- Because that is the second benefit of the collective approaches that should accompany decision-making: helping to identify future reactions to the decisions taken, both individual and collective. Reactions that will emerge and bring the “implementation” to life.
For this, sociodynamics is a powerful tool.
Because it makes it possible to build “partner maps” – to steer the mobilisation of stakeholders at every stage of the project.
And “allies strategies” – strategies for leading transformations by mobilising stakeholders, which choose synergies in order to overcome antagonisms and mobilise as many people as possible, so as to control risks and increase benefits.
Because, having been involved as early as possible – and not just in a “communication” phase – the beneficiaries of transformation projects will have been able to make them their own, bringing conditions for their support but also proposals and contributions, adaptations and enrichments.
In this way, they will become actors in the implementation, multiplying the energy and skills of those leading the project.
And this “contributive” approach also has a consequence for project management. A consequence that the spread of “agile” projects – in the world of digital projects, but not only – has encouraged in recent years, with “sprint” or “Minimum Viable Product” logics. Modern project management, in tune with the practices and perceptions of our interconnected world, and with our taste for immediacy – even if one may sometimes regret it.
Because to foster ownership and adapt implementation to the real mobilisation of stakeholders, it is essential no longer to arrive with a “locked-down” project, even after validation in a test phase that can never take into account all the variables of a general roll-out. Instead, one should propose a project that can be amended – from the outset and throughout the implementation period – while keeping the permanent option of changing the pace and content, even significantly, upwards or downwards.
This principle of action is not merely an act of “communication”, aimed at “giving the impression” to as many people as possible that they have been heard. It is the conviction that the multitude of the “human factor” is not a drawback, let alone a weakness, but a real lever for performance and success – provided one devotes energy and time to it.
Time for relationships
Because the “time” factor is an important parameter for forming and nurturing the bonds that bring people together. And it was indeed the concept of “relational time” that was discussed at this Campus.
We had raised it in the very first weeks of the “great lockdown” of 2020, and again as professional activity gradually resumed, amid the enthusiastic promotion of “remote working” – encouraged by tool vendors who saw it as a tremendous growth lever, by managers of property rather than of talent, and by trainers who promised, sincerely or not, the advent of remote management[1]…
No, work cannot be reduced to individual output, within one’s own expertise, silo or office – and therefore regardless of the distance from one’s company and colleagues.
The social and interactive dimension of work is crucial, and it cannot be handled solely by telephone or through screens.
Problem-solving – whether the problems are technical, organisational or human – and creativity feed on interactions, exchanges and conversations. Whether they are organised or even facilitated, or improvised and impromptu. But in their full human dimension: the one that engages the senses, perceptions and intuitions.
Considering others merely as “producers” is to deny them their humanity by depersonalising them. And therefore to push them away, when material and legal conditions allow, so as to reduce the occasions for interaction that might make the masks slip. Pending the moment when this “production” can be entrusted to an even more distant party, physically and legally – a contractor rather than an employee or partner – while waiting for the opportunity to move on to an artificial “intelligence”… the latest avatar of industrial automation, which can free people from tasks of little added value, but only on the absolute condition of supporting them towards other contributions, for ethical but also economic reasons, over a longer time frame than the accounting quarter.
This relational dimension therefore requires investing time (time is not a parameter, it is a scarce resource, which one decides whether or not to invest).
Time to build a relationship, to maintain it – and not just superficially. Taking proposals into account, whether or not one adopts them, by integrating them into one’s thinking. Which does not always happen in the moment – the hare’s brain and the tortoise’s mind…
Uncertain connections
This relational dimension also requires being ready to manage the uncertainties inherent in human nature, and therefore in the socio-technical systems that our companies and organisations are.
The widely shared reluctance to face uncertainty (more so in France than elsewhere) is probably one of the main reasons why so many people like “indicators”, “procedures”, “standards” and bureaucratic organisations, which straitjacket initiative but give the impression of “control” over one’s environment.
Because all these factors can be automated, or nearly so. And thus remove from the “decision-maker” the risk, and therefore the responsibility, of their “decision” – which is uncertain by nature.
This uncertainty, inherent in the business world – and in the world at large – must be owned by every decision-maker. Of course, some like to drape themselves in the robes of a “providential man” (or woman, of course) who controls everything in their omnipotence, thinking that this will reassure teams who would like to move towards a guaranteed future – and thereby attract gratifying devotion.
But it is impossible to build genuine connections in this way, because the contingencies of our lives will always, at one point or another, recall reality. A chaotic reality sometimes kept at a distance by the geography or the field of our rather peaceful environments, but which the world of instant information now makes immediately accessible.
Saying “I don’t know” is both honest and often true, and does not prevent one from owning one’s decisions while relying on healthy relationships.
This is probably the whole balance that organisations must seek in the “holomorphic” model recommended by sociodynamics: reconciling both the connection that comforts and reassures (the “ego” dimension) and openness to the world – and therefore to uncertainty – which drives innovation and growth (the “eco” dimension). Far from the “mechanistic” model, which considers stakeholders merely as executors, as “producers”.
Time for citizens, too
The Campus programme also offered a theme that went beyond the strict scope of companies: that of their “ecosystem”. And in the talks that explored this theme, the question of connection was also central.
In Ukraine, for example, between the armed forces and the citizens who, since the beginning of the resistance to the Russian invasion, have been providing them with resources that go beyond a strictly military contribution – expressed through institutional or voluntary mobilisation.
With intelligence or expert support in information technology, which make “hybrid warfare” possible, as well as securing the infrastructure and services for populations targeted by the aggressor. But also with food supplies and medical support, right up to the front line. To strengthen bodies and hearts.
This was a terribly concrete application of the growing “permeability” between the military world and civil society – what in France is called the “Armed Forces–Nation bond” – and which now seems urgent to bring back to the fore, after the temptation of an “end of history” that had disarmed minds, at the very least.
A bond to which companies – outside the world of the defence industrial and technological base (BITD in French) and of large public companies – are beginning, somewhat timidly, to contribute. But one that illustrates a significant and potentially structuring part of “corporate social responsibility”. Because we should not underestimate the importance of time spent at work, and the permeability, here again, between the “managerial” bond (with its ups and downs) and the civic convictions that are forged and evolve through the trials of life.
This question of the “civic bond” was also at the heart of the experience shared about the remarkable human dynamic driving Les Mureaux – a town in the Yvelines, west of Paris, which sometimes suffers from the image of a troubled past, even though riots now spare it, and which is home, among other things, to a jewel of European industry, ArianeGroup.
Because to develop employment and ensure everyone’s safety, the choice there was not to wait for the providential manna of subsidies or to keep reinforcing the police. It was to develop relationships between residents, between generations, with businesses and with visitors. On the basis of a shared project. What a fine illustration of the principles formalised by sociodynamics!
And what about the State?
In the war in Ukraine, as in the handling of the temptation to riot, but also in the discussion of how the Covid-19 crisis was managed, the role of the State came up during the day – once again touching on the question of connection.
In Ukraine, relations between the population and the armed forces are direct. Of course, with the war, volunteer units were incorporated into the forces, for the sake of coordination and therefore effectiveness. But the relational capital that characterises this bond does not erase the Ukrainian people’s traditional mistrust of State structures, some of whose abuses are still recent and probably deep-rooted, since they characterise the Russian, post-Soviet regime, which is not so distant… It is war, and one must stay united in the face of adversity. But this bond is not organisational or formalised. It is human and direct.
As for Les Mureaux, the synergies between the police and the civic dynamic probably still need strengthening, when the former perceive the latter as a “competitor”, or even as a direct challenge to their effectiveness – whereas it only offers complementarity. Here too, “permeability” is a relevant concept to describe the interfaces between disruptive actors and their friendly, social and family environment, which wants peace and prosperity. And it recalls the need to create “connections”, to generate synergies in the face of antagonisms, in order to deal with them “differently”.
And Covid in all this? The perceived, if not real, mistrust of State decision-makers towards our fellow citizens fractured bonds that were already fragile. Faced with a situation full of uncertainties by its very nature, the public authorities could have acknowledged the fragility of their decisions. Shared their complexity in the face of risk, their humility in the face of the unknown. Adopted crisis management mechanisms based more on trust and responsiveness than on bureaucratic planning, often blind and brutal. Since the directive management typical of mechanistic organisations can only be exercised very briefly, given the destruction of social bonds it always causes.
The role of the State, then? Probably not, or at least not only. But certainly the capacity of large organisations to free themselves from the bureaucratic perceptions and practices which always see individuals in their silo, performing a task, rather than in the richness of their relational dimension: the one that feeds on the connections we keep alive, and that make the richness of our free and democratic human societies.
Here again, a wonderful application of sociodynamic practices!
[1] See, for example, the following articles on this blog (in French):
- Et vous, avec qui voudrez-vous vivre et travailler ? (And you – who will you want to live and work with?)
- Poursuivre le télétravail, vraiment ? (Continue remote working – really?)
- Penser les plaies (Tending the wounds)
- Le télétravail pour tous ? Pas à n’importe quelle condition (Remote working for all? Not on just any terms)
- Télétravail : les résultats de notre enquête de la rentrée (Remote working: the results of our autumn survey)
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