Throughout the past year – as for the past 20 years – I have supported teams that needed to come back together, heal their wounds and project themselves into an uncertain future. Situations that are always different, varied paths to solutions, but in the end a similar choice: above all, working better together…
In an ever-changing world, there are many ways of thinking about a strategy – and above all about implementing it. Because, unless you love ideas for their own sake, what is the point of imagining one if not to put it into practice?
This post-Covid year was, of course, a special one. Not only because it put on many companies’ agendas the consequences of remote-working agreements that were often imposed rather than chosen. But also because it had led them to pursue or implement more or less profound changes without the benefit of immediate feedback from the teams concerned, because of the distancing of the previous months.
Processes had made it possible to keep the business going. Some had worn themselves out designing, implementing and running them. Others had disengaged. Interactions had not been those expected; fires had sometimes smouldered; wounds had also come to light, and even become infected.
Here we look back at a few concrete cases that illustrate our convictions – and our know-how. For ease of reading, each case has its own link, so you can read it and then come back here for a few concluding thoughts.
- The centre and the periphery
- People and processes
- Supporting growth
- New roles to produce better
- Growing together
- When the hierarchy is not enough
- Partner or co-actor?
So what do these seven situations – quite different in their context and in the people involved – have in common?
Above all, making do with “the people you have”
The first is that, in companies, you often have to make do “with the people you have”.
Some leaders, when they join a team, plan to get rid (often quickly) of those they judge not to be up to their expectations. This can be legitimate, particularly when the new leader’s project is one of rupture: because not everyone in the team they inherit may subscribe to the new direction and the changes that will have to be made.
But this “renewal” can only be very partial – in my experience, 10 to 20% of the team at most, which means one or two people in a management body. Beyond that, the disruption always caused by a departure, and by a more or less rapid replacement, will be too great, both for the role and for the group. And above all, the departure may arouse in the “survivors” a reaction of mistrust, fear or even (suppressed) hostility – all emotions that run counter to the commitment expected.
Unless, of course, one is in a bureaucratic structure, in which everyone must keep to their place, and not necessarily more. In that case, without worrying about the consequences of this choice, one can add the comfort – also legitimate – of replacing those who leave with supporters from one’s previous organisation. Because the “spoils system” attaches little importance to “corporate cultures”, which sustain the long term and directly influence how people commit – when that is what is expected of them.
Making do with “the people you have” therefore perhaps means agreeing to give up an imagined ideal in order to design, with them, the reality you will bring to life together. It also means accepting that you do not hold a “truth” alone, and choosing complementarity and mutual enrichment: accepting the expertise of others, whoever they are. Expertise that often comes from their technical skills, but also their human skills; from their experience, which often goes beyond their own area of responsibility. And which, incidentally, justifies their place on a “management committee” – which is not merely a “steering committee” in which each person in turn presents their achievements. But a space for collective intelligence and action, for solidarity and synergies.
Choosing action
Among “the people you have” are those that sociodynamics describes as “allies”: actors who put more synergy (energy “for” or “with”) than antagonism (energy “against”, but also “elsewhere”) into the shared dynamic. These are the people to identify, support and rely on. Even if they do not match the ideal one might have in mind – the proverbial rare bird. Even, and indeed especially, if they show a critical spirit, which will help identify risks and weaknesses early on, provided that at the same time their capacity to mobilise benefits the group.
Because what matters is to move forward, together, bringing as many people as possible along. To favour action, in the service of collective objectives.
All proportions kept, this is also one of the principles of the 6C protocol, increasingly recommended in situations of acute psychological shock (accident, attack, disaster…): keeping those involved active by communicating with them and giving them a role that calls on their cognitive abilities, to avoid emotional isolation and its consequences.
In companies, outside exceptional situations, the seriousness of situations is objectively incomparable. And business time is not the time of these extreme cases. But stress, even if it does not strike acutely, can build up over time. And, from the point of view of those involved, lead to the same paralysis, and to damaging long-term consequences. Individually and collectively.
Engaging in action makes it possible to call on everyone’s cognitive abilities – their professional skills and qualities. To feed the quest that some are pursuing for “meaning at work”. And to put the emotions felt into perspective, or at least to move beyond them or even transform them, thanks to the benefits of successes experienced together, through collective action.
So: rely on those who act, and also give others the opportunity to take a place in the dynamic under way… Because what matters in a company is not to act “against”. It is to act “with”.
And what about digital?
Finally, after this “post-Covid” year, it is impossible not to mention, in these projects to (re)build synergies, the consequences of remote working.
Throughout these months, a large majority of the working population “discovered” remote working – and many continue to practise it.
For others – self-employed people in intellectual professions and, more broadly, employees of companies relying on “dispersed” teams, in Europe or beyond – it was merely an intensification of a familiar way of working.
But they knew its advantages and drawbacks, and had learned to deal with its consequences and risks… The blurring of personal and professional life, relational isolation, the spread of flex-office (because a company will not keep a fixed “desk” for an employee who is absent much of the time)… They had mastered these and knew that this distancing could only be harmful, and that the wounds would have to be tended afterwards for lack of having been thought through beforehand (in French).
So for digital companies and the beneficiaries of “techno-folklore”, these months were a godsend, and no doubt they would like it to continue. Because unlike suppliers of physical goods, their gains are exponential: give or take, every new customer generates nothing but profit.
We will come back in a future article to the consequences of this “virtualisation” of our lives.
But as far as synergies are concerned, the conclusion is clear: distancing has been disastrous for everyone. And digital solutions have been mere stopgaps, or even mirages that led people to ignore the wounds to come… Because a screen is only a space for contemplation, not for interaction.
It is also a way of working that fully satisfies bureaucratic, vertical and inhuman structures, which flee interactions as so many opportunities for dissonant thinking to emerge. Because, once again, they favour status over action.
But it is not the way of companies that create value. For the greatest number.
So, if you share this need and this taste for action, to forge and maintain our synergies, let us meet and share the art of doing it!
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