The most successful companies are those that think jointly technological change, work design and the changes in internal social relationships.” Antoine Riboud.
The question is nothing new. How many times did we hear “we can’t change, we’ve always done like that” or “this is the rule so I obey”.
Even if it means to set the cat among the pigeons, I’m sure that with a closer look it would become clear that some so-calles rules are useless if not counter-productive today. I say today because in many cases they made sense when they were edicted but don’t anymore.
He are a few eloquant examples.
A reflection that is not very far my usual discourse since it’s about optimization under resource constaintes. Most of all human resources.
Everybody know that a company’s goal is to make money in order to create value for its shareholders without whom it wouldn’t exist.
As time went by the need for making profit was turned into the need for maximizing it. A vision that made possible the strongest and longest period of growth, more than a decade ago. But it seems that the engine is now jamming with consequences we can all observe in our daily lives.
At a corporate level it implies the will of doing always more and keep with growth rates that are incompatible with the mere logic. A logic that becomes counter productive when it lead to halve strategies and promising linear performances where people end one day or the other by meeting a ceiling. Both leading to cyclic crisis.
Outside of companies, this lead to a period when, for the first time, growth creates poverty, this poverty being a threat for tomorrow’s growth, destroying current markets and making it impossible for new ones to emerge.
In one word, we have the evidence that, in order to continue to grow rich tomorrow, people must may not ask for the impossible today. In other words one don’t run a marathon by linkinng up sprints.
The event co-organized by Danone and HEC which I attended recently gave me the idea or reading again a collection of Antoine Riboud’s speeches and interviews (Antoine Riboud : Un patron dans la cité
The Pew Research Center issued an interesting report titled Networked Workers that proposes a analysis of the state of web workers in the US. By web workers we have to understand people who use internet in their day to day job, including email. qui dresse un état des lieux des travailleurs du web aux Etats-Unis. Par travailleurs du web entendons tous ceux qui utilisent internet dans leur travail quotidien (pour information cela comprend également l’email).
Here are some numbers
- 27% are always on internet at work (“always on”) andt 22% several times a day.
- 80% consider web technologies increase their ability for doing their work.
- 73% consider web technologies help them to share ideas with their colleagues
- 58% consider they offer them more flexibility in their day to day work
- 56% say they work at home on top of their work
- 50% read their business emails on week ends
- 49% say these technologies increased their level of stress
- 49% say they make it more difficult to switch off when at home or on vacation
conclusion :
- we are more and more connected to the web and it’s an obvious help in our day to day work.
- the confusion bewteen private / business is more and more pronounced and may have negative consequences on people’s health and, more widely, on their family and on society.
In brief it can be summed up by : “it’s useful but it’s more and more intrusive”.
Are we reaching the limits of the web as a work platform or the limit of an unappriate use ? Assuming that, according to me, tools are either good or bad, efficient or not, depending on the way they’re used, I’d rather say the second propostion is true.
A friend of mine was making fun of the use of the word “talent” since he didn’t see in which way it was different from “ressource”, even if human. He was only seeing one more employer brand trick, a promise that only engages the one who hear it.
It’s true that HR marketing, as general marketing, likes to use new terms to value the people it talks to even if that doesn’t mean anything really changed in the workplace. But if we look into the subject, there is sometimes a true reflection behind all that and we can guess this will spread in the upcomming times.
Nortel announced they were going to give up their complex matrix organization to focus on their business units. The purpse is to act faster, making decisions as close as possible to the market. Making decision close to the marketin reminds me of either SOO or subsidarity at a time when but is it a pure coincidence, I see many companies trying to tackle the question of empowerment.
The post where I got the information is wondering about the efficiency of going back to a vertical model. What can we think about that ?
L’efficacité opérationnelle ne suffit pas
Je suis souvent interpellé sur le thème : “Que font les meilleures entreprises en matière de …”, et on y va de la discussion sur ce qu’on appelle “les meilleures pratiques” (on dit aussi “best practices” car il est chic d’utiliser des expressions anglo-saxonnes dans ces cercles).
Il en résulte une frénésie, dans ces entreprises, à se copier les unes les autres, avec l’angoisse qu’une autre entreprise pourrait savoir des choses que l’on ne sait pas soi-même, comme un secret alchimique. Bien sûr, les consultants prospèrent sur ces angoisses; surtout quand on s’aperçoit qu’il n’existe aucun secret, finalement.
The Economist Intelligence Unit reported that Web 2.0 has moved from buzzword to reality in many of the world’s largest corporations. They conducted a survey of 406 senior executives worldwide and found that 79% of respondents see the collaborative web as a way to boost revenues and cut costs.
After a long reflection I realized that the tools I use were the cause of a high level improductivity. And that the others gives me incredible services.
Try to pay attention to this in the upcomming days. Try to take some distance on your own experience, listen to your colleagues, you friends, and I’m sure you’ll draw the same conclusion.
When someone talks about “using” a tool or when you feel you’re using one, it means there’s a problem somewhere : the simple fact to be conscious of using someting creates a kind of disruption in our work, needs an effort. In brief : our efforts are not about our work anymore but about using tools that are supposed to help us doing our job.
The Alumni Network of the famous french “Ecole Polytechnique” issued a report on “how to manage in a downturn’. Here are a few excerpts :
• Urgency does not mean lack of vigilance : state of urgency makes people focus on short term which bad effects are know…on long term. Moreover, enterprise compartmentalization and a hard context lead to a strong deterioration of communiation. At last, blind faith in systems disconnects managers from reality.
• short term and lack of markers. The contractual short term logic destroys people’s markers and confidence disappears.
• Innovation is key to survive a downturn. But it will have to be cooperative and operated inside alliances, with partners.
• Intangible assets are a source of differencitation and development. Companies must identify therm and build their new strategies upon them, using new appropriate dashboards and indicators for this paradigm.
• Digital as a tranformation lever : companies underuse the capabilities new technologies offer and don’t reinvent themselves because of overcautiousness and fear of changing era.
• Maintening the links with the ecosystem in crisis time is very important, knowing that it’s a time of high customers volatilty and that the public opinion will try to analyze even the weakest signal. Mastering one’s communication and information will imply to use tools that allow this new form of transparent communication.
(But the opinions expressed in this blog are only my own)
You can find the "original" french version of this blog here
