Benchmarking | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Some advice not to fear internet in the workplace

April 9, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

You are scared that your employees stop working and spend their days surfing on the net ? A too easy shortcut based on the assumption that people inevitably lose their time when they are on the net. An assumption that may also be true. In fact, the issue is about two questions :

The first is to know if your staff need internet or not, what amounts to wonder if it can be a business tool or if it’s only a leisure tool.

In the case the answer to the first question is positive, the second question will be about usages. Nearly everybody agree that net surfing is like cholesterol : there is the “good surf” ” and the “bad surf”, the one who serves the company and the one that makes you waste your time.

Here again, there’s no “magic formula” but we can figure a few things out with a few common sense.

Managing Complexity : Danone Tries to Spread its Values through a Business Game

April 7, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

“Managing Complexity” or “Managing in complexity” is a very common word at this time. This only means people have to take into account more and more changing factors before making a decision. It may seem obvious but it’s still useful to remind some people of that as we can see too many managers acting as if everything was still binary, predictable.

Complexity also depends on the company, its values. There is what is strictly necessary (figures, reporting) what is often considered as accessory (context, non structured information) and the icing on the cake : values which respect is adding and added complexity. Let’s also add the necessity of taking into account elements from outside the company. I’ll soon make a post about that but I’m often appaled when I see that so many people don’t pay any attention to what’s happening outside the organization’s walls : no intelligence, no weak signals detection, no benchmark. They live looking at each other and become victiom of the NIH and MCID syndroms (Not Invented Here and My Company Is Different), which is an organizational form of consanguinity.

In short, some companies are culturally more likely to take “others” into account when it comes to make decisions. By “the others” I mean employees but also all the ecosystem, the social reality the enterprise lives in.

This introduces two projects from Danone I’d like to talk you about : Danone Way Ahead and Trust by Danone

Ce qui m’amène à vous parler de deux initiatives mises en œuvre chez Danone : le programme Danone Way Ahead et Trust by Danone. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: benchmarking, corporate brand, corporate culture, danone, Human resources, management, recruitment

Innovation at Google : a model to follow ?

March 17, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I read a note on Internet Actu [fr] , about Google’s innovation model, where many expert gave their opinion on whether it was a model to follow or an exception. My point here is not to discuss Google’s model but to wonder what the very existence of this kind of discussions teaches us.

The question is “is there a model that applies everywhere ?”. And the answer is obviously not.

Many companies fail because they copy a model from A to Z. That’s being unaware that each company is different, in terms of culture, market, ecosystem. To make it short, each company is unique and what works somewhere has many chances to fail elsewhere.

Hence the question : is Google Google because of the way the company operates or is the way Google operates due to the fact Google is Google.

Saying the Google’s model is the best would imply everybody has to copy and implement it, neglecting one’s own specificities. In the other hand we can’t say it doesn’t work. Reality is half way : Google is unique. And this is in what their directors are right : they understood it, assumed it, and they built their own model instead of copying Yahoo or Microsoft.

The myth of the “comparable” company, which implies everyone has to clone his competitors to reassure financial analists is close to its end. Today it seems more useful to develop one’s particularities, to be oneself and to draw all the consequences.

Then, instead of discussing whether the Google model is relevant or not, let’s benchmark it (what works is always a source of progress), but try to build our own Google. Because Google’s success is not due to the famous “20%”, it’s because of its culture.