Alexis Nicolas
Transcript (Translated)
Ok. Do I have a timekeeper in the room or not? No, the organizers are the least well-served. Oh well, great, I think we have until 3:30 PM, so 3:20 PM.
Is that okay?
Thank you very much.
So, today, I suggest we talk about—the title of my session was Beyond Kanban and Uninstalling Management 1.0. You’ll notice that I’ve kept only Uninstalling Management 1.0, since I’ll really focus on the management aspect. So, already in the title, there’s... There are already ideas that come through, because I imagine it resonates with all of you—1.0 immediately evokes questions of delivery, versioning, branching, things like that. So, we immediately sense there’s a notion of a version of management, but we still need to agree on what management would be, what it means to develop different versions of management. We’ll delve into that a bit to then explore how to actually uninstall Management 1.0 or paths through... Two examples, not three as I tweeted a few days ago—two examples, otherwise we won’t meet the deadlines.
And then afterward, a proposed model on which I’d be eager for feedback, for discussion, based on what you see.
So first, I don’t know. I don’t know if any of you have read some articles I’ve posted on my blog.
One of the topics that interests me a lot is hacker culture, for about 2-3 years now. And I’ve started talking a lot about management hacking. So, I wanted to offer you a definition. And to reference the title of my session, the idea is really to consider management as a system.
And to seek to hack it, to hack the management system of organizations. Seeking to hack it—so I’ll quickly take Eric Raymond’s definition of hackers, which distinguishes hackers from crackers. Hackers are those who build. Crackers are rather those who destroy. That’s the distinction he makes. Afterward, it’s up to each person to decide who destroys, who builds. I’m not here to judge. You form your own opinions. But I really align myself with this heritage. Here, if I use hacking, it’s really in this idea of construction, improvement, doing better.
But before that, we’re talking about management hacking, which presupposes a definition of management. And from my personal experience, I’m sure there are billions of ways to define management. So what I’d like us to do now is take 5 minutes to... For each of you to ask yourselves: what is management for you, actually? When I say management, what comes to mind? And if possible, one idea per sticky note, one characteristic, one theme. Go ahead, share the sticky notes, I’ll give you some. I hope you have pens.
We’ll take 5 minutes, then we... There.
You want to play?
No, you didn’t know how. It’s not no.
And you?
I'm not, I'm trying to follow, but I'm not speaking French.
Okay.
Hello. That’s fine, that’s fine. There, sticky notes.
You want some? Oh yes, I would love to.
So one idea, one characteristic, one... Oh darn, we’re in French.
One idea, one theme per sticky note, 5 minutes—you can discuss, exchange, copy, cheat, whatever you want. There you go, write down what comes to mind. Then afterward, try to pass the sticky notes so I can roughly see them when we stick them on the walls.
Factual or utopian?
Ah, both, that interests me. If it’s possible to distinguish, then that interests me. I hadn’t thought of that, but both. Just by making a distinction. This is reality, this is what I’d like it to be. To be clear, but there you go.
Let’s go, 5 minutes. There!
5 minutes, no. We’ll shorten it, timeboxing, 3 minutes.
Then bring the different sticky notes when you have them, so I can take them and review them. Thank you.
Thank you.
More sticky notes, more sticky notes.
Thank you.
Ah.
Over there, you have a few.
Thank you, nice harvest.
I don’t know if it’s for you to do.
Okay, okay, it’s not... Don, Elie, happy new year to all.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there still others writing more things? There we go! I won’t be able to use all of them, of course, because we’ll try to go quickly, but in fact, I’ve put up a timeline of what I consider the great thinkers of management during the 20th century. And then...
Well, here’s a sticky note. I won’t say who it’s from, but we’re already quite far along. Support, support, we’re almost there.
Support again. Ah, hierarchy, hierarchy, we’re typically here.
Goal-oriented guidance, we’re rather over here. Human management, it’s something around here. So coaching, coaching, we’re rather over here. People management—it depends on what we mean by management, so I don’t know. Supporter, human development, so there’s still a lot about humans. Service to employees.
Service, we’re rather in the mode of serving, guiding, there you go. Development. Leadership, vision.
Do you roughly recognize yourselves in all these terms? Is there one that wasn’t mentioned, have you heard the ones you wrote, or is something missing here?
Leadership again. Oh, man.
Sharing objectives, that's pure Drucker.
Culture Keeper, we're almost in Jean-François Zobrist territory here. Support function for the value zone. We're in HCL, we're... Okay, so, what else can I see here?
Facilitator, there you go, but you're already at the beginning of the 21st century.
Facilitator, driver, change catalyst, we're also pretty much in that phrase.
Motivating people, the vision, we already have the vision, I don't remember where, but around there.
Direction, leading a team, we might be closer to that side.
Okay, I'll stop here, otherwise we'll spend all our time sorting through the sticky notes. I'll stop here.
What I notice, well first, just the distribution of the sticky notes I did very quickly, so it's certainly debatable. But from what I see, and knowing that I stuck them myself, roughly estimating who to attribute them to or whose idea this sticky note most closely resembles. But what we already see is that it's quite scattered. So, from what I see, you're rather a group with a vision of management that leans toward the second half of the 20th century.
I thought there would be more hierarchy, more command and control, I didn't see much of that, it amuses me. It might also be the audience, the conference that does that.
What I noted anyway is that it's true that in many companies, there is a lot of hierarchy, a lot of command and control, and often, management almost means that, or something close. And we're pretty much in that, since Frederick Taylor really conceptualized the idea of separation between managers and workers. It was he who proposed it with scientific management, with the idea that managers should focus on the activity of... Well, organizing work activity. After that, we... Refire, they worked a bit together, but he really clarified what the role of a classic command-and-control manager was, with organizing, coordinating, controlling, that sort of thing. I won't go into detail, otherwise it will be too long, but afterward, there are contributions more from the field of psychology, human aspects, sociology, or organizational sociology.
Douglas McGregor, he wrote, that's really the human dimension, since he wrote *The Human Side of the Enterprise*, so we're really in something that takes into account the human, the quality of the human, with his Theory X and Theory Y. And Jean-François Zobrist, we'll come back to him at the end, he would hate to appear here, since he doesn't consider himself a management theorist at all.
But well, I really like his definition, so we'll end with that one.
The fact remains that I had a big problem, actually, because I remember my manager telling me I was a strange manager. And I couldn't understand why they said I was a strange manager. Because the clients were happy, he himself was satisfied with my work, the team was doing well, it was a great atmosphere, we were happy, there was energy, there was all that. And he kept telling me I was a strange manager. So I thought, what does managing mean to you? I don't understand, actually. For me, managing, simply put, meant that we have a team, we try to achieve the objectives, and the better we achieve them, the better it is, period. So, I didn't understand why 'strange'.
So, I thought about this question, and it's really by thinking about it that I seek to understand what management is.
And I found nothing that... I wasn't satisfied with what I found. So I found the differences, you know, manager-leader, I'm sure you've already read posts like that. Well, the differences make sense, I like them, but they still don't tell me what management is. Unless we consider that management is the set of all managers. But well, that's a bit simplistic. So, management equals the set of all managers. Well. I wasn't convinced, I couldn't find something that made sense, and I really found a huge gap between these two, for example. Since Drucker isn't in the little bubble here, but he says 'management isn't about commanding, but inspiring'. So, it's a shock when Henri Fayol says 'no, no, management is about controlling, commanding, organizing'. It's not the same thing. Well, I couldn't reconcile all that, I couldn't understand what was going on, then I dug deeper, dug deeper, dug deeper. And yes, there's a quote from Mr. Peter Drucker that helped me better understand, well, clarify my thoughts.
He said, 'There is no organization without management, and there is no management without organization.' I thought, okay, the two are linked, they're really intertwined, a bit like a computer and an OS, they go together. A computer without an OS isn't very useful.
An OS without a computer doesn't exist. But there you go, they're really intertwined. So I thought, maybe management is the operating system, the OS, of social organizations, human organizations. Why not? And when you look at the definition of management on Wikipedia, they propose exactly something like that, they don't use the term 'social technology,' but they say something like management allows an organization to achieve its objectives, something like that. But they don't actually tell me what it is. So I used the term 'social technology,' which is my modest proposal for a definition of management, one that helped me clarify my thoughts and that I hope helps clarify things a bit. So I wrote an article about it, which details a bit about manager, leader, leadership, management, what all that means. And I came to this conclusion, this proposal that I'm making to you, which helps me understand better, and first of all, it works—that is, Taylor-style management fits into this, and Jean-François Zobrist or Peter Drucker-style management also fits into this. So I'm already happy because at Fabi, we still call it management, we don't call it something else. I had a long discussion with Niels Pflaeging, the one who wrote about alpha and beta management versions, and he says we need to move toward leadership. I think management will remain. Organizations and management go together for me, as Peter Drucker suggests, and management won't disappear.
It's just that we can do management differently, but it's not the same thing.
Yes, all this leads me to that, yes, sorry, I had a little mental glitch too. This summer, I wrote an article titled 'The 4 Critical Flaws of Management or the Current Management System' or something like that, which circulated quite a bit. In fact, it was a way to synthesize the four major bugs, in my opinion, that exist in what I call Management 1.0. I understand, it already works, meaning Taylor-style management works in this context, and Jean-François Zobrist or Peter Drucker-style management also works in this context. So, I'm already happy because at Fabi, we still call it management; we don't call it anything else. I had a long discussion with Nils Plaging, the one who wrote about Alpha and Beta Management versions, and he specifically says we need to move toward leadership. I think management is here to stay. Organizations and management go together for me, as Peter Drucker suggests, and management is not going to disappear. It's just that we can do management differently, but it's not the same thing.
Yes, all that leads me to this—sorry, I had a little mental glitch, me too.
This summer, I wrote an article titled 'The 4 Critical Building Blocks of Management or the Current Management System,' or something like that, which circulated quite a bit.
In fact, it was a way to synthesize the four major bugs, in my opinion, that existed in what I call Management 1.0. Going back to the previous timeline, sorry, what I call Management 1.0 is really... Concretely, before everything that truly begins to take on the motivational, psychological, and social dimensions in organizations. So, it's really the classic command and control, the classic hierarchies, but what we still see quite frequently today.
So, the four bugs I identified within organizations are as follows. The first is that there is a module within management, which is this set of social technologies, a module called control and reporting. I don’t know if you’ve had the same experience as me, but I noticed it was bugged—there was an infinite loop inside it, a big problem. We even started reporting on the reports we might have made. There’s a real problem with this bug. And it’s serious—I say this in a humorous tone, but it’s serious because... Control and reporting have a cost. It’s all well and good to do control and reporting, but while I’m doing control and reporting, I’m not doing what needs to be done. And I saw a study not long ago that said 60% of managers' activity was control and reporting.
So, where is the value? If we stop doing control and reporting, do customers stop buying our products? Is that certain or not? Where is the value in all this? So, my feeling is really that... And this is somewhat one of the major contributions of the book *Freedom, Inc.*, which I mentioned earlier. It’s that... Control and reporting have a cost, so it’s dangerous for the competitiveness of companies. And secondly, it can kill creativity because too much control and too much reporting stifle innovation and creativity, like under a bell jar. It gets stifled. Then, companies sometimes try to revive innovation. Yes, but they do it through reporting and control. So, well, yeah... There’s a bug; doing more of it won’t get us out of it.
Another module that’s bugged—and I won’t say much about it here—but there’s Don in the room who explains it much better than I do. So, another module that’s completely bugged in many organizations using Management 1.0 is the economic management module, the one that allows for economic decisions, choices based on economics. And today, this bug—watch out—can really lead to a slow and very painful death. It can hurt a lot. And if you want to learn a little more about the foundations of this bug and how to get out of it, I invite you to buy Don’s book and read it carefully; it’s very enjoyable. A third bug is the bug in the human management module. Now, this is perhaps a little less serious; it’s just a configuration problem. There’s a small configuration issue. The thing is, for now, 'human' is configured as 'resources.'
I don’t know about you, but as a human, I have a hard time seeing myself as a printer, a disposable resource, a mechanical resource—it doesn’t work for me. Now, I know that in English, it’s perhaps a little less connoted—'resources' refers more to the resources we have within us, or something like that—so it might be a bit nuanced in an Anglo-Saxon perspective. My talk in English might take that into account, though.
In any case...
Yes, that will be the occasion in London. In any case, personally, it bothers me a little, even if I can see the positive side of things, but it still bothers me a bit. And naively, when I left school, I thought HR stood for human relations. I realized it wasn’t the case—that it was human resources. Now, some have evolved and moved away from this configuration problem. They said HR stands for making people happy. I’ll let you ponder that; it’s up to you to see. But it’s interesting; it makes you think. Configuration problem. And the fourth bug is in the recognition module. So, recognition includes everything related to salary, bonuses, and what’s called extrinsic recognition, extrinsic motivation. That is, essentially when we operate on the carrot-and-stick model. Either I threaten you and scare you, or I encourage you, give you a salary, a bonus to make you move faster.
This is largely the mode of recognition in companies today. And it has a big problem—Daniel Pink has worked a lot on this—it’s a major issue with using extrinsic motivation levers: it works very, very well in the short term, but very short term,
And if it ever reverses—for example, if bonuses can’t be at the same level the following year, or if there are none—it becomes destructive, actually demotivating. So, the trend reverses very quickly. And as a result, I think the recognition module within companies should rely much more on intrinsic motivation levers—that is, what we really enjoy, our passions, our creativity. Gary Hamel has also written a lot about this. So, everything related to creativity, passion—really what comes from within us, what we enjoy, what we really want to do, what we’re really good at and love working on. Yeah, I think we can do that. There are companies that have succeeded, you know. Some have succeeded. So, it’s not intrinsic to management.
I think I’m being way too long, way too talkative, because whenever we talk about these subjects, I inevitably take up time.
Only 20 minutes left to finish, so it’s going to be quite a challenge. So, four bugs in Management 1.0.
Oh yes, I was jumping straight into the stories. That I suggest we try to shake up, try to disrupt. And here, I’ve had the opportunity—I’ll tell you two little stories. I’ve had the opportunity to slightly disrupt this Management 1.0 way of functioning. Particularly through the use of a social network.
An internal social network within the company. Well, maybe that surprises you or not.
I thought about it not long ago—an analogy we could make about a social network, because I know many companies try to use a social network but don’t succeed or it doesn’t work. And in fact, I reflected a bit on what a social network is, how I see it. For me, a social network is a bit like a virtual coffee machine. And when you look at what happens at the coffee machine, no one tells you when to go, how to go, who to go with, what to talk about, or whether you can leave or not. No, no one monitors that. At most, they might look at how much time you spend there, for productivity reasons—that’s another matter—but... So, at a coffee machine, there’s no one, no approval committee deciding what you’re going to talk about at the coffee machine, no.
So, if a social network is really this place where discussions can aggregate based on interests, what we see emerging on Twitter, Facebook, and other so-called social networks, then if we want to create an internal social network, why not use the same logic of building a virtual coffee machine? In which case, when we build a virtual coffee machine within a company, if we put it under rules, under a system with approvals, we’re not creating a social network, period. We shouldn’t... There you go, it’s no more complicated than that. Anyway, a social network is really something quite... It’s strange in a Management 1.0 culture, where we’re used to controlling, verifying, approving. So, I had the chance to be somewhat at the heart of developing the uses of an internal social network within a rather 1.0-oriented management, maybe 1.1.
And what I focused on was trying to find little gems like that, little stories to tell to make management reflect on what a social network is. I’d like to share one with you. And the 'before' is what would have happened if we hadn’t used the social network, and the 'after' is what happens once we’ve used it. What it results in. So the story goes like this: there's the CEO, the head of a department,
who gathers everyone in a town hall and announces a new development strategy for the next two or three years. So, since we were a bit lacking in visibility and vision, everyone leaves the town hall saying, 'Yeah, great, there's visibility now, everyone's happy.' Then, well, days and weeks pass, and suddenly, 'Oh right, but actually, I didn’t really understand what this strategy was, it’s not very clear, I didn’t get it.' " So this happens, it gets reported, and it reaches the senior management’s ears, who one day tell me—since I was somewhat involved in creating vision and perspective—and say,
there are a lot of people who didn’t understand, could you prepare a communication? You’ll interview, you’ll meet the experts, prepare a communication, and then explain to everyone what this strategy is. I was bothered because I didn’t know the term very well, and I thought to myself, I’m a bit lazy, this is going to take a long time, I’ll have to call everyone, schedule things, it’ll take two weeks to align calendars, meet the experts—I don’t even know who they are—I have to identify them, how am I going to do that. It would have cost me a man-day of work, the time to prepare, meet them, and have the meetings. Me plus the other people in the meetings, that roughly adds up to one man-day of work. And well, it would have been a very classic, well-formatted, standard top-down communication. Then I thought, hey, I’ll do it differently. It so happens that I was lucky enough to have already created a virtual coffee machine that worked well, where people chatted, exchanged ideas, and talked. So I went to this virtual coffee machine and said, 'I didn’t really understand what this strategy was—is there someone who can explain it, say more, clarify what it actually is?'
Within less than an hour, I had five responses. Five responses from experts on the subject. Well, more or less experts, actually. Some people weren’t necessarily experts but gave their opinion. The experts then came to complete, modify, or correct them. So, in one hour, not only were there answers, but they were already shared. You’ve already been communicated with through the virtual coffee machine.
In terms of costs, 5 minutes, that’s the maximum. It took me 20 seconds to write my question. I think, let’s say, 30 seconds each for the others, that’s a maximum. So I used 5 man-minutes, at most. And then the side effects: the experts—no one asked them to come, I didn’t call them, I didn’t bother them to propose or schedule a meeting, it didn’t annoy them to come to this thing—so they came entirely on their own. Recognition by their peers—they were visible, seen by everyone, and everyone knew they were experts on this subject. It’s a natural and social recognition of things. And then the other effect is that not only did we reach the members of the community—because yes, not everyone came to the virtual coffee machine yet in this department—well, there are people who don’t like coffee,
but the advantage is that since it was shared on the social network, some people went to talk about it in the physical coffee machines, or in morning meetings, or elsewhere. And so, it really spread well beyond the members of the virtual community.
There you go, a little gem like that, a little story. And of course, I had fun telling this little story to the senior management who had asked me to do it that way, saying, 'Which one do you prefer, actually?' Because you asked me to do this, well, it’s normal—maybe you’re not used to using this virtual coffee machine—but now that you see the story, now that you see the effects, which one do you prefer? And that’s part of what I call management hacking—that is, we use levers that are quite important for management and important for any company. We show that there are different ways of doing things, and that makes people think, 'Hmm, can’t we...' change our practices, our ways of doing things, our management reflexes, our habits.'
Another little story, but I think I’ll skip this one quickly. I eliminated the previous one because otherwise I wouldn’t have made it. And this one, 'When we hack management habits,' is actually my talk from last year. It’s my talk from last year, and so I’ll go through it very quickly.
Because I only have a quarter of an hour left. And to tell you that, in fact, this is really—I practiced the method myself, I used it in my teams, and I noticed that it made me reflect on my own management. It changed my own management habits. That’s the story it has. On four main themes, Flow thinking, seeking to learn continuously—so a learning organization. Reflecting on change and seeing it as something viral rather than something planned. And reflecting on the notion of leadership—distributed leadership—and aiming for self-organization rather than task distribution and all those top-down things. So I’ll skip—flow thinking. From what to what did I shift? I moved from left to right—that is, from the commander on the left who seeks to ensure that people and resources within the team are 100% occupied, that all the numbers are maximized to 100%. Thanks to Don’s work, I realized that doing this was economically foolish. It cost the company extremely dearly to be in this logic. And thanks to Kanban, thanks to visualizing the cards flowing on the board, the team and I began to truly focus on the concept of flow. And as a manager, I realized that my role was more to be the curling broom than the commander on the left. The curling broom to ensure there are no obstacles preventing the curling stone from reaching its target. So this really shook me up and helped me understand where my added value as a manager for this team was.
The second point is the learning organization. And that made me shift. I saw myself as a manager who shouldn’t have problems. So as soon as there was a problem, whatever it was, I looked for a solution. And so, I also asked my teams, as soon as there was a problem, to look for a solution. I couldn’t handle it. As soon as someone mentioned a problem, I’d say, 'Whoa, whoa, no—solution.' It was a reflex, you know. And then, with Kanban, with this vision, we see blocked work, we manage risk a bit better if we start calculating the cost of delay, as Don suggests. So we have better risk management, and what’s more, it’s shared risk management. It’s no longer just the manager who sees these things, but the whole team that sees them every morning, every day. And so, by having a better vision and better management of these risks, I was able to change my positioning and attitude and move from immediately seeking a solution to a problem— because I couldn’t live with a problem—to focusing more on what we can learn together. What happened? We have a problem—is it a failure? And what did we learn? And I didn’t focus on failures—I didn’t celebrate failures, as I sometimes hear, nor even successes, because actually, I don’t care. What I sought to celebrate was what we learned. Did we learn something between yesterday and today? That’s what interested me. There you go, so shifting from one to the other.
I’ll give you my talk from last year in fast-forward in 5 minutes. On change management, it’s really top-down change—we go from point A to a planned point B. That’s how I used to see change. And then, using Kanban, I noticed a whole bunch of much more viral, much more organic effects, where we don’t necessarily plan everything in advance. We try, as we also mentioned, to take advantage of opportunities that arise along the way. And so, to see things from a viral angle—a change that’s there, continuous, and that happens between people, not on a plan, a schedule, or something like that. Celebrating was what we were learning. Did we learn something between yesterday and today? That was what interested me. There you go, and so shifting from one to the other.
I’ll give you my talk from last year in fast-forward in 5 minutes. Regarding plan management, it’s really top-down change management, going from a planned point A to point B. That was a bit how I used to see change. And then, by using Kanban, I noticed a whole bunch of much more viral, much more organic effects, where we don’t necessarily plan everything in advance. We’re also trying, as we’ve discussed a bit, to take advantage of opportunities that arise along the way. So, rather than seeing things from a planned angle, it’s about a continuous, viral change that happens between people, not on a plan or a schedule.
And finally, aiming for self-organization. So, aiming for self-organization, management for me was really the place where rules and processes were centralized, where we said, we dictated the rule: no swimming allowed. That was forbidden in the team; we weren’t allowed to swim. And it was centralized—it was someone else, who wasn’t even in that context, who defined what we were allowed or not allowed to do. Then it turned out that on that day, it was 42 degrees, I think, outside. If the kids hadn’t gone into the water, they would have either ended up in the hospital or wouldn’t have been outside. Anyway, there would have been a problem. And I went from a vision where all the rules were up to me to manage and enforce. And thanks to Make Explicit Policy, etc., it allowed me to share these rules a bit and focus more on developing leadership rather than being the keeper of the team’s rules. So, really shifting from a model where it’s centralized in the manager’s and management’s head to something more distributed, where we try to develop leadership.
About ten minutes. Thank you.
So that was the second story. To show you what I call management hacking—it’s really about taking the management system as it is today, inserting a social network, a virtual coffee machine, or tools that I believe shake up management habits a bit, like Kanban and many others. And we try to learn from all of that, and it slightly modifies behavior, it modifies the management system, and we think about other things. And while working on this last year, it seemed to me I discovered... In fact, I found in other organizations like Favi or elsewhere, that they had also managed to change their management system, but without an internal social network, without teleworking—since that was the other story I had at the beginning—and without Kanban. They had taken other paths to change their organization, and what I would say... To make them a bit more human, as David said yesterday in his keynote, so they’re better adapted to carbon-based life forms, or however he phrased it. How to make our organizations a bit more adapted to what it means to be human, rather than... disposable resources. So I looked at different things, and my sources of inspiration were extremely broad. I’ll mention Anonymous, Wikileaks, permaculture, and of course everything related to Kanban and systems thinking. I really dug around everywhere, especially hacker culture.
I’m a bit nervous now because it’s the first time I’m presenting this. I arrived with this model proposal that I’ve started working on, which I call Actor—it’s the model I’m naming, which is a model for... The goal is to try to propose ways to move toward an organization that, in my opinion, is better adapted to humans.
And you see there’s movement in this model; it’s not static at all. It’s not a list of 8 points, 8 principles, or anything like that. In fact, these aren’t principles; they’re kinds of guides, like for plants, to grow in a certain direction. And you can take any of them—that was my idea—you can take any of them, and in fact, it sets everything in motion. So, what do we already see emerging? It’s this loop here—maybe it reminds some of you of PDSA. I prefer S over C, so PDSA, for the loop, the Deming wheel. You might also see the upward path with continuous improvement, the little obstacle, all that. Well, indeed, that’s part of my sources of inspiration that helped shape this model.
But what was missing in this model—first, there were only 4 things, and I had... no starting point, no path to begin with, and then I didn’t have a direction. I didn’t know where to go, actually. And I realized that in the examples I mentioned, particularly Favi, which we’ll try to talk about again just after, we aim for self-organization. And self-organization has several great effects.
It allows the system to better manage complexity, to be much more adaptable, much more dynamic in the face of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and the acceleration of external time, continuous innovation, etc. And aiming for self-organization seems to me... Good for that, but not only that. It also has another beneficial psychological effect: we can almost link autonomy or the ability to take control of one’s life to happiness. So, aiming for self-organization, in my opinion, is good for organizations because it allows them to be better adapted to an uncertain context, and in addition, it’s good for the elements of the social system that are inside—human beings—because it allows them to take possession and control over their own lives. So it seems rather beneficial and desirable to aim for self-organization in many organizations. Where to start? That’s the idea of viral change. Start small, start step by step. There’s no need to aim for something huge right away. No, start small. Set up a virtual coffee machine. Boom, that’s it. We’ll see later. So that’s the idea. So where to start? What to aim for? The movement here—so you find learning by going, the idea of focusing on learning rather than problems or solutions, really trying to learn from successes and failures. Balance and flow—it’s really this idea of movement and seeking balance, which we find in Kanban between capacity and demand, and in Don’s work on the economic balance of things. Creating meaning—well, that should speak to any good agilist since it’s really the idea of user stories. We stop developing features or databases or whatever; we try to develop a user story.
A user experience, we create meaning in everything we try to do, and rather than just seeking to produce profit or anything else, it seems good to me for companies to aim to produce meaning, to create meaning, what Jean-François Zobrist calls a shared dream. And then do-ocracy—do-ocracy is the action side, getting into action. Do-ocracy is power to actions,
And I think it addresses a bit, it connects with a point Don also mentioned this morning about, be careful, when there’s too much search for consensus in an organization, it might potentially not take any action. And I prefer do-ocracy, where everyone can act as a leader now, like the Debian community, for example, which developed Linux and a do-ocracy manifesto, the idea being everyone Everyone can act, everyone can develop something without asking permission from one or another. The idea is that behind it, there are processes for review, sharing, improvement, integration, testing, etc.
So, there you go, and what was missing from all this—I had the wheel, I had the path—and what was missing was a bit of the why, where it comes from deep down. Where it comes from deep down, what would put us in motion? It seemed to me I found two things that put quite a few carbon-based life forms in motion: seeking more freedom and seeking more justice. I define justice as not having it all, simply put. I’m not going to do big philosophies; it’s not having it all. Definition of justice, and freedom as the ability to self-define. We find self-organization in that, by the way, and I think that’s why it’s inside the wheel—it’s really the engine of the machine, the human and social essence of the machine. However, I put a limit on freedom. I don’t just say seek more freedom, because otherwise it can lead to excesses. If I’m too hungry, I want to be free to come and take what you have to eat. That’s not desirable; we end up with things that go off track. So I put a limit on freedom: respect. Respect for oneself, respect for others, respect for the environment, respect for whatever you want. Putting a limit on this freedom seems important to me. As for justice, the way, in my opinion, that different communities have sought justice, notably Wikileaks, is by promoting more transparency. So, in short, that works too—more transparency. So, after that, is it justice? I’m not going to philosophize, but I think it connects a bit with these drivers. And also, what I often hear is... There you go, now we’re entering a more and more transparent world. What’s the limit of transparency? What limit should be set on transparency? What limit should be placed on transparency? I don't know if you've ever asked yourself this question, or if you've read things on this topic. I've read a lot about it, and I've had many discussions on the subject. In my opinion, in fact, transparency is desirable and beneficial when it serves justice, when it serves—well, it won't cover everything. If it no longer serves that purpose... In my opinion, it can be unhealthy or bad. We don't care what I cooked at home yesterday.
Okay? I'd like to take the minute, the two minutes I have left, to switch back to... He would really be upset with me, but well, I apologize in advance to him.
Jean-François Zobrist's definition of management—you have it there—I don’t know what it evokes for you. Management is not doing.
Management is not having things done.
But management is a kind of letting go to ensure that things get done on their own.
We truly find this idea that 'no way is a way' or 'no methodology is a methodology.'
Quite an Asian approach to things. Here, we're really in something quite Asian. Non-action is also a form of action.
And so, Jean-François Zobrist was inspired—I think it was François Jullien who mentioned this definition of management to him. And so, at Favi, Jean-François Zobrist is the former CEO of Favi. And so at Favi, they operate following this W that speaks to both the emotional and the rational. How do they operate? So, they have a shared dream. The shared dream at Favi is to stay in Hallencourt. It's not to outsource work to Romania, China, or I don’t know where. It's to stay in Hallencourt, in their village. That's the shared dream—it's emotional. The factual part, by the way, is having a common shared goal: to produce more and better quality for less money for my client. There you have a rational goal, shared by everyone, understood by everyone, accepted by everyone. Then, we go back to the emotional. At Jean-François Zobrist's company, you're free to do what you want. I mentioned douocracy earlier. You're free to do what you want. Take the car, buy something for the company—you're free to do it, as long as you respect two conditions, two limits.
Man is good, which is this photo here.
Man is good, and seek the customer's love. As long as it's within these limits, it's fine—do what you want within the company. So, we're starting here. We're talking about values—we're really in something emotional, but it frames the freedom and gives structure to this douocracy I mentioned earlier. Then, we come back down here—it's a measurable goal. So here, it's the number of parts per hour, I think, since they make car forks at Favi. So, something quantifiable, measurable, shared by all. And then, we return to the more emotional aspect of things, with a dimension linked to the redistribution of the wealth created. Because at Favi, it's not the boss who pays the employees, but rather the employees who pay the boss. Because if the employees ever stop working, the company dies. If the boss ever stops working... It can still survive for six months, a year, quite easily. However, there will be problems in the future. So, the employees pay the boss. For what purpose? To guarantee them a future. An interesting managerial stance, I find.
And beyond that, this idea of bonuses and sharing—so that's the redistribution of the value created in the company. Over there, they've eliminated all bonuses, all variable pay, etc. And from the boss to the employee, everyone shares the same... Well, it's actually divided proportionally among people. So, a portion of the profits goes to pay capital, and a portion of the profits goes to pay all workers equally. So, shared fairly among each of the stakeholders.
I hope this vision of management inspires you. I hope my suggestions might enlighten you. If there was one thing I'd like you to remember, it's this idea that management is... Management is not necessarily the manager, management is not necessarily command and control, management is not something fixed. Management is truly a social technology that can evolve, that has different modules, different components, that can be hacked—in the good sense of the term—improved. And don't hesitate—you can test, you can try things locally. Maybe my model can give you ideas on where to start or not, and I would be happy to discuss it now.