Romain Tchertchian
Transcript (Translated)
I'm going to tell you a little bit about holacracy and share a bit of feedback on what we've done at Engie. Before I start, just two small things. I have a bit of a cold; I hope my voice doesn’t give out halfway through. Normally, it should be fine; I have a little water. I’ll try to hold out until the end. The second thing is, like my friend before me, I’m not very good with slides. But I was told, here, it’s Linkamba in France, these are serious guys. Plus, some people paid. So, slides are necessary. So, I made slides. They won’t be very useful for my topic. So, I thought, OK, we’ll use them for fun instead. So, you’ll see, each slide is a TV series. You have to guess the series for me to move to the next slide; otherwise, I’ll stop. And that way, we’ve saved time. I’ll ask you the question before moving to the next slide to see if you’ve guessed which series it is.
So, just before starting, I won’t talk about eudacracy, At least, I won’t explain what holacracy is; I won’t go into the details of the practice. That’s not really my topic here. I’ll mainly try to explain what we at Engie tried to do, what our challenge was, how we experimented with it, and then what we learned from it—what worked and what worked less well. There you go, and I’ll try to share that with you.
As I wrote here, it’s a story of transformation. Engie’s topic today is very broad. I’ll give you just a little context. Engie is something enormous. There are 150,000 people, very different jobs, lots of things. Just to give you a bit of context, I’m in an entity called Global Energy Management. Which is one of Engie’s business units. We’re about 1,500 people worldwide, mostly in Asia and Europe. And we do jobs that are, let’s say, trading and asset management around energy markets. And so, I’d say, to give you a little idea, our DNA is a mix of industry and utility businesses—people who bring electricity and gas to your homes—and a mix with an investment bank. So, we also have a bit of that market side with people who do trading, sales, that kind of activity. I arrived at Engie two years ago now, a little more. And when I started, they had just gone through a huge reorganization. So, I don’t know if you’ve seen, but Engie changed its name, changed its strategy. It really repositioned itself on everything related to renewable energy. And that challenges a lot of things within the company. At our level, the same thing happened—there was a kind of big upheaval. They got rid of all the bosses who were there at the time, at least a large part of them. The starting point was this: we start by breaking everything down, and then we’ll ask ourselves what we’re going to try to rebuild.
I mustn’t forget to ask the question. So, which series is this? OK, that’s good.
I’ll tell you a little about what happened. That was the challenge. I didn’t know him, but that was the previous boss.
Well, he was apparently very, very intelligent, very powerful, but in fact, he set up a kind of structure that was very hierarchical, very— let’s say, centered around him, his ability to create the perfect plan and align everyone to execute it.
Except that it created a lot of difficulties within the company. In fact, it killed, in a way, our entity’s ability to react to what was happening around it. So, there was something—when it worked well, it worked very well. It didn’t work for long because, in general, it exhausted everyone a bit. And then, especially when I arrived, I found people who were rather disengaged, something that was very, very rigid—that is, no one dared to take risks, as we just mentioned, no one dared, so to speak, to do the work they were asked to do—that is, they were waiting to be told what to do. And so, really, a structure that was very, very, very rigid, almost asleep. And that was ultimately linked not necessarily just to the previous boss—we can’t blame everything on him—but it was really linked to the culture that had been created around that: the one whose head sticks out is more dangerous than intelligent.
And that thing where you shouldn’t challenge the decisions that were made—you were just there to execute what came from above. And so, when there were things coming from above, we executed them. And if there was nothing coming, we waited until the next day. To go spend a nice time in the cafeteria with colleagues. That was the internal challenge. And then there was the external challenge. Our jobs, like many, I won’t tell the story of the world, but at Engie, especially in our trading activities, it’s a job that is completely challenged today, challenged by Engie’s own strategy—that is, it was still something quite... It’s a fairly radical change, ultimately, to really focus on everything related to renewable energy. And we’re also challenged like everyone else since we’re a large company. There are many new players arriving with new value propositions, with a potential ability to respond much better than us, or at least much faster. And ultimately, we weren’t prepared for that at all, like many companies. And the challenge takes many forms. It’s how, tomorrow, in the businesses where we’re present, where we think we’re leaders—where we may no longer be, but no one has told us yet—how do we manage to continue operating these businesses and living with them? And above all, how do we reinvent ourselves? How do we create new growth drivers? To face these shrinking margins and this market and our customers’ needs that are changing. Except that the reality is, for us, the customers—it had been a very long time since we’d really gone to see them because we knew what they wanted, in fact. That was our starting challenge. And so, I arrived in the middle of that, in a team, My title is Innovation Diffuser—it doesn’t mean anything.
But our challenge, ultimately, was a small team. Our challenge was indeed to try to bring this wind of transformation. So, we were a bit like the trigger coming from outside, saying, OK, there are different things that exist, there are also different ways of working—we’ll talk about that later. The idea was just to make the system react. So, to arrive inside, ask disruptive questions, try to change things at that level, and then try to make the system vibrate. Don’t worry, the antibodies worked very well.
But we still managed, with perseverance and time, to start nibbling away at things and slowly shift positions.
I forgot to ask the question, but it’s so obvious.
So, we asked ourselves what transformation is needed for GEM and, therefore, what transformation we want to implement. And in fact, when we asked ourselves that question, the answers, I’d say, are quite... I won’t say simple—they’re not simple in how to implement them. At least the themes are quite simple; they weren’t new. We had a real transformation challenge around technology—that is, we had somewhat forgotten to invest in our information system for a while. Well, we had invested a lot of money, but little in operating it, little in reducing our technical debt, and reinventing it. So, we had that challenge.
But that technological challenge, even if it’s often the easiest way to approach it, our real challenge was actually more on the business side and, I’d say, two axes. How do we learn to better understand and respond to our customers’ needs? Our customers are either the Engie group, since we do a number of things for Engie, or external people—large industrial companies, things like that. How do we learn to better respond to their needs? And above all, how do we better design solutions once we’ve heard those needs? So, if I schematize, it would be about shifting...
from a very project-based approach—that is, very administrative.
There’s a 3-million-euro budget over 3 years; we’re going to do that. The plan is brilliant, go ahead, execute it. Then, generally, after a year and a half, we realized that we had completely messed up and that, in any case, what we were doing was no longer of much use to anyone. And they did quite a bit of that too.
I did some too, but they did it. And we arrived just after that. In fact, they had also undertaken a kind of major project on which they had placed enormous ambition, except that it was a project about coal. And so, a week earlier, Isabelle Kocher, the new CEO, said, 'There is no more coal at Engie.' So, it was a failure, let's say, quite a friendly one. So, our transformation really took these three forms. A technological form, a cultural form, meaning there was a real need to come and re-challenge within our company the way we wanted to work and what we wanted to do, ultimately, what we were there for, what value we wanted to create. And then there was a challenge, let's say, that was a bit more organizational: how, faced with these new needs, do we ultimately create the right organization, the right way of working that will allow this to come to life.
So that's where you... Not bad.
As I said, we spent a very little bit of time, not much, asking ourselves how we wanted to carry out the transformation. And in fact, quite quickly, we realized that this wasn't really the question we wanted to ask ourselves, because... In fact, we weren't interested in trying to write a new chapter or a new book on the right way to carry out a transformation in something so big and complex. There are consultants who do that very well; it wasn't our focus. Especially since we were pretty much convinced that we could probably write something and sell it to our co-director, but that in any case, we would be pretty much incapable of carrying it out the way we had written it. So, in the end, we moved away from that question fairly quickly and said, OK, today, we are in a position to... What was clear was that we were not in a position of strength, at least culturally. We weren't welcomed, so to speak, by everyone. With open arms, great, you're going to help us transform.
So we said, OK, we're rather in a position where our challenge will be, initially, to come and make things vibrate a bit. And so the fairly quick decision we made was, OK, how can we hack this system? So I'm going back to the first slide. Mr. Robot, the idea is, well, we really started from there: how can we hack our system? So what's the first little thing we can try to activate to ultimately start getting on the path and start bringing to life what we think are the right values, and then, as a result, implement the right tools and do the right things so that ultimately we manage to create value for our customers. And so our approach was really an experimental one.
What did we want to experiment with here, particularly through holacracy? One of the fundamental points we identified, and I mentioned it a little with this story of the somewhat omnipotent boss, was this question of autonomy, responsibility, and consequently, as a side effect, engagement. That was quite central. Meaning we needed people to reappropriate their work, their workspace, their commitments, feel responsible for what they had to do, and also ask themselves again what they were there for and how they contributed to making the company thrive. And so our starting point around holacracy actually came from there.
We said, OK, we have this need—or at least we think there is this need. We're not going to try to write a five-year plan on how we're going to change the world. We're just going to say, OK, if we were to do one first thing, what do we want to address and how do we want to address it. And from there, like many others, we took our manual of agile practices—so we went through them all. We went through them: OK, what have you done, what can you do, this thing from there. And then, in the end, we said, but what if we did something we had never done before, because, in the end, it would be nice if we had a little fun too. Reproduction is cool, but it's... Let's say it's never the same twice, a transformation, but anyway, we said, OK, what have we never done? And what appeals to you? And so, when we had that reflection, we all brought a proposal, and holacracy came to the table. Because it was a bit trendy at the time, it was something that was talked about and well marketed a little everywhere.
And so, we started to look into it. And then, in the end, we said, hey, this might be a value proposition that is slightly different from what we've already seen, like Scrum, Kanban, many things we could have implemented to try to activate this first small step in the transformation. And I think the advantage, at least what we could see as a starting point, was the fact that it was already very process-driven, or at least on paper, it takes a fairly processed form, or in any case, it's very clear in saying, here's what we're going to do and here's how it's going to happen. And I think we needed that to reassure everyone, to say, OK, we're not going to turn everything upside down at once, it's not going to become chaos, because there were a lot of people who were afraid of chaos, in fact.
So we told them, here it is, it's very clear, it's written down, it's explicit, you can read the book, you can watch the videos, it's great. So, I think that... There was this very reassuring aspect. And then, there was also the aspect that was quite universal. Meaning that we didn't want... At least, we wanted to minimize the thing of falling into the transformation that, so to speak, already happens in IT. And then we'll see about the rest. And so, when we started talking about Scrum and all that, And for the things we had already done in the past, we realized that ultimately, in the way we bring it, it's still very, very difficult to bring it through the business first. We always have to go through IT a little because that's where it comes from, and it speaks to IT people a bit more. And holacracy, for that matter, is quite... It's quite neutral in that regard. It can adapt to pretty much everyone. And so, we'll talk about that just after. So we really started with this idea of conducting an experiment. We didn't commit much more than that. And in fact, we just made sure we had the necessary space to carry out this experiment. So that, I think there was this very reassuring aspect. And then there was also the aspect that was quite universal. That is to say, we didn’t want to... At any rate, we wanted to minimize the risk of falling into transformation. It happens, so to speak, already in IT. And then after, we’ll see about the rest. And so, when we started talking about Scrum and all that, and then about the things we had already done in the past, we realized that ultimately, in the way we bring it, it’s still very, very difficult to bring it through the business first. We always have to go through IT a little because that’s where it comes from, and it speaks to IT people a bit more. And holacracy, in this case, is quite neutral in that regard. It can adapt to just about everyone, and so we’ll talk about that just after. So we really started with this idea of doing an experiment. We didn’t commit much more than that.
And in fact, we just made sure we had the necessary space to carry out this experiment. We didn’t really go ask the big boss for permission. We made sure that at some point, they told everyone, 'You can experiment with things to try to transform the culture and the way we work at GEM.' So once we managed to get that, we said, 'Okay, from that point on, you won’t see us again; we’ll do things, and you’ll see when it works or when it fails.' " We started from there with this idea of experimentation and so we made the choice to say, 'Okay, let’s try holacracy.'
And we started with a group of 30-40 people who wanted to try. So it’s going to be a little... It won’t quite fit with what I said before, but there were still quite a few IT people, maybe because they like taking more risks, or I don’t know, maybe it speaks to them more. And we started with this group of 30-40 people who were groups of volunteers. So we didn’t ask anyone to switch to holacracy if they didn’t want to. It was really people who volunteered to do it. And we started with that idea.
So what is that?
You’re really good with the series. I had planned a little video, but it won’t play because there’s no sound. But it’s not a big deal. It was something that, in two minutes, presented holacracy.
For me, the idea wasn’t the content. It was more the form. Just to tell you that... If I say in two words, holacracy is an agile practice, so it’s based on the same values you might know from Scrum.
I would say the main things, the main levers within it, are several things. I think there’s the process side, a number of meetings, so operational meetings or governance meetings where we’ll work, and everyone will work on how we’re organized. So that’s something quite central. There’s the part about how we make decisions, which is super important. So for us, we were in a situation where we almost never made decisions, unless it was the big boss who made a decision, so it took six months. And so here, decisions aren’t made by consensus, like we all agree, or there’s a majority; there’s a very particular process called consent, which allows decisions to be made much faster and to move forward much faster, to try things. And then there’s this very strong notion of autonomy. And responsibility. That is, in holacracy, there’s this notion of a role from the moment I’m assigned to a role. So the role is why I do this and what’s really expected of me in that role. And from there, ultimately, I have a free hand to do whatever it takes. With measured risks as long as I don’t sink the company, let’s say, to carry out my mission. And that’s super structuring, super important. We’ll talk about what it brought us later. However, what comes with holacracy is the American method. That’s just why I wanted to show you the little video. There are two types of people.
Some will say, 'It’s great, it’s super clear, it’s super nice, etc.' Others, like me, it freaked me out. That is, I said to myself, 'Wow.' At one point, it says 'holacracy' and then 'trademark,' etc., it’s super marketed. Now, I’m part of a movement where I’m all alone, which is the basic rebel. And so, when someone tells me this is how you have to do it, by default, I say, 'Damn, no, I don’t want to do that at all.' Actually, holacracy, the model, is that. They tell you, 'Okay, we’ve tried a lot of things, we’ve gathered a bit of everything that worked, we’ve condensed it well, we’ve marketed it well, and then try it.' My first reaction was, 'Oh no, no, no, I’m not going to do that at all; I want to do something where we have fun, lots of different things, etc.' In fact, I realized I was alone, and that it reassured everyone to have something super marketed. Even I had a moment mentally where I had to take the step to tell myself, 'Okay, but it’s a thing, an agile practice like any other.' Try it, that’s all.
It took me some time. And ultimately, the breakthrough was when I told myself, 'Okay, let’s try it.' It might work. It seems cool, it seems nice.' " I’m a bit bothered by the somewhat American marketing side and all that. But what I suggest, what we decided together in the little group of activists around this, is to say, okay, but on the other hand, we’re going to play the thing all the way.
So we took it as a pure marketing product. And we said, we have a new product, how do we bring it to our company, and how do we make sure that tomorrow, among the 30-40 early adopters we managed to convince on paper, how do we make it a successful product tomorrow, where everyone comes to us because they want some, they want more, and they want to order even more. So we really started with that idea, where we said, okay, we’re going to turn this thing into a marketing product, and we’re going with a purely product approach. So we really moved away from change management mode, that is, how we’re going to support the change, even if it’s in the background, but we really started with... Okay, it’s a product, what do we offer, who do we need to conquer, on which channel do we bring it to them, how do we bring it, how do we ensure we have a growing user curve, how do we measure that, and so we really started with that approach. So I’m a little ahead. As I said, we really started with the idea of a product.
How did we do it?
What did we try, at any rate?
We started, we created a group of 5-6 people who volunteered to... To try to launch this product on the market. We started with 30 or 40 people who agreed to try, and then we needed to learn because we pretended we knew something, but we had never tried it either. And we started like that. Let’s say we had one or two months of learning together, with the early adopters and the people who were a little more, let’s say,
involved in the project, so who put a little more energy into it, at any rate, to try to spread it. And quite quickly, in fact, our product strategy worked rather well.
We started with a strategy where we said we won’t force anyone, and anyway, it’s not in the interest of the approach.
So we really started with something where we said, we’re going to try to create desire. We’re going to put a little mystery around those who are in it. We’ll arrange for them to say it’s great. And in fact, that will make others want to get in. And we really started with that, in fact. And we said very clearly from the start, and that was quite reassuring too, we won’t force anyone; only those who want to will switch. And in fact, that’s where we said at the outset, where we said we’re taking a risk, because maybe, as usual, change can be a little scary, or at any rate, it can... " scare people off.
It might take a little time to kick in. People, in fact, it rather created a desire,
And it rather created a buzz around the product. Why is it a fairly successful product? About 6-8 months ago, we went from 40 people who had started in 'okay, we're learning, we're trying' mode. Today, there are about 450 people, out of a group of 1,300 people, an entity of 1,500 people, who are in holacracy. Who practice it, let's say, on a daily basis, yes and no, meaning they live in this spirit. Afterwards, in holacracy, there are no typical scrum ceremonies that happen daily, but in any case, they live in this way of working. 450 people, I think there must be about fifty circles. The number of roles within them, I couldn't tell you, because that, in turn, is quite exponential. We'll talk about it a little just after on what holacracy can bring around... precisely this notion of role, this notion of clarity around the company.
But as a result, it really created this kind of enthusiasm, and we really felt a moment when there were people who were in it, so who were experiencing something different, who were being challenged, of course, daily on what they were experiencing and how they were working. But as a result, it created a real call effect on those who were not in it. To the point that the team that was there in the accelerator role, our role was really to say, we have developed a little more expertise at least by reading things and then we feed ourselves a bit from the outside. Knowing that in the field, in France, there weren't many people who had already done it either.
And we had a request to start transitioning teams to holacracy that we could no longer handle. So at one point, I think it was around 8 months after starting, there was an exponential demand. We could no longer handle transitioning teams to holacracy because there was really this desire. Among the important things that emerged from this, it's that the small bet was to say 'it won't just happen in IT, it will also affect different people in the company', what was really interesting is that quite quickly, people from quite diverse backgrounds came to see us. We saw this thing, we would like to try it. So notably, quite quickly, All our communication and legal teams switched to holacracy. I wouldn't have bet on the legal team at the very least at the start. And we even have trading teams, ultimately, who came and asked to switch to holacracy. I don't know if you've ever worked in a trading environment, but a trader is someone who sits all day in front of their computer, well, in front of the markets, and who is just there, let's say, it's not to say it's simple, but who is there to ultimately maximize the profits of their company, and who is not, so to speak, in a logic of collaboration, of collective, and of how we organize together to try to do better. So for us, we really saw this as a strong signal, in fact, to say that the challenge of transformation was understood. Even at the trading level, they realized that they needed to do things differently, they needed to come together to work differently and offer different things to their clients. And ultimately, they had found, or at least, they thought they found in holacracy something that could help them take the step. For us, really, again, holacracy, I told them, was not an end in itself.
Holacracy was just a tool to set the transformation in motion and to start challenging people in their way of working.
So just to give you a little overview. So what is this?
Silicon Valley.
Yes. This one is great. So just to give you a little overview of what our organization is like today. So there you go, I like it, I was saying, it's our entity. So today, there is a whole part, of course, not everyone is there, because there are only 450 people, so to speak, out of the 1,300, who are organized more in the form of circles, including Crassie, trying to move away from the pyramidal organizational chart and more towards a circle model. It doesn't change much. Except that the big difference is that we are no longer in a hierarchy, let's say, of power, where there is the boss at the top who gives power to two others below, and so on, but rather in a hierarchy of meaning.
So we expressed ourselves in a fairly marketing way, since there is also communication, we use it in communication, etc. But what was quite important was that this exercise forced us to ask ourselves again what we are, what we want to do, what our purpose is, and what meaning we give to our activity. This probably doesn't mean much to you, but the purpose of GEM is 'We connect energy worlds through market'. And then, from there, each of the circles, which are inside, so in a fractal way, will ultimately have to say, for me to do this, to achieve this, what role do I have around this mission, around this ambition. And so this forced each of us at different levels, to ask ourselves how I contribute to this and how I am different from another circle. And that, in terms of dynamics, in asking ourselves again, OK, what am I here for? What are we trying to serve? How am I different from the team next door?
Why am I doing this? It has value. And in what way and how should I organize myself to ultimately be the best at what I'm trying to do? That is highly structuring. It is highly structuring for the teams, for the people who will collaborate anyway. And it is highly structuring on an individual level. That is to say, when you ask yourself the question 'but what am I here for?' 'what is my team here for?' Ultimately, it raises quite structuring questions for people and for the group. And notably, I was talking earlier about engagement problems. Here, ultimately, we are forced to ask ourselves the question. You can't just say 'my job sucks.' And so, I come, I do my hours, and I leave. You are forced to ask yourself 'okay, but what am I here for today?' and why ultimately I don't feel good about it. And as a result, holacracy also allows you to take control, if I'm not quite comfortable with this, I have the means at my level to try to influence the group to change things. So that is very important. I won't dwell on this, because it's not very important, it doesn't add much value for you, but we tried to bring in our management code. So, they do... They do semi-holacratic co-directing sessions. It's not bad, we're making progress. And we forced them to explain what they are here for. It wasn't to say, okay, management is useless, but rather to say, okay, how do you, as management, think you contribute and to whom? That is, do you think you are at the service of clients or are you at the service of the people, the group? And what are you trying to do in this? I would say it's a mix of both, but it forced them to ask themselves the question. We have the IGO, I mentioned, so that's trading, and then we have different things, and then the AS, which is rather bio, meaning Business Innovation and Oversight, so there are many things in there working on this. And just to give you another example, so this is the example of one of the circles in which I energize a role, so I am in this circle.
There you go, and so this allows, in this case, at a slightly lower level, to be much more precise about what we are going to do, so here is our purpose. Growing a future-proof and client-centric learning organization powered by agile culture and entrepreneurship. And then, ultimately, what is expected of us? So this is the higher circle that built us and ultimately, which made explicit what it expected from us. So these are the things we are accountable for to the rest of the structure. And then, these are all the roles that we created. So we like to create roles with funny names, but it's not mandatory. And behind, the people who will energize these roles. In holacracy, the big difference is that we no longer talk much about positions, we talk about roles. So we define a role, this role exists because it is necessary in the organization, and because at some point we felt the need to create this role, because operationally it met a need. And then, there are people who come to contribute to this role.
But that changes. That is, this role does not belong to me. That is, tomorrow, I will do something else or I will no longer be in the company, but this role still exists. So then, there is a process of how people are attached to roles and how they can be removed from a certain role. But there you go, there is really this notion of role versus a position and then a title. We're talking about roles, so we define a role, that role exists because it is necessary within the organization, and because at some point we felt the need to create this role, because operationally it met a need, and then there are people who come to contribute to that role,
But that changes. That is to say, that role does not belong to me. That is to say, tomorrow, I will do something else or I will no longer be in the company, but that role still exists. So, then, there is a process of how people are assigned to roles and how they can be removed from a certain role. But there you have it, there is really this notion of role versus a position and then a title.
So... What did we gain from it? What did we learn from it? And what potentially didn't work so well? Because in every approach, there are things that work and others that don't. Or that work less well.
I think what we gained from it, the first thing is... Well, I'll mention the first two things that come to mind fairly quickly. In the implementation or experimentation of holacracy, I think the first thing is clarity. That is to say, it allowed us... Well, when I arrived, it was extremely complicated. I think you needed some kind of PhD, having already spent six months in the system to understand who did what, what it was for, the interactions between teams, the people. In fact, the first thing holacracy brings is really this clarity around the organization. The act of forcing ourselves... So, what I just showed you is a small software that allows recording things, sharing them, keeping them transparent. So that alone is a lifesaver. But the act of forcing ourselves to make things explicit, to clarify what we want to do, what we want to achieve, what the expectations are, who does what, so which role, what the role is for, because I didn't show you, but then each role has its own purpose and its own accountabilities. And so that really allows us to bring clarity fairly quickly, within the company and also to question redundancies. And so, I can't show you, but with the small tool, I can type 'machine learning.' And it can tell me, in the company today, all the people who have a role or accountability around machine learning. And it can tell me, for that role, who is currently putting energy into it and who is working on it. That, in this case, is quite powerful because it allows, let's say, from a project perspective, to find the right skills in the right place, to be sure we're not doing the same thing three times in three different places in three countries. And so, this clarity, I think, quite quickly brings real value.
And ultimately, it allows for a kind of cohesion among people because it's much clearer what each person's role is and how they contribute to the company's efforts. So that's the first thing. The second thing it brings fairly quickly, quite classically, is efficiency. Or effectiveness, depending on how you see it.
The fact of introducing these quite structured meetings, which are of two types, an operational meeting that will resemble... a well-run team meeting, or that can somewhat resemble a Scrum daily meeting, whose sole purpose is to organize operational work, to say, here's what we have, this is the need, there's this expected thing, how do we organize to address it, whose role is it, who should take it on, here's what I expect from you, to get this done... but to implement it effectively. Generally, at the beginning, operational meetings, people say a team meeting is awful, it's a pain, I'm going to waste another hour, we don't talk about my topics, etc. We end up with an operational team meeting where we manage to address 30 or 40 points in an hour. And ultimately, we don't just leave trying to discuss for an hour how we were going to change, I don't know which field, in which database, to solve a problem, but simply to distribute the work in the most optimal way and ensure it moves forward. And that creates a strong dynamic in the teams because it empowers people, meaning it's not 'I'm waiting for someone else to do it,' it's 'I know it's my responsibility to do it.' And then the work is organized, and we get back to work. Ultimately, there was the time for the collective, and then there is the time for action. In this time for action, I am autonomous. And I am, in this case, I hope, much more effective in carrying out the operational task at hand. So there is this effect quite quickly. At least for those whose teams didn't necessarily function very well collectively, it brings value quite quickly. Among the interesting things also, that we learned and observed as added value in a way. It's really that everyone can participate and even must participate in organizing their team or their circle. And so we really move away from a sometimes somewhat passive approach that is, Okay, it's not going well, it's awful, my boss is bad, my team is useless, what we're doing is useless. Oh, okay, what do you want to do? What do we do? What problems do you see? And what do you propose to implement? And that, in fact, has a super beneficial effect on teams because, first of all, it really reinvigorates them. The fact of taking control of how we are organized and how we do things works. Because the people who are on the ground, who are doing the work, are the ones who know what they need and how they should organize to do it. And so, that is extremely powerful. So just giving people back control, Very quickly, we realize that things which, in a classic decision-making process, might have taken a lot of time, and which would also have been decisions that were a bit... Well, in my experience as a crazy manager who has done great things in many companies, I think we should do this. Except that's it, until you've tried it, you don't really know if it will work. And so, in fact, it offers the possibility of giving a voice, so to speak, to the people who know. However, it forces them to take responsibility, meaning you can't just say it doesn't work. You have to propose something, you have to propose a first small step. And what holacracy offers, as we discussed earlier, is... It really puts you in a position to try. That is to say, a governance meeting. The governance meeting is the one that aims to define how we are organized, and to define it together. It's a meeting that takes place every two weeks or every month, when it's a bit more mature. It means that when you make a decision today, you can potentially change it in two weeks. You can even change it in two days, because in fact, you can do it asynchronously. And that, in fact, is also very beneficial because you're no longer in the mindset of, 'OK, I'm going to try to predict,' or ultimately, 'I'm taking a huge risk, an extreme risk, because I'm committing the team for a month, two months, six months, on something that may be, well, we don't really know if it will work or not. Here, we just say, 'OK, the first step we can take to try to improve the situation, I propose it be this one.' Do you have any objections? No? OK, let's go. And then, if it doesn't work, we'll adapt. And that, I think for me, at least, in the agile mindset and in the philosophy, at least in the way we wanted to do the transformation, is something quite strong, in fact. That is to say, we are saying that the path is not written in advance, but we are constantly readjusting at many levels within the company based on what we are doing. And that, I think, has a learning function that is just enormous. That is to say, in a few months, potentially in a few weeks, there is a kind of learning curve in the team about what is good for it, what works, what the expectations of its clients are, what they have tried, what worked, what didn't, which is quite powerful, in fact. And so there is a kind of knowledge within the team that builds up quite quickly. And for me, this knowledge of working together, this knowledge of what is good for us, is ultimately the accelerator of the team. self-organized, which no longer needs anyone to deliver enormous performance. And I would say it no longer even needs holacracy, so to speak, to do it.
Holacracy is an artifact to try to accelerate it or at least to learn about it.
What it also brought that was important,
is that it allowed reorganizations that we couldn't have done, I think, in less than a year or six months. And so, I saw this in two things. So this ability to reorganize fairly quickly and that emerges from the people. That is to say, we saw teams In fact, we could have tried to anticipate or include in our transformation plan that we would want to have feature teams. We could have tried to do it. And then it would have taken a year to try to change the entire hierarchy, stuff like that. I arrived one morning. So all decisions and the entire organization are transparent to everyone. I arrived one morning, I was coming back from vacation, I looked at the state of our organization, the one I showed you earlier. In fact, I saw three circles that had disappeared and five others that had been recreated. And so four circles that had disappeared were expert circles. So we had, if I schematize, the accounts circle, the back-office support circle, and then IT circles that were dedicated to certain activities. I came back from vacation, these circles had disappeared. And had reappeared in the form of a feature team. That is, the guys had created circles dedicated to a client. And inside, They had created the roles of the IT guy, the Quant guy, the back-office guy. And ultimately, they had done it because they had realized on their own that this was what they needed. And that, in the end, this thing happened in a two-hour meeting.
It would have taken six months, it would have taken two years to try to do it in an, let's say, organic, hierarchical way. And that is just incredibly powerful, because then it's not someone who dictated it, it came from the field. So I think the strength of the proof, in any case, is quite evident. The second thing that is incredibly... In things like this that also emerge, the fact that there is a fairly strict process, so to speak, around holacracy,
there is an emergence of incredible talents. That is, there are people we didn't hear from before, in fact, because they were introverted, because they were traumatized, well, I don't know, people we didn't hear from in the organization. And now, in fact, we hear from these people. And in fact, these people have just incredible ideas.
And I think that's really what it helped us discover. It's that we have resources everywhere in the company, they were just hidden. And just by giving them a protected space to speak, where they have the means to try without taking too many risks, and then ultimately to express themselves, to be truly protected in it, we have people who have... emerged from there and who today are pushing things forward, have become thought leaders, have even become leaders in implementing the transformation. These are people we would never have thought to seek out if we hadn't given them the space to do so. So that was... I think that was... For me, these are really the very important things that resemble holacracy. After that, among the things that are a bit more difficult to manage, there are two things. I mainly see two things. And by the way, it's a criticism sometimes made of holacracy, but I think it's a false accusation. There is this idea, in fact, where we separate roles from people. We say, there is this role that exists, it exists because we need it in the organization. And then, by the way, Romain, we think you are the best person to do this. Would you like to do it?
And when transitioning from the mode 'I had my position, I had my title,' potentially, I was also a manager, so I had worked hard to finally reach that level. We tell you, 'Well no, but you have to re-challenge this, is this thing really useful?' And then, are you really the best person to do it? And then, be careful, anyone in your circle can modify your role as long as there is no objection, meaning it doesn't endanger the organization, without you, potentially, having much say in it, because it's in service of the organization and not in service of you. And that, there are people... who take it really hard and who ultimately have trouble distinguishing the moment when we are challenging their role versus when we are challenging them as a person.
And so that can ultimately create a bit of discomfort, a bit of unease. For a number of people who were very attached to their role or their position, and who can't separate in the kind of positive abrasion that exists around how we are organized, what works, what doesn't, the difference between when we... Are they attacking me or are we modifying the organization to make it better? So honestly, we didn't have many cases, but there are people it hit quite hard, well quite strongly. And so often people say, I've seen a lot of criticism that says, well yes, holacracy is not good because it's inhuman.
Yes, it's inhuman if you do it badly.
And in fact, I think the only answer is that holacracy allows you to organize yourself properly so that it goes well. And so of course, we made mistakes. So we had meetings where we realized we hadn't anticipated this well and that some people took it very hard and thus took it badly. So it creates conflicts like any... Well, it happens even when there isn't holacracy either. But from there, we said, OK, what do we do? Either we accept it, we say, OK, it's inhuman or it's tough, there will be people who will be left behind, or we don't accept that. And from that moment, we said, OK, we have the means to do what we want. So we went to governance, at the very top level. We said, OK, we need to create a structure that ensures people are doing well in holacracy. So I can't show you because I'm not connected. So we created a circle called...
Pyramid and Partners, whose role, whose purpose is to take care of people.
I won't go into detail about how we take care of people, but the focus, my purpose, is to pay attention to people in the structure, support them, develop them, stuff like that. So from there, I think that's also one of the strengths of holacracy, and which is often misunderstood, it's that we think holacracy will provide answers to all the problems we may or may not have in the company today. In fact, it just provides a framework, a capacity to organize more quickly and to try, To address these problems, if we decide not to address them, they remain. However, if we want to address them, we have the means to do so.
So there you go, but after that, it also clashes quite a bit. And then around the questions of autonomy and accountability, we also realized that there are many people who didn't want that. For us, it's the culture we want to live by, I would say, it's one of the values we want to live by in our company. There are many people who, faced with responsibility or accountability, don't want it. They prefer to be told or to have a boss who tells them 'do this' and then if it doesn't work, it's the boss's fault. And that's the same. There are people it challenges a lot.
I think those are the main negative points I've noted. After that, there are two other risks, and I'll finish quickly on that. There are two other risks. There is a risk of scattering. That is, especially for people who, either by nature or by their roles, are initially a bit more like connectors between teams and all that, you risk being completely absorbed by the fluidity and freedom the system offers and wanting to have roles in many circles, in many places, because intellectually, it challenges you. And then, since you like to make connections. So that's also a risk, a kind of scattering risk. So me, at one point, I know that... In addition, since we were making the thing work, we also had this slightly coordinating role. I know that at one point, I had about fifteen roles.
People were adding roles for me, putting me in them, I didn't even know what I had to do anymore. So there is also that risk. It's anyone's challenge. After that, we come back to the same agile values, focus, stuff like that. So it forces you to ask yourself that question. But there is a risk, in any case, of scattering. And I think you have to be aware of that. And then there is a bit of a risk of over-engineering the organization. It's the same, people who like to play with the system, as here, they have a system, finally, with which they can play, there are people who come just, it's not entirely true, but who come to play. So they come to try to invent some kind of optimal organization, stuff like that. So, the challenge here is really to manage to stay connected to real-world tensions and not try to build something great on paper. Those are the two risks I see. So that?
Yes.
I’ll quickly wrap up with the next steps.
So, the next steps, I would say, we have a challenge here. In our street group, we had this super exponential phase where everyone wanted to be part of it. And now, in fact, we’re starting to feel a kind of burnout. A kind of burnout, I think it’s linked to two things. I say these are our next challenges. Again, holacracy isn’t the end goal.
The idea would be to maybe find the next step that allows us to continue our transformations. In any case, what we’re seeing today and what people are telling us from the field about what’s working less well, it’s two things. It’s the interface with the cats, so with human resources, because in fact, all of this has challenged a whole bunch of things around careers, compensation, evaluations, that kind of thing, on which holacracy itself doesn’t provide answers. And so, we’ve spent a lot of time, or at least, I think we’ve spent too much time waiting for our HR to take ownership of this subject and ultimately support the transformation by reinventing our way of operating it in light of holacracy, so that’s the first challenge. The second challenge, I think there’s a managerial pivot issue, meaning we realize there are a lot of things, a real dynamic has been created at an operational level and also at organizational levels, but quite vertical ones. We realize that there are managers today who haven’t made the pivot yet and who, today, there are a lot of very structuring decisions that aren’t being made, let’s say, that are made outside the system. That is, there are moments when they say, OK, recess is over, now we’re going to make a real decision and step out of the classic framework. So that sends messages that are a bit contradictory. And we feel that this kills the dynamic a little and, as a result, raises questions. People wonder whether they really want to do this or not, whether they really want us to collaborate or whether it’s still them who decide when it’s important. So, we’ve felt that this realignment of management was something that either had to happen, and we’d succeed in carrying it out in the long term, or it wouldn’t happen and it would kill the whole thing, but at least we’d know. So, I think those are the real big challenges we have coming up. And I’d add to that, surely, finding the next step.
Which is, OK, we’ve experimented with holacracy, we took it a bit off the shelf because that’s how it’s presented. How do we keep what seems great and very useful in it today, and how, now that we think we have a bit more perspective, do we tweak or challenge the things that don’t quite fit our company or don’t quite meet our expectations. That, I’d say, is the next step.
That one?
Damn, even that one, you’re good.
OK, I went a little over time.