Those fears French managers don’t admit to

In the face of the instability which is the norm these days, and of the endless surprises ready to assail a manager at every corner, doubts emerge and anxiety rears its ugly head. From the depths of their offices and their leather-bound swivel chairs, what are French decision-makers and leaders confiding to us these days? Their confidences can be summarized here as four major fears: 1/ being able to respond to the challenges of the future which others cannot see; 2/ getting buy-in from colleagues and being supported; 3/ being prepared for everything and 4/ having insight which carries more weight than the ability to react to situations immediately. Overall, we noted around fifty concerns, most often resulting from threats unidentified today, which leaders are not yet able to see as opportunities.

Published for www.hbrfrance.fr – the Harvard Business Review in France

Like a large thunder cloud, these menaces accumulate ominously on the desks of big bosses. From SMEs to multinationals, decision-makers’ confidences converge to form a block of anxieties that looms large. Get those lightning rods out please! Things are going to heat up!

Firstly, and at the top of the list of worries, we find the all too human, and familiar, fear: ‘will I be able to cope?’.

What does the ‘capacity to cope’ consist of exactly? What feeds it? First of all, the fear of being slow. Could the French fable writer La Fontaine write The hare and the tortoise today? Not so sure. The speed and variety of ongoing transformations exceed the time needed to build one’s own resilience. A lack of original ideas completes this anxiety-ridden picture. To which one can add a series of statements recorded at various levels in organizations:

– the difficulty in taking action

– a lack of perspective

– the abundance of certainties often resulting from the ease with which we merely repeat what worked yesterday

– a decrease in the level of general knowledge

– the lack of communication, and comprehension of, clear guidelines

– the tendency to keep things secret

– a loss of confidence in one’s own intuition

– insensitivity when faced with clients

– a lack of experience in the field (the case of leaders ‘parachuted’ into their jobs)

– and, finally, the fear of failure: a fear which presides over this inventory of alarm signals intrinsically linked to the individual, to his or her character, strengths and fundamental weaknesses.

Second come the fears linked to the solitude of the long distance runner, or that of the goal keeper during a penalty. Isolation! That fear proliferates via four major rivers:

– parochialism: a manager who can only see as far as the edge of his sector of activity, when goods and services are clearly merging across sectors

– technical silos: the expert and his jargon

– a total incomprehension of the new digital world around us

– the advent of serious inter-generational conflicts, whose scope will surpass that of the 1960s, scaling the heights of operational incomprehension, even just in terms of language (don’t young graduates today themselves confess to not ‘understanding’ their own younger brothers and sisters, who often have but three or five years between them?).

Managers inflate communication problems at the risk (which is not overrated) of drowning in the magma of Big Data. Enough to demotivate entire cohorts of the ‘over 40s’.

In this category, the risk of wasting energy is tied to the absence of a common goal and project, as if the search for new forms of consensus remained unfulfilled. For if the collaborative economy is making newspaper headlines, it has neither reached through to the great majority of organizations, nor has it convinced their leaders.

Third, we take note of the fear linked to risk-taking. ‘Am I really prepared for every eventuality?’ I could just stick my head in the sand: the standard reaction of an animal facing aggression. But how long can I maintain that position, in these times of structural crisis? As is the case with all ready-made answers, denying the evidence of disruption around you (technological, social, behavioral, scientific) can make you fall from very high, very quickly. A time-saver? Forget it! The consequence of our increasing thirst for coherence is that colleagues are merciless when there is a gap between what is said externally and what is practiced internally. Decision makers will get no pity in this context. And beware of gimmicks! Employees have become as demanding as clients. So best to adopt one unique ‘story’ for everyone.

To do this, ‘contextualisation’ is the best bet. Behind this term, there is one urgent priority: reconnecting with the world around us, making one’s organization the heart of a sort of ‘eco-system’ of its own, plugged into real life, influences, ideas, suggestions, other viewpoints. This can even lead to a substantial change in the creative process behind a commercial offer in order to integrate the maximum external added value. A ‘co-development’ model which can cause apprehension since it breaks the concentrated power structures in an organization. But tomorrow’s world will above all else place value in ‘relational capital’, that is, relationships: the ability to connect with the right person, at the right place, at the right time, more than ‘just’ human capital (Intellectual Quotient or IQ, and Emotional Quotient, or EQ).

And, lastly, to conclude, a fear less evident since less visible than the three preceding ones: the lack of insight, or absence of vision for the medium term. Immediacy today looks like a mousetrap. A little box made of cardboard, full of tasty grains, from which one doesn’t emerge alive. The lack of time available for one to project oneself ahead is deadly. 75 % of global growth in the next ten years will be in 15 countries, all emerging, from Indonesia to Mexico, via the Philippines and Nigeria. How can one pass over such evidence? How can we think that these countries could be content simply to replicate our consumption and management models? How can one believe that our local markets will be enough to supply our needs (?)? Compartmentalizing is another danger, just like sticking one’s head in the sand. How can one make the ‘made in France’ tag more appealing? How can one rise above our disagreements (within Europe, within France, even within the family) to concentrate better on innovation and its deployment? How best to prepare one’s succession at the head of one’s organization? How can one dare not to trust one’s intuition, the fruit of centuries of development and know-how? How can one get to the point not recognizing, yet living close to, a client ever more unstable, demanding, fickle?

Here, fear looks like the face of a myopic person, with a downtrodden look, who has lost confidence in him or herself.

So, this is what managers in France worry about. And yet, what are the actual obstacles which prevent them from clearing their mind, finding a sense of progress and the motivation to create shared projects? To extract themselves out of those everyday reference points, to try out new strategic spaces, and renew the contract of managerial trust in the company?

What are the obstacles to clearing the mind? There are none. Those that think there are suffer from migraines caused by mental barriers; imagined, yet deadly. What obstacles? Is it not more a question of multiple springboards, from which one can only jump higher and higher?

Nicolas Rousseaux

http://www.hbrfrance.fr/chroniques-experts/2015/03/6461-les-angoisses-inavouees-des-dirigeants-dentreprise/

photo © Nicolas Rousseaux