I am very much surprised to see many analysts thinking serioulsy that Facebook facing a colossal data-gate, could turn around and suddenly become customer-driven. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Facebook will be Facebook. But to understand that you have to go past obvious solutionism (they should do this or that) and understand that any successful business was born with a powerful DNA.
And you can’t change your DNA.
Continue reading You Can’t Just Decide To Be Customer Driven
Corporate Culture
Corporate Culture and HR Strategic Role
A recent podcast about “How to fix your company’s culture” grabbed my attention because it illustrates how rarely big corporations actually work on their culture. Although, I would say the “fixing” entails something is broken and I wouldn’t say that corporate culture could be broken. It might be mismatched with its environment or within itself (vision and values are not aligned with behaviors), or worse, your culture might just have faded away…
You might need a Company Culture VP
In the past year or so, with so many media scandals about various company culture dysfunctions, many other corporate cultures being dissected, scrutinised and analysed, and the many advice published online, it seems about time to hire Company Culture VPs to ensure the culture is supporting and not hindering your strategy and image. In this short article, I’m presenting the three key missions of the company culture VP.
Three scenarios of corporate culture change
The main reason why a corporate culture change fails is the lack of awareness of what the specific culture of the company is. Although it can be observed via the behaviours of employees, leaders are often blind to it until something unexpected and critical for the organisation happens. As it was the case for Uber and United Airlines. But waiting for such a wake-up call might be lethal as the company may not be able to readjust the culture in time and recover from the public blow.
Continue reading Three scenarios of corporate culture change
A full stack approach to corporate culture change
Even when most of the “right” ingredients were implemented, most corporate culture changes fail anyway. And the quintessential trap is always the same: the culture of a company is a multi-layered assemblage. Work on one layer at a time (such as the behaviours) and you’ll have results. However, after a while, other layers that were unchanged (values, vision…) will collide and counteract the initial results. These various elements of corporate culture move at different speeds. They don’t even have the same plasticity and are driven by factors that can be very counter-intuitive. In the end, avoiding a full-stack approach to corporate culture change is a rookie mistake. Let’s see then how to deal with it…
Continue reading A full stack approach to corporate culture change
An entrepreneurial approach to women’s careers
I was invited early October to speak about how to unlock women’s careers at a round table debate at the Elle Active Forum. Continue reading An entrepreneurial approach to women’s careers
HR is powerless!
I have been meaning to write this article for ages and not daring to say some obvious truths about organizations and how they think as a collective. Since the work that I do is on the “soft” human side, it has often been associated with HR, but a great number of my work to change organizations is not ordered by HR. And the best programmes that I do are not sponsored by HR, they are backed by CEOs themselves, Executive Committees and high level management. In many instances I have found that HR is powerless! Continue reading HR is powerless!
Mechanics of emotions
… And why engineers can be great at dealing with emotions at work, once they get the manual.
I presented this TED-like talk for the Airbus Group Leadership University’s trainer day, held in Toulouse on 11 December 2014. In this short talk, I wanted to present to my peers a few perspectives on how to bring soft subjects like “emotions at work” to engineers, since a vast majority of Airbus managers we train come from an engineering background. The pedagogy for engineers needs to be very coherent from the title “mechanics of emotions” to the metaphors (engine), the language and the concrete cases and tools. Continue reading Mechanics of emotions
Emotions at work
So, I did my first TEDx speech last week in Toulon. I thought that I’d share the video, the presentation and some key points which I may develop in later articles. Continue reading Emotions at work
Promouvoir la carrière des femmes
Je viens de boucler un programme pilote de formations visant à promouvoir la carrière des femmes d’une entreprise leader mondial du transport maritime. Malgré un format court, la formation a été bien reçue et surtout a commencé à déclencher des changements positifs pour les 40 femmes qui ont pu y participer. Pour un changement culturel, il faudra bien plus qu’une formation pour faire bouger les choses, mais il faut bien commencer quelque part et faire les premiers pas. Continue reading Promouvoir la carrière des femmes