BENEVOLENT MANAGEMENT, LIBERATED ENTERPRISE, FAD OR MAJOR TREND?
Are benevolent management, the liberated enterprise, and “chief happiness officers” just a fad or a major trend that is set to take hold in the long term?
It is difficult to answer this question without asking the fundamental ones, and in particular the interest for people and structures to think about their vision of the future, going far beyond the framework of simple short-term profitability.
Why did we end up having to talk about these concepts? Why have we come to the point of creating a position of “Chief Happiness Officer” in companies, whose sole function is to look after the well-being of people?
It is difficult to answer these questions if we do not also ask ourselves the fundamental question of the purpose of structures.
A structure, whatever it may be, is a group of people who collaborate together in order to respond to a need, either of the group that constitutes it, or of people outside the group, or of both at the same time.
In order to provide the right answer to the need that the group is trying to satisfy, the structure must, it is obvious even if not always realized, know perfectly the people concerned and identify their needs. This is what constitutes the common base of the structure, which we will call the mission. This mission must make sense to all the people in the entity, because it is this mission that will create the motivation necessary for the group’s collective and individual commitment.
Once the group is committed, it is necessary to think about how it will organize itself so that the response it provides to the needs of its “clients”, the people to whom the service or product will be delivered, is as close as possible to their expectations. This organization will concern both the way of doing it, i.e. the company’s processes, but also the human organization necessary for the implementation of these processes. For this to be fluid, it is necessary that tasks be distributed, either permanently or temporarily, among the various people in the structure and that each person be perfectly aware of his or her role and the importance of this role in achieving the objective that the structure has set for itself.
This is where a fundamental question arises, the answer to which will have a strong impact on the result obtained. How should the different tasks be distributed and who should occupy the different roles necessary to achieve them?
A first, fairly classic answer is to define the roles upstream and recruit the different people to occupy them, then to give a certain number of these people responsibility for leading the group and obtaining the results. These people are called managers, who are then responsible for the good results, taking on the pressure linked to this responsibility. This is the classic company approach.
A second answer is to leave the responsibility for the result to the group as a whole, then to think together about the organization that needs to be created to get as close as possible to the result that we want to obtain, and finally to decide together which people will be the most capable of carrying out the different roles. It is then the group that decides who will carry out a given task or take on a given responsibility, based on the skills of each person.
It is the group that will also be responsible for future hiring based on the skills it needs to better carry out its mission. Responsibilities are “entrusted” to certain people for a specific period of time; they are not in any way acquired permanently and can be redistributed at any time. This is called the “liberated company”.
We have here two different forms of organization that nevertheless pursue the same goal, that of providing a product or service that best meets the needs of a client.
We will not go into the details of what should be found in a process, nor how to control its proper implementation, as this is not the purpose of this article. We will only focus on the human organization that participates in the realization of the different processes of the structure.
At this level of our reflection, we can already see that there is a fundamental difference between the classic company and the “liberated company”, this difference concerns the person or persons who take responsibility for what is produced by the structure. In the case of the classic company, this responsibility is at the level of the managers, in the case of the liberated company, it is the whole group that takes responsibility.
Is one form of organization better than another? It is difficult to answer this question, as it depends a lot on the managers in the classic company and in both cases on the methodology and the commitment of the people concerning the mission of the structure.
This brings us back to the importance of defining the “why” of the company, i.e. the existence of a mission that will be sufficiently engaging and exciting to make each person want to bring their energy and intelligence to the group in order to best satisfy their clients.
What are the pitfalls for each type of organization and how can we avoid them?
We will assume that in both cases, the structure has taken the trouble to think sufficiently about the definition of the meaning of what it does and therefore that the notions of values, vision and mission have been sufficiently thought through to create a real commitment from each person to the result to be obtained.
In the classic organization, the main pitfall is at the level of the managers, and more particularly at the level of the managers’ egos.
It is also important to verify whether managers are there to serve their clients and are therefore willing to see themselves as resources for the people they manage, or whether they are there primarily to serve themselves and their personal ambitions. The outcome of the organization will depend to a large extent on this answer.
When managers are primarily pursuing personal goals, the entire organization is impacted. They also find it very difficult to engage the people they are responsible for and often end up using “tough” management, which only increases their difficulties.
The company also starts to face many quality problems, making it more difficult to sell products or services to the sales people, but also efficiency problems with an obvious impact on its result.
In this type of company, it is not uncommon to see people stop working once they have reached the objectives that have been the subject of bitter discussions between the management, the managers and the staff. It is also not uncommon to see people carrying out what has been asked of them by a manager who has made a mistake, knowing full well that the result will not be the right one, just in order to “punish” the manager by confronting him with his own difficulties.
These managers are often caught between a management that believes that the results are not up to their expectations and the staff that does everything to oppose in a frontal or passive way the achievement of the right result to discredit their manager.
In this type of structure, there is also a high turnover of managers and staff, as well as many cases of burn-out which, beyond the human problem that it poses, significantly affects their profitability.
The “liberated company” type of organization, even if it avoids most of the previous pitfalls, is far from being simple to implement and to live. One of the main pitfalls of liberated structures is the goal pursued by their management. Is management convinced of the importance of caring for the well-being of employees for humanistic reasons, or is it just trying to maximize its profits?
If there is too great a discrepancy between the values of the management and those of the organization, this will also cause problems sooner or later.
Another possible pitfall is to decide to liberate the company and not trust the people. This will result in a liberated company mode that can be called “middle of the road”, where the company has gone part of the way to liberation but does not go all the way because the Management doubts the final result and wants to keep a precise control on all the decisions that are taken. This will result in the disengagement of the staff as soon as they realize that they are not trusted.
Moving to a liberated company is often described by those who decide to do so as jumping into the void. It requires a small dose of madness and a great deal of trust in people. If the commitment is total, however, it is unlikely that the company will have to go backwards. There is a before and an after, there are many stories of companies that should have disappeared and that have become jewels of their sector because one day, finding no more solutions, their leaders have turned to their staff to rethink their organization and save the structure.
However, a question arises when it comes to developing managers to bring them towards a management that will take into account the human being and will help them to let go of their ego in order to put themselves at the service of the structure and the people who make it up. This question also exists when it comes to moving towards a liberated company.
Should we do it alone or with others?
There is no single answer to this question, it depends on the time available to managers to understand the issues and accompany people on this path.
Often it is simpler and ultimately more profitable to entrust this support to people whose job it is and who are familiar with all the difficulties that this path can pose.
Whatever the choice made by the management, it must be fully and permanently committed and must understand the stakes while trusting its teams.
It is therefore fundamental that, in parallel to this work, the management cultivates itself on the subject and supports the project because it believes in it and has confidence in its personnel.
In conclusion, and to answer the question posed in the title of this article, we believe that for many reasons related to the growing complexity of the missions of the structures and their processes, but also for questions of changing ways of thinking of the new generations, it is unlikely that the trend is a fad. On the contrary, it is likely to become a permanent fixture in companies.
Companies that follow this path will have a much better chance of withstanding the difficulties they will face thanks to their agility and their ability to provide new answers to new problems that society will inevitably create.
Even if it does not appear in the title, it is wise to also ask the question of the presence or not of a “Chief Happiness Officer” in the structures.
Personally, I think that this position is more of a fad than a lasting necessity. Indeed, it is not up to one person in the company to ensure the well-being of the group, but it must be the business of all and more particularly of the Management itself. Otherwise, this will be perceived as a way for the management to offload a subject for which it does not feel concerned onto a person whose mission it is. In these companies, the staff will quickly perceive the lack of interest of the Management for their well-being and after the initial enthusiasm they will disengage again.
Thus, whether it is for humanistic or profitability reasons, companies and their leaders should seriously consider their operating mode and pay attention to the benevolence of their management. If they have the possibility, they can also make the big leap towards a liberated company model. This will guarantee them sustainability, a climate where it is good to live for all, including for the managers, but also an optimal and sustainable profitability.
However, this is difficult to reconcile with the short-term demands of certain shareholders, but that’s another debate.
