Transforming The Giants: Discoveries From The Inside
This Monday we’ve had the pleasure to talk with Alexandre Mulliez about transforming the giants from inside. Being the grandson of the founder of Auchan, he not only felt very concerned with the future of the company, but he also has a very interesting position to see how a business evolves overtime.
“Everything started with a feeling I had about the shift of online usage. But how do you communicate your doubts when everything is going well? We all know that when everything’s crashing it is too late. Yet, no one knows when it is the right time to take drastic measures and initiate a true transformation.”
There is no definite answer, only convictions of the top management.
As we’ve talked in a previous post, the Red Queen Effect suggests that organisations are continuously trying to stand out, which make innovation a never-ending journey. If you stop, you lag behind. And innovations happen thanks to talented, creative people.
This is precisely what Alexandre told us. He discovered 5 pillars for a successful business transformation.
1. Get super-talented people. Not your neighbours. Not your friends. Not good people. Get super-talented people. The best creative people, even if they’re young and getting paid more than the average market price, will have a greater return than less skilled people. This is true for developers, for UX designers, for Data Scientists… But when your goal is to make a transformation you need only amazing, creative people. And empower the creative people: put them in charge of projects and in the management committees. Having talents is the ground of every other pillar.
2. Praise for chaos. Innovation can only happen through chaos. You cannot afford the luxury of a hierarchic and very efficient company. Everyone has the right to express his/her opinion. You need to cultivate a habit of irreverence. Managers shouldn’t be sacred. And to do so, you have to design an appropriate environment, that promote the right attitude and beliefs system. Leaders shouldn’t be the one taking the decision, they should nurture good decision-process by the ones on the field.
3. Setup transparency as standard. Nobody stands against transparency. Yet few managers go as far as their team would need. Why is Slack so powerful? Because everyone in the channel has access to what is said. The key is not whether you need to put someone in cc or not. The key is to put transparency as a standard. This is true from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top. Use visual products.
4. Focus on technology. Outsourcing technological competencies is the curse of established brands. It generates huge costs and delays. It keeps away managers from the true user experience, because they stick to the plan, not on the actual design & implementation of the products. If you have great creatives people that deliver the best ideas in class but you can’t implement you’ll lose all the value !
5. Make your manager coaches not bosses. If a manager is the one taking all the decisions, the power and the skills will remain on his perimeter. True transformers understand that the more skilled and responsible your people are the faster and better you become. What the purpose of hiring people if you do their jobs?
The challenge for a well established company is to reboot people’s operating system. The system that made their company what it became. It is always hard to believe that the actions that worked in the past will no longer work. It is all the more difficult when you don’t have real proofs. The compass might be around the true usage, about the user experience. Without surprise, this is what takes a lot of Alexandre’s brain.
