There are many reasons why people are paralyzed. Mistakes in past messaging, misunderstandings about tensions, the difficulty of changing culture, etc. And we’ve grasped the shift between a manager who commands and one who frames and leads (giving direction, embodying it).

How to actually implement all this starting Monday. That’s a question often asked.

I’ve explained the necessary managerial posture change and the meaning to give it.

But you’d like a list of instructions to follow, for me to tell you how to do it step by step.

Well, I can’t tell you what you should do on Monday. Once again, we need to stop controlling, or waiting for others to provide a list of actions to execute. Especially regarding your organization which is not mine. Each of the fictional organizations I encounter has a different meaning, different convictions, a different environment, a different current state, different people. Figure it out. I can give you the principles I apply to myself and that seem to bear fruit (my entourage might not say so). But I have no guarantee that it will work for you.

The first of my principles is introspection. Nothing will happen if there’s no questioning. I know that in this complex world we’ll need to quickly move to action otherwise we could reflect until the end of time. But there needs to be a minimum of questioning. Understand that this word introspection includes two phases: questioning and action. This introspection is a muscle to develop. And like all muscles, at the beginning it’s weak. It’s quite simple, but like many simple things (and not simplistic), it’s not so easy to implement. I suggest questioning ourselves every day and putting into action: are things going well? Am I working and acting as I wish? What could I do differently? Could I have made better choices? Made other and better decisions? What’s the next thing to do to move forward? That’s the questioning part. If we stop there, we won’t have a feeling of progress. Just going in circles with the same questions, feeling trapped. And these personal questions will become like lemon juice flowing on a wound. We’ll very quickly want to forget them. Become a robot. Stop thinking! You realize at some point that if we don’t address the questions, we evade the questions: are things going well? Am I working and acting as I wish? What could I do differently? Could I have made better choices? Made other and better decisions? What’s the next thing to do to move forward? It’s dramatic for you if we end up evading these questions, and for the fictional organization. There’s no introspection without questioning, but also none without taking action. Taking action is generally more difficult.

What would prevent taking action?

First, a poorly trained muscle. What’s a poorly trained muscle? We think we have to change everything. That everything is necessarily linked, that it’s all or nothing. We embark on changes whose end we don’t see, from which we learn nothing for a long time. We want to do everything, we think too big. The actions from introspection should be minimal enough to feed the following questioning. We can observe their effects quickly. It’s a virtuous circle, I question myself, I act differently the next time, I observe, I don’t limit myself to this single observation, I try to validate the result through repetition if it’s good. “Perfect is the enemy of good” isn’t such a well-known saying for nothing. Today around me I often see paralyzed people who no longer dare to think and even less to take initiative.

A poorly trained muscle is perhaps also a fear of leaving one’s comfort zone. What will happen if things change? We come back to the point at the beginning of our conversation. And what will happen if you change nothing? Again, you’re making the organization your sarcophagus. Here again, minimal actions are welcome: they often don’t require anyone’s authorization. So no blame for failure. And if there is failure, it’s over a small perimeter. To leave your comfort zone, you also need to take small steps, especially when your muscle is sore.

What else would prevent putting your questioning into action?

The organization itself. It’s not clear about its messages, its meaning, how then to answer the questions asked? What could I do better, yes, but why? You then need to question the manager just above, it’s they who aren’t fulfilling their role properly. It happens to everyone, me first. And perhaps we’ll need to go up and up. And we may find the fear mentioned earlier. The higher we go, the more we have access to the high spheres of the organization, the more it indicates that we’re already high ourselves, and the more we probably think we have a lot to lose, that the fall will hurt more.

Or the organization forbids moving, changing, improving, thinking. This is the moment to know whether you actually want this organization to become your sarcophagus or if you want to be alive enough to have the right to introspection.

Introspection is setting in motion. Initiating it is often the hardest, then momentum helps you.

You need to feel authorized, many things are possible, far more than you estimate. Managers, like team members, brake themselves enormously, self-censor. There are generally plenty of things to do, far more than people imagine, before being blocked.

Hey, relax, introspection often leads to “things are going well, let’s continue like this,” without lying to ourselves.

In parallel with this introspection, when you strengthen this muscle, you’ll need to expose yourself. You don’t live alone in an empty room. You’re a component of a whole system, with numerous interactions. You need to constantly send signals around you: to feed this introspection, and to get feedback about it. If you never say what troubles you, what you’re questioning, the problems you’re facing, if you never make explicit the actions you’re taking, don’t expect any help, any contribution, any information, any support. Or worse, unfortunate support from people who haven’t necessarily understood what’s happening, where you’re going. Keep as few things silent as possible. Learn to speak out loud.

Yes, it’s often simply a matter of saying out loud what you’re thinking quietly. Quite simply, but not so easy. Right now I’m asking the coaches around me: should I continue to support organizations as much or focus more on beNext? What should we reform in our way of functioning? How should we think about the place of coaches in the organization? I have my opinion, I have an opinion, leads, I’m questioning, observing, looking for answers. But by saying my thoughts out loud, by questioning the coaches, I get much more information and intelligence. They know I won’t necessarily like their proposals, their reflections, or even if I like them, implement them, but they also know that it will feed my reflection, and even that I’m ready to fully follow others’ ideas, fortunately. Yes, yes. And everyone has the right to say stupid things in this reflection, otherwise how to say intelligent things if stupid things are forbidden?

By voicing out loud what you observe, or your introspection and related actions, you enter into vibration with the system surrounding you and it sends back plenty of indications, plenty of information, it greatly enriches you and you enrich it, because your reflections spoken out loud feed other people. And you can’t be alone in answering all your questions.

I’m not asking you to say insanities or insults, even if they may cross your mind, just to describe the why or your observations about the organization. We ask computer programmers to talk to a stuffed animal while coding. By saying things out loud we organize our mind, reorganize our thinking, we give it consistency. If you can’t express your thought, how can you implement it? You know Einstein’s quote: if you can’t explain your thought to an eight-year-old child, you don’t know what you want. So simply express out loud why you’re acting this way, what you’re trying.
Formulating things out loud makes them tangible, makes them accessible, modifiable, improvable. Or saying things out loud lifts the veil on their existence, as if we were coming out of hypnosis. Benign observations: about who always sits in the same place, turns of phrase, behaviors, buzzwords that suddenly we no longer accept by questioning them.

You know the fable of the naked emperor, he’s fooled by tailors who explain that the beauty of their fabrics can only be seen by intelligent people. And they sell him an outfit that doesn’t exist, he accepts out of pride even though he doesn’t see a fabric that doesn’t exist. The naked emperor walks among his subjects telling himself that others see his suit. But nobody sees anything and not daring to say what they see, everyone applauds this new outfit that doesn’t exist. Until a child’s cry: the emperor is naked! Reality violently bursts back in. We’ve put words on it, they’ve been said out loud.

Exposing yourself is also making yourself vulnerable. There are no good managers who aren’t vulnerable, because there are no good managers without the involvement of their ecosystem. There are no managers who live alone in a room under vacuum, and there are no managers who are never wrong. There are no good invulnerable managers. Vulnerability is authenticity, proof of your involvement.
We must thus constantly have introspection: question ourselves and put the fruit of our reflections into action. These actions are small, cumulative, easily measurable. This questioning, these actions take on another dimension when they’re shared. Without seeking results, just sharing them, the mixing of brains, of vibrations, will do the rest. Since you’re questioning yourself, you’ll show that you doubt, that you’re trying, thus that you’re sometimes wrong. You’ll appear more vulnerable. It’s a strength. Without vulnerability you’re fake, artificial.

First principle: do introspection (questioning / action), second principle: expose yourself to share and enrich yourself, third principle: be aligned, authentic. Almost like ethics, morality.

Ethics: Set of moral conceptions of an environment, of someone.

Morality: Set of rules of conduct considered as good.

I’m not proposing the words ethics or morality as necessarily going toward good. But rather in the idea of coherence, a coherent universe, with meaning, an identity, convictions, authenticity. I agree that a mafia can have certain ethics: a set of rules of conduct judged as good, a set of conceptions that define its way of thinking about the world. Even if this ethics is probably not good in the good/bad sense.

For this introspection, the reflection, the implementation, the sharing, the exposure to others, the vulnerability, to be enriched, we need this backbone, this coherence, for everything to aggregate around the same meaning, the same identity. Otherwise we go in scattered directions, everything gets lost. What allows having these small actions, these small reflections, these trials, all these mixtures, and for this to build the same cathedral, the same pyramid: the same termite mound rather, is that we agree on the direction, on the meaning, on our identity, once again.

In this chaotic, complex world, we move forward with a framework and a direction: meaning, convictions, an identity. Within this framework, following this direction we move forward, but we need to regularly know if things are progressing. We observe ourselves regularly, so we must advance in small steps to observe ourselves as regularly as possible. But for all these small steps to make the long journeys, for all these bricks to build the right cathedral. We need to have an idea of the termite mound, of the destination, it’s your meaning, your direction, your identity.

If we all know what we want for our product “more new markets in Africa” (to take the previous example). That we know our identity well, for example it’s built on values: “nobullshit”, “pursuit of excellence”, “humility” and “fun” (these are beNext’s values). That we share convictions, for example: autonomy and leadership and not order and discipline (and that this is known to all, constantly reminded by management). If this has been clarified enough, it becomes easy to aggregate all these thoughts, all these actions, however minimal they may be. Suddenly we understand that it’s a piece of the termite mound, which we discover, sometimes with surprise, appearing little by little.

For all these pieces to be one, we need unity, coherence. Alignment. It reinforces authenticity.

We also understand why we say “no”. Management should say “no” when we leave this framework, it’s its rampart.

There’s an interesting model, Dilts’ pyramid. This model, which like all models is false, but useful, explains that if there’s no alignment between the meaning, the why of your organization, your identity, your beliefs, your convictions, your capacity (that is, your means), your behaviors and your environment, if there’s no alignment, your organization is dissonant. Not fluid. The dynamic is broken. We’re told that we exist for this, that we believe in this, but the behaviors aren’t in phase, not in agreement, or the work environment is quite different, or the means aren’t given to what we believe in, there’s a contradiction. With this dissonance, actions don’t complement each other, don’t enrich each other, but brake, block, cancel each other out.

Whether it’s a mafia, a football team, an organization, a government, a book club, I think it’s important to have this coherence in mind and to share it internally. It allows advancing in small steps, but advancing far on the same road with the sum of all the small steps. It allows having introspection that we can share, communicating and exposing our introspection, our thoughts.

I’ll summarize.

There are a thousand reasons why people dig in on the existing, on their habits, on their beliefs, in their comfort zones. None seem good to me today. All seem acceptable or understandable to me. All the more for managers, because they’re the ones who have the most to lose, and who will lose the most if nothing is done in my opinion. But wanting to change for the sake of change makes no sense. And without meaning, without direction, we go nowhere. Yet we often try to make organizations move by invoking changes in means: let’s be agile, lean, digital, all this has no meaning. We need to know who we are and what we want for our organization. What is its meaning, what is our identity, what are our convictions. And go in that direction. Change, agile, digital, will be a side effect (or not, and we don’t care).

For managers, becoming a leader, someone who knows how to frame and indicate direction in a modern way is exciting and rewarding. But they need to understand it, because they’re the key to success or failure. If the organization’s reform isn’t moving in the right direction, it’s their fault, they must hear it. At the highest link in the chain. Either they don’t know how to delegate enough and send the right signals, embody, or they don’t know how to communicate, or they don’t understand what’s happening, or like many they’re afraid and prefer to stay in their comfort zone. I don’t blame them, but let them not blame others. It’s the managers who are the key. Let them take responsibility! Let them realize the commitment we need from them.

Let them understand that today we’re not going faster, for less money, but that we give autonomy and we constantly adapt our product. That orders and control are counterproductive. That the difference is made on engagement. For that: again a clear meaning, clear rules, but that give space, regular information about what we’ve produced, and no imposition. Teams of five, seven people, eight people, ideally co-located, in departments of 150 people, multidisciplinary, who can deliver regularly something. We break down silos. The manager no longer says how, they no longer control people, they say what, why, and they observe results, not people. And we improve. We move forward.

For that, introspection, regular phases of questioning followed by action to answer it. Then we expose ourselves to share and enrich ourselves from this reflection. Finally, all this aggregates around knowledge of self and the organization shared: meaning, identity, convictions, capacities, behaviors, environment.

It’s not easy, but there are a thousand pleasures, lots of satisfactions, in acting this way.