You all want to shout yes, I hear you, because it’s flattering, lucrative and interesting. Interesting? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.¹

Especially since there are no major organizational changes and therefore product, technical, etc. without the involvement and action of senior executives in companies. It’s therefore a necessary step. (Cf Un café craft by Thomas Wickham: La transformation commence par celles des managers)

Should we support senior executives who don’t want it?

Senior executives who refuse our support. Those, no, naturally, you have the answer in the question.

But should we support senior executives who call on us, but who do everything not to listen to us, but who do everything to hear nothing of our conversations? For whom we are ultimately just a sham or for whom we ultimately appear too far removed from their world, and therefore without value?

How do we differentiate between someone who thinks they want to, but doesn’t really want to, someone who is genuinely pretending, someone who genuinely wants to?

And should we differentiate?

It’s a thorny question I regularly ask myself.

No bullshit (a.k.a. #nobullshit) the simulators, the gesticulator, the haughty ones, I can’t take it anymore.

I don’t want to waste time and energy with those who pretend, who don’t really want to. Yet among these there can be moments of realization, epiphanies, “aha” moments that change their perspectives and turn them into actors in the movements we support. I too can have these types of moments, unexpected learnings, an experience that enriches itself.

The problem is that we never know if these moments will occur, and when.

Finally, a simulator can be someone who observes and when convinced becomes a strong pillar. A gesticulator can be someone who suddenly grasps the situation and catches a focus, then possesses formidable energy. A haughty person can be someone with strong experience, who if inclined to use it, will prove to be of great value.

In job interviews, I deliver some of my convictions:

• We mainly operate in muck, it’s a metaphor to indicate that we must extricate ourselves from political, technical, social contingencies. And especially that we must love this effort, that extracting ourselves from the muck is partly the objective.
• That we have much more space than we imagine. That we can fabricate our job much more than we imagine.
• That we can’t judge a book by its cover and that we must live in a situation to truly understand it.

In short, anything can happen. It’s complex.

When it’s complex, let’s simplify (Vers le simple, vers le complexe).

How to simplify? By setting a time limit, an expiration date so to speak, a deadline of non-evolution for any support engagement. But a substantial enough duration to give the context time to reveal itself at the beginning and then evolve afterwards.

Time management is arduous on the subject of change. There’s no cause and effect, but needs for sedimentation, decantation, loops, echoes, etc.

I give myself, let’s say four months maximum and three months minimum (as an indication) to let everyone (them, me) prove themselves. Prove? Proof of intention that transforms into realizations. Small acts, small decisions, details, but significant in terms of taking positions. Not just words, small decisions, small acts (size doesn’t matter). That we advance at minimum.

This time period is sliding. Have we advanced over the last three or four months?

I don’t think this is a short duration at the company scale, a company that doesn’t move for four months when we’re talking about small acts, small decisions, but significant in substance, is a mark of blockage, of fossilization.

Parenthesis: this doesn’t exclude at certain moments grand strong acts, or major decisions, etc.

If an inconsistent period occurs for three or four months, it’s time to look elsewhere. Sometimes, often, it’s the first period, right from the start. That’s why I love consulting, I can look elsewhere, I’m not locked into one context. I’m not talking about flight, avoidance, I’m just talking about not insisting when it’s not desired. Besides, I don’t like flights or avoidances at all, too easy, that’s why three or four months (as an indication) seems like a minimum to me. I like to grapple with the context, the muck, with naivety and candor. I also give myself three to four months to prove myself, no question of being a boor who hears nothing either and drapes himself in arrogance to leave the battlefield as soon as real things start.

Sometimes flights hide under heroic aspects: you don’t want to hear anything so I’m leaving. No, I’m not aligned with that, the muck is not black or white. It’s the intention of these senior executives that will count, not the state of affairs.

After that, a final question comes: should we expose the falsifiers?

Don’t waste your time, do things properly, move on to something else even if sometimes it really itches.

And sometimes it really itches, my “savior” wants to send a vengeful letter exhorting this or that “falsifier” (in my eyes) to use their potential to do “good.” Understand that between the “savior,” the “falsifier,” and “good” I have three chances to make a mistake.

To conclude

• No company-wide support that encompasses the entire company, no global support, without senior executives.
• Yes, we are very often confronted with falsifiers, simulators, gesticulators, manipulators. Sometimes, they themselves are aware of it, sometimes not.
• We must give ourselves time, but not too much either, to truly see the situation and the levers present or not reveal themselves. Roughly speaking, this sliding time interval that I give myself to judge that a context is (still, always) alive oscillates between three and four months.
• Draping oneself in a know-it-all posture and refusing to dig deeper, or to plunge into “the muck” is not worthy in my eyes.
• Everyone can change, all situations can change.
• No point wasting time “teaching a lesson” or “playing the savior,” we don’t control, we never really know: we must let go.