At the beginning of the confinement, to fight against the spread of Coronavirus, we created the “CLUB 3C the Club of Confined but Confident Consultants” with 2 fellows and also friends, Benoit DE SAULCE (Team Decide) & Didier CORBOLIOU (D2A Consulting) : a think tank to pass what imposed and still imposes us the fight against the virus.

We decided to regularly post our 6-handed articles on Linkedin to acompany our customers and contacts with :

• The take of the height to reflect,
• Advice to transform the organization,
• Good practices to act differently

In and after, this extraordinary period that has impacted us all.

These publications are, on the substance, without expiry limits. That’s why we offer them today on our site to strengthen your Relationship Effectiveness, your leadership and serve the performance of your company through human leverage.

You can also find and share them on Linkedin by logging into my profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-boquet-453b891/

The main contributor is indicated at the end of each article.

How to commit without promising, and therefore without reassuring?

The future is inherently uncertain. The war we are waging against the Covid19 reinforces this characteristic and demonstrates to what extent, without avoiding predictions and intuitions, it is necessary to observe the progress and reality of each situation and reconsider one’s strategy “live” and adapt action plans. To rethink one’s organization and act with speed by accepting to be wrong, by accepting not to be part of the medium term.

The future is inherently uncertain. The war we are waging against the Covid19 reinforces this characteristic and demonstrates to what extent, without avoiding predictions and intuitions, it is necessary to observe the progress and reality of each situation and reconsider one’s strategy “live” and adapt action plans. To rethink one’s organization and act with speed by accepting to be wrong, by accepting not to be part of the medium term.

 Adapting the organization while it is volatile, accepting to be wrong, admitting to have only a relative hold on events, is contrary to the habits of the company, which relies on established rules, dashboards, forecasts, statistical simulations, … to try to reduce the uncertainty of the future as much as possible.

This uncertainty, both current and future, which is imposed on us by the crisis management caused by the fight against the virus, requires a dose of agility from everyone. This imperative applies to everyone, whether they are executives, middle managers, local operational managers or project managers.

 This requirement can, at worst, be frightening, at the very least it can make people anxious with many believing that it is the role of the Manager to reassure.

Giving information, guidelines, instructions for the medium term, assuming that they can be invalidated at any time, requires courage and leadership so that they are effectively implemented by those who receive them.

This is even more powerful as the flip-flops, reversals of decisions, stop and go, … weakening the desire to believe and the motivation of employees. They end up thinking that there is no one at the helm.In France, we have a “love of hard work”. It often opposes the decision to stop a project, even if it is off to a bad start, before it is finished and move on to something else.  This lack of pragmatism leads to continuing to invest time and energy in the stopped project rather than fully mobilizing on the new one.

The manager is frequently identified as the “know- how”, who must absolutely provide answers or solutions, preferably sustainable ones.

But managerial competence is different from technical competence. What we are experiencing today puts managerial and relational skills to the test in order to mobilise our teams on projects and operating methods, knowing that we can terminate both at any time.

Playing it by ear does not in any way mean having no direction. It means knowing at all times, without losing sight of the goal, how to steer the ship and avoid the pitfalls.

As a good sailor, in fog, you reduce sail area and speed, and you put sailors at the bow, on each side and in the foretop to distinguish possible obstacles. The Commander of the Titanic probably forgot these elementary principles of navigation.

And sometimes you have to be ready to tack to get to port.

And if the winds and the sea are contrary, be ready to reach another shelter.

Managing in uncertainty means making an agreement with adversity when you know that the moment is not favourable for you.

 It means taking decisions with a minimum of reference points, it means agreeing to say: “I don’t know”, “I made a mistake”, “Who can help me?”

And not projecting ourselves into the future in the medium/long term with stubbornness and without flexibility.

It is about showing humility in order to bounce back and as Napoleon Bonaparte said: “We must know how to laugh today at the good ideas we had yesterday! ».

Managing in uncertainty means being aware that the rambling vine we take to throw ourselves into the void (the action) is perhaps badly fixed and may not always go in the chosen direction. Only Tarzan’s films can make convince us of the opposite.

Managing in uncertainty requires real leadership to mobilize and push for commitment without promise.

“Some people see things and say “Why?”. I dream about things that don’t exist and I say “Why not! “Mark Twain

Managing in uncertainty means accepting that “I don’t have a monopoly on intelligence” in order to lift self-censorship, free the expression of ideas even if some may seem strange (the Swiss sometimes say “I’m positively disappointed”), encourage experimentation (what more do we have to lose!) and empowerment to transform the organisation and practices.

Let’s hope that what we live today contains the seeds to make, in a more positive context, more agile companies in the future thanks to managers and employees who will have developed this ability.

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Benoit