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WHEN
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WHY A new role-taking is complex: to find one’s own marks, one’s originality, to leave one’s stamp, to accept pressure and projections from the others. All of this requires to step back a little and get feed-back from someone distant, from the otherness.
Moreover, taking a new role, going from management to executive team, also means getting out of the technical dimension to confront the political dimension, learning to elaborate a strategic reasoning and giving oneself the means to pull the others: this may be more or less innate but requires in every case some practice and learning though.HOW We always have a tailor-made approach, depending on the initial dialogue we always have with the client-partner; our experiential approach makes us favour the creation of experience moments, to then move on to thinking about the unfolded events.
Thus in the individual work, the one-to-one with the client, it is the client’s working life, his/her role and missions that bring the lived experience which will be the thinking material. When the team work takes place, we alternate dedicated moments (small workshops, conferences) and moments of work in the heart of things to see the team in action (focus groups, etc).why
how
Accompaniment of leaders and team accompaniment.
Sometimes, in the company’s stability, individuals change positions and roles and must be accompanied: we then intervene to facilitate and optimize the leaders’ new role-taking. In other situations, a leader is confronted with a new challenge: succession, development, culture change or needs to leave a new stamp on the company.
At least half the time, once the role-taking has been carried out, a distance between this same manager and his/her team arises; it is then time to work on the team’s cohesion elements or to ensure that the team follows its leader in the new challenges or in the culture, by establishing a common language and verifying each member’s aptitudes to face the change of environments.
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WHEN
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WHY A company is made of its history, its myths and founding traumas: the latter generate representation systems, that is the base of what constitutes the values and then the identity and the culture of this company. Yet an acquisition or an overseas departure are moments which are going to directly impact this memory. Thus it is not the values or the identity that are called into question as much as the mental representation that people make of the company and themselves. An understanding and investigation work –sometimes even archeological- becomes necessary in order to recreate appeasement conditions. Thus a reflection time will allow the constitution of a new base for the myth and the preparation of the foundation of the new identity. Most of the time, one is content with imposing the new deal imagining that time will solve what is left; in reality, several years later, one notices that new identities overlap like yarrow’s strata constituting as many specificities and complications in the company’s management.
Thus, understanding and diagnosing what happens in the company’s life to then drive a transformation of the system, by acting on blocks and brakes, turns out to be mandatory: a prepared and followed work, by anticipation, allows to avoid failure and to ensure success.HOW In system work, with small workshops or with larger groups, we follow a methodology that drives us to first favour the group’s experiential and in a second phase to think about what is working and what is not, in order to set up transformations’ strategies. We thus discover the system’s cohesion, its values, its purposes with our clients by giving them the opportunity to make the positive and the negative emerge, always anchoring our work on what arises, in order to identify possible transformation paths.
Finally diagnosis phases rest on classical techniques –interview analysis or live set up- in which what will make sense is not the technical reading of the system but rather the understanding of global stakes -conscious and unconscious- (well-being, ill-being, objectives, culture, values, mental representations).
One does not transform a situation by defining the new one and elaborating the path but by working on the mental representations in depth; thus the system transforms itself step by step, naturally, by the clients themselves, with our accompaniment.WHY
HOW
At other times, it is the whole company which faces a culture or business model change. It is then important to succeed in the diagnosis: to understand the field dynamics, brakes, boosters, difficulties; to establish a precise image of the climate and of people’s expectations.
Since it is impossible to decree people’s adhesion to new contexts, we first intervene to understand, to weigh up, to get a picture of the situation that will be as accurate as possible. This then allows –in a second phase/stage - to explain the reasons for the blocks and to analyze the undergoing dynamics: this is what we call a working hypothesis. It is not a dogma, it will be modified and sharpened all along the mission; nevertheless, although perfectible, it will be the essential element to start the active work, the transformation work.
Once having understood, it often becomes necessary to ensure that things move in the direction assigned by the company’s leadership. The gap can be very significant. As specialists of the way systems function, we know that, in order to perform transformations, it is not enough to accompany them (or to manage the change): a preliminary work on surrounding mentalities and reflexes is mandatory. Thus our work involves understanding the gap, taking it into account and giving the possibility to express it in order to reduce it progressively. We work with people -never for (or on) them- in a co-construction joint approach.
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WHEN
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WHY A company is made of its history, its myths and founding traumas: the latter generate representation systems, that is the base of what constitutes the values and then the identity and the culture of this company. Yet an acquisition or an overseas departure are moments which are going to directly impact this memory. Thus it is not the values or the identity that are called into question as much as the mental representation that people make of the company and themselves. An understanding and investigation work –sometimes even archeological- becomes necessary in order to recreate appeasement conditions. Thus a reflection time will allow the constitution of a new base for the myth and the preparation of the foundation of the new identity. Most of the time, one is content with imposing the new deal imagining that time will solve what is left; in reality, several years later, one notices that new identities overlap like yarrow’s strata constituting as many specificities and complications in the company’s management.
Thus, understanding and diagnosing what happens in the company’s life to then drive a transformation of the system, by acting on blocks and brakes, turns out to be mandatory: a prepared and followed work, by anticipation, allows to avoid failure and to ensure success.HOW In system work, with small workshops or with larger groups, we follow a methodology that drives us to first favour the group’s experiential and in a second phase to think about what is working and what is not, in order to set up transformations’ strategies. We thus discover the system’s cohesion, its values, its purposes with our clients by giving them the opportunity to make the positive and the negative emerge, always anchoring our work on what arises, in order to identify possible transformation paths.
Finally diagnosis phases rest on classical techniques –interview analysis or live set up- in which what will make sense is not the technical reading of the system but rather the understanding of global stakes -conscious and unconscious- (well-being, ill-being, objectives, culture, values, mental representations).
One does not transform a situation by defining the new one and elaborating the path but by working on the mental representations in depth; thus the system transforms itself step by step, naturally, by the clients themselves, with our accompaniment.why
how
Finally, the challenge may come from outside the company, within its foreign subsidiaries aiming at conquering new markets, during mergers and acquisitions. We then work on the intercultural dimension, the one in between two companies for example or two countries. Putting two visions together to re-create one is not an obvious thing: it requires expertise and understanding. When it happens, leaders, managers, teams and shareholders face a complicated phase of the company’s life for which they did not anticipate any blocks or specific opportunities. Our work consists in levelling down problems, reducing differences in visions and creating a common one: whether it is with a recently bought group or with the foreign subsidiary which has been going its own way in the group for a long time.
