Who can take five years of this? Professional cost killers, maybe, who make a living out of the crisis. But the rest of us?!

Over the past three years, we have been working with clients who are all focused on one basic question: How can we continue to deliver quality performance when the world is turning upside-down? How can we live through adversity without killing enthusiasm, commitment, loyalty, and fun?

This is where two things come into play: leadership and resilience*.

In ancient Greek krisis means judgment, clarity, and decision. And Charles Darwin once wrote, “It is not the strongest that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.” So here we are! The ability to guide people and teams through hard times and change is exactly what makes great leaders different from so-called leaders. These people convey their passion and optimism no matter what difficulties they face. They learn from these difficulties.

They inspire others.

We can learn from these leaders as we can learn from crisis. Yes, troubled times are opportunities to learn something important about our business, about organizations, about our colleagues, about ourselves.

Our convictions

Working with our clients through these past years we have learned from them. And we have formed some clear convictions about what the resilient ones do and how. They have led us to develop a powerful process for galvanizing the troops despite tough times.

• Step 1: Spell out “the Muse of Fire”: Shakespeare wrote “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention…“. It’s one thing to agree on strategic objectives. It’s another to spell out the passion and the imagination that are needed to move forward in adversity. Leaders in tough time do this. They will trigger buy-in to the relevant and focused efforts, to those fundamentals to concentrate on over the next 12 months in order not only to survive, but to grow and perform.
  People engage in real efforts when they are meaningful, consistent with the “dream” and recognized. No need to list 100 priorities on PowerPoint here. A limited number of key initiatives to work on, tightly connected to that “Muse of Fire” is more than enough.
• Step 2: Draw lessons from the battle: While getting the troops on board, the real leaders focus on the specific capabilities and skills their teams must develop in order to be more resilient. They start with equally specific questions: How can we get beyond uncertainty? What do we need to do in order to control our destiny and be successful? Each one of the successes and achievements is highlighted as a victory against adversity. These key learnings are then integrated into the common knowledge base of the group. You never forget the skills you acquire in a storm (as the sailor’s adage goes, and I’m one of them).
• Step 3: Share the passion, be together: In other words, what are the five actions, ideas, routines, and principles individuals can apply during these difficult times in order to reinforce the “togetherness” and the solidarity that will make each one of us feel we are both supported by others and responsible for them? Let us not forget the importance of pleasure, fun, and celebration of our quick wins and solidarity in these troubled times.

Over the past twelve months, articles and management books on “well-being” abound. Is this really all that surprising given the suffering around us? Well-being cannot be disconnected from reality. You can’t create resilience just by setting up some exercise bikes or ping-pong and foosball tables… Passion is serious business. It can’t be left to gym paraphernalia. It must be thought through and lead!

The Art of Resilience is the “little bit more” that enables exceptional leaders and managers to guide their teams through adversity while keeping morale and performance high.

Ulysses never gives up. At the end of the day, and with a little help from his friends, he wins.

*Definition of resilience by Karl E.Weick: “The essence of resilience is the intrinsic ability of an organization (system) to maintain or regain a dynamically stable state, which allows it to continue operations after a major mishap and/or in the presence of continuous stress.”

End of a stunning year and heading to uncertainty. The right moment to prepare for the 12 months to come: aim at high performance with an engaged team, make use of your team experience, business opportunities and be well equipped to affront potential difficulties ahead.

As team engagement is critical for performance, this is an ideal moment to run a quick check with your team. Find out what marked your team members positively and negatively during the year, what they see as opportunities and consider as priority going forward.

Get a feedback of their level of motivation and engagement and what, for them, leverages team achievements.

To help managers and their teams organize this with little effort and time investment, ICM has put together a Team Snapshot Questionnaire, web-based and easy to administer.

We cover essential questions on satisfaction, enthusiasm and commitment, as well as sources of motivation and team performance. Most importantly we capture, through a number of open questions, individual feelings about team work and business looking back at 2011 and forward to 2012.

One of our consultants will accompany the manager through this process:

1. adapt ready to use template of prior communication sent to the team
2. administrate the on-line questionnaire and sort out data
3. debrief in a 3-hour session how to interpret the results, define next steps and clarify the communication and debriefing towards the team.

If you are interested to know more about this offer, which we propose until end of January 2012, please contact us!

“Oh darling,” I said, turning to my wife, “guess what!”
“What?”
“I forgot my Blackberry!”
She looked at me, stunned, ashen.
“Oh, you poor thing! How could you have forgotten…?”
“It doesn’t matter now. Why don’t you rush to the car, go get it, and bring it back to me before I board?”
“Well, because boarding starts in 15 minutes and it’s a god 60-kilometre round trip…”
“You don’t want to give it a try?”
“No, not really.”

Then she left and suddenly I felt terribly lonely. So I boarded without my BB and felt utterly lost when I saw all my co-passengers switching off their electronic devices before take off and then again an hour later before landing. The woman beside me eyed me suspiciously. Who did I think I was, not switching mine off and putting the whole flight at risk?

Had I been Keith Richards, I’d have booked a private jet immediately to fly the thing back to me in Paris. But as I’m no Keith Richards, I had to face a brutal reality: I was going to experience at least three days BB-free: utterly devoid of a means to consult my Outlook every five minutes; to check the GPS to make sure I was really where I thought I was; to delete the 576 spams offering to enlarge all sorts of appendages and pushing all sorts of pills or travel to all sorts of places to attend all sorts of conferences; and to instantly react to all the SMS and tweets that ensure I am in the appropriate time-space dimension… Isn’t that what loss of identity is all about?
But I survived.

I could connect with the people with whom I had to connect. I used old-fashioned devices like a landline phone. I was able to write a few emails from my computer without being assaulted by unexpected vibrations in my inside pocket. But the most amazing impression of all was that of entering a space-time I had known many years before: a context in which time is not a hectic dotted line, where space is a place you can breathe, where people have faces (although most of the ones I bumped into hardly noticed me, as theirs were looking down over their little screens), in which a body has thumbs that can relax…

Although we are frequently advised to switch off our smart phones and laptop computers, and to experience life again—calm, uninterrupted conversations with people we love, the fruitful loneliness of thought— we rarely do. Those three days made me appreciate and better understand what Nicholas Carr brilliantly explains in his latest book, The Shallows: the information overload has all the characteristics of psychological addiction. The brain’s response to information saturation is pleasure, as with any other drug. And, as with drugs, the damage is enormous. Memorization capacities are directly affected. We just tend to experience the surface of life. Who knows where it will lead…? A book worth reading.

But yes, three days later, I got the precious black thing back by express mail and could get back to normal life.
The Good Vibration (Beach Boys, 1966) was back in my pocket.

Manpower Group s’est associé à une matinée d’échanges informels organisée par HR Channel vendredi 24 juin 2011 sur le thème de la « révolution des talents ».

Charles Gancel y a été convié. Retrouvez ci-dessous son intervention.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Before synergies, bridges
Huge Corporate headquarters had not yet announced exactly how the two organizations would be merged, but the all too well-known noise about “synergies” was already in the system. Meanwhile, in one of the major countries, the Huge Inc General Manager decided to initiate a “getting to know you” process right away. With the full support of the Small Inc Country President he wanted to start building bridges between the two leadership teams. There had been more formal exchanges between the teams previously. The next step was a one and a half-day meeting for 12 management team leaders from each company.
The Huge Inc team came to the meeting with lots of enthusiasm since the acquisition consolidated their leadership in a critical strategic sector. The Small Inc team were seemingly open and willing to take the time off to meet with their Huge Inc counterparts. No one had organizational answers since these would be coming shortly from Huge Corporate HQ and so were beyond the scope for this meeting. Both company leaders positioned the meeting as an opportunity to strengthen relationships between individuals and generate excitement through greater mutual understanding of the businesses.

Getting to know you…
The first step was about individuals. Participants had been asked to bring a meaningful object and present themselves through that object. They were seated in a semi-circle, without tables, and the exercise brought out high levels of authenticity that marked everyone. People were no longer merely “functions”. They were people.Off to a good start!
After a break, the second step was about getting below the surface, moving from individual to collective, and exploring the very different corporate cultures of Huge Inc and Small Inc. I made some introductory comments about how cultural differences generally lead to misunderstandings rather than disagreements. Disagreements, one hears them and can solve them. Misunderstanding stay hidden and lead to difficulties and conflicts! It is therefore invaluable to make as much explicit up front as reasonably possible. I asked Huge Inc and Small Inc teams to split up and spend 30 minutes preparing flip charts (I love low tech!!) in answer to two questions:
- What do you need to know about us in order to work effectively with us ?
- What questions do we have for you?
I sat in on the Small Inc preparation where the atmosphere started out with a strong dose of assertiveness: “Well, Huge people have to know that we all left big multinationals like theirs to work in a small, niche company like ours” said Bernard (name changed), a critical member of the Small Inc team. More than 50% of the Small Inc team agreed to this and up it went, first point on the flip chart.
“Not so simple” were the words that came to my mind!
Thirty minutes later all the flip charts were posted in plenary. People circulated and read. After a few minutes the Huge Inc GM turned to me and said,
“OK, so what do we do with all this now”?
I restated the purpose: To share what they felt would best help them work together in an effective, satisfying way. And to take this opportunity to learn as much as possible about one another and to tell one another as much as they felt would be useful about themselves. Recognizing these differences is “respect” in action.

Getting engaged
Thus began an open and in-depth exchange about company culture, values and style based on the flipcharts, that lasted for three hours and brought out the kinds of issues that often take a lot longer to discover-including why many members of the Small Inc team had left a Huge Inc style organization and what they so appreciated in their company! Everyone participated. Another step in the right direction!
After a splendid evening that lasted into the wee hours, everyone was up on time for a series of 100% business presentations each team had prepared to strict guide-lines:
- 5 presentations with no more than
- 5 slides,
- 5 points per slide and
- 5 minutes per presentation, to be followed by an exchange.
To be honest, some of the presentations took longer, but it didn’t matter. At this point everyone got interested in what the others could bring and how they worked. You could feel the wheels turning as they keyed into value-generation possibilities together. A perfect subject for the next meeting.

Getting places
The final lunch was telling. “So, what’s the outside view on this meeting” Bernard asked me?
“Like a journey”, I said. “From a point of departure with a fair amount of hostility to a first step that you all seem to think that might lead to great things.”
“Yes” he replied. “We started out with a some antagonism. It’s definitely more like 70/30 now. I hadn’t imagined the possibilities beforehand, nor had I imagined that here were people who didn’t think they were always right about everything.”
Here were two teams who had accelerated the integration process in a significant way. You can’t ask for more than that after one meeting. But you do need to ask for at least that!

As we work with Leadership Teams who are challenged in these very substantial ways, we have noted a few approaches and behaviors that appear to be more relevant than others. Here they are:

Listen to what you don’t want to hear
A world with Black Swans requires acceptance, creativity and agility more than tried and true methods and comfort zones. By definition, Black Swans overthrow preconceptions and common sense and so leaders need support to take greater risks and initiatives—above and beyond how things “have always been done.” This means that leaders give space and voice to people who think differently and question the status quo, including questions about how the business is being run. But oh how counter-cultural! What happens when a senior manager raises serious questions with respect to new product development and no one wants to hear about it? How do you get beyond the “group-think” excitement of new products, new markets, new acquisitions, new hires—new whatever!—and listen to a totally different point of view? How can you make sure that people who do not agree with the “rest of the crowd” continue to their point after having been repeatedly shot down?

Use a Scenario Thinking approach to strategic planning.
Scenario thinking, unlike classical strategic thinking, does not explore “probable” futures, projecting existing trends into the next 3, 5 or 10 years. Instead it pushes teams to formulate “plausible” futures that are all about uncertainties and surprises. For Nassim Taleb, Black Swans are part of “plausible” futures but these are too often overlooked. A scenario thinking approach allows leaders to discuss in the most open way possible, pitting different views of the future against one another. Creative options are developed allowing for increased agility in decision-making as the world changes.

Foster accountability, team effectiveness and cooperation.
Speed and resilience are key to living with Black Swans for they demand rapid reactions and also high levels of consistency. Does this sound paradoxical? In many corporate environments it is. The corporate culture will make the difference. The three critical cultural aspects are accountability and empowerment at individual level; trust and teamwork where the various part of the organization that need to cooperate are poised to do so when people can truly challenge ideas before reach conclusions together; and cooperation so that required.

These are some of the things that companies can do in order to better cope with what we, at ICM Associates, call the “U3”: Uncertain, Unexpected, Urgent.
When it all comes down to it, reality seems to systematically contradict our forecasts, our common sense, reason and models.
How can reality be so wrong?!

So at ICM we decided to find a way to help our clients identify those people who are most likely to make it internationally. We use a web-based questionnaire to provide feedback on three different sets of key facets, all crucial to operating as high-performing “culture bridgers”. Our statistically valid and robust set of data assesses Culture Bridging Skills^© (CBS^©) in candidates for overseas assignments. The data analysis has identified four profiles.

The Local Champion
These are managers who usually get excellent results in their local environment. But although they are aware that international careers are important for their development, international travel and cultural differences are just not their thing. They get irritated when people who speak other languages, or work differently, want to do things their own way. They are not ready to give up on successful recipes in exchange for some unknown, untested (by them) approaches. Local Champions like being at home. They’re not keen on learning a new language or being far from their home base. If they absolutely have to move, Local Champions will do everything they can to recreate conditions in the new place that are as similar to those back home as possible. Their learning curve for successful overseas performance is likely to be steep and long, and some won’t make it.

The Friendly Backpacker
Friendly Backpackers are always ready to move. They love it. They are curious about new people, new cultures, new foods, new climates, new clothes, new behaviors and they tend to mumble a few words in more than two or three languages. Their tolerance for differences is probably greater than that of many of their colleagues.
Friendly Backpackers sometimes find business demands difficult to handle. They don’t want to “impose” ways of doing things on people without making any allowances for difference. Their tendency is to make allowances for people who “might not have understood” what you meant; or who “are used to doing things differently”; or who “have not been trained in the same cultural environment” as head office. This can jeopardize the kind of team leadership their organization expects and they know this might also jeopardize their career development. But it is a price they are willing to pay.

The Cultural Professor
Cultural Professors know everything about cultural differences on paper and read up a lot about the countries where they are going. They enjoy learning and debating about values, political and religious realities (when possible) and other subjects of this kind with local colleagues. They also feel that international work has its downsides. For example, Cultural Professors might master several languages but they are far more at ease with reading in these languages than taking the risk of sounding silly speaking it. They don’t enjoy the challenge of having to rely on people who approach things in different ways. Cultural Professors get irritated when cultural theory doesn’t play out in practice. In short, they’d rather discuss the cultural basis for different decision-making processes than have to deal with them! They might not be the best types to recruit for stressful operational positions as they are more at ease with the theories of difference than with people who are different.

The Culture Bridger
Culture Bridgers are the excellent and effective leaders at home and internationally, combining personal pleasure in meeting people who are different with adapting to the challenge of doing things differently. They often wonder about whether they are “doing it right” but they also have a way of keeping calm, gaining people’s confidence and finding out how to do things that makes people want to follow them and work with them.
Culture Bridgers are attracted to different people, places and things and feel that their life is enriched by entering into new and different relationships and testing out new ways of doing things. So they actively look for how to go to and integrate into new environments. They are also clear about their own values and so don’t feel personally threatened by other world views. Deep down Culture Bridgers believe that building trust and a shared sense of belonging with people who work together wherever they might be is the most important success factors in a cross-cultural, international business context. And they are successful!

More later
So, who are you? Wouldn’t you be interested in finding out? And wouldn’t you like to have an idea of your corporate culture bridging index? All of this is possible.

Stay tuned to www.icmassociates.com to learn more over the coming months about our Culture Bridging Skills^© diagnostic, the profiles and facets and how it might help you make the right choices first time round.

Dress rules
However, let’s be honest. Dress codes are not a new thing, whether formal or informal. In fact they kick in very early. Just have a look at the school playground next door and you’ll see kids and teens all wearing almost the same shoes, the same distressed jeans, the same parkas etc…OK, these are the informal rules, although these are perhaps the strongest rules of all. But plenty of professions have their formal rules: stewards, soldiers, priests, nurses and all sorts of people who have no other choice but to dress in full accordance with their professional uniform.
Many companies have more of less formally established rules about how to dress, what’s acceptable, what’s not. Just Google “dress code” on your browser and you’ll find hundreds of sites teaching you how to dress in a corporate or private occasion. What’s different in the UBS case is the fact that this code feels intrusive. It seems to invade private space, going too close to the skin and pushing norms and alignment to a level hitherto unseen in a corporate environment.

Tell me how you dress, I’ll tell you who you are…
Clearly the way people dress in a company does reflect its norms and culture. It’s a big enough deal for many companies to have “casual Friday” dress rules. People don’t dress the same way as at Apple as at IBM. Generations differ in terms of what they consider acceptable or not. Gen Y and internet start-ups are no Swiss banks. White and blue collar workers differ by collar…
By the same token the way people dress says a lot about their identity, their cultural origin and the kind of society they live in. This may sound very obvious and not such an issue. But to our surprise, dress codes appeared as a very “loaded” subject in a study ICM ran in 2010 to define Culture Bridging Skills and Competencies. When we meet someone, how that person is dressed sends out an immediate and strong message about how similar or how “different” we are.
And we all know how difficult it is to give feedback to someone who might be inappropriately dressed. And how people can get emotional about this. Unconsciously or not, we know that we are treading on private ground.

What’s really at stake
Apparently, UBS’ Code went beyond the limit, at least in Europe where people don’t expect these kinds of explicit norms in order to understand where the limit is.
At the end of the day, accepting diversity or pushing for conformity in how people dress may have more to do with the overall level of discipline and compliance a company expects from its employees than with their dress alone.
In a post financial crisis world, UBS may have intentionally overplayed a message of discipline to compensate for the perception of on-going madness that prevails now in the public mind after the turmoil that nearly brought an end to the whole banking industry.
But perhaps this will only add to the vision of madness?

In a 2009 HBR interview, J. Richard Hackman, Harvard professor and recognized researcher on team effectiveness, makes an interesting statement: “It’s managing the links between members that gets teams into trouble. My rule of thumb is no double digits”. Hum… we’re far from the complexities of a global matrix. And if we consider the classical success factors of teams, such as clear boundaries (who’s in, who’s not); a clear and compelling set of directions; a facilitating environment and structure; a supportive organization (like HR performance tracking and evaluation); stability (in order to build on experience), almost all of these factors take a blow in a global matrix organization structure. But there’s no point questioning these organizations. They are the logical response to challenge of how to better manage resources at group / global level and at the same time offer the best local or function-specific answers.

So the question is, how can you make your way in this complexity and not simply get burned by it? Here is some advice based on our experience and dialogue with managers and leaders who have not only survived in the matrix, but who have learned how to take the best from it and succeed.

Be a diplomat: by definition, the matrix responds to various sets of interests some of which are potentially ambiguous or even conflicting. Being at the cross section is risky, but it’s also full of opportunities. So get the coaching or training you need to develop problem solving, negotiation and mediation skills.

Be a geek: Matrix organizations couldn’t exist without Information Technology. Companies are now operating within a wired global grid. Develop your ability to use all the up-to-date communications and computerized solutions so that you stay “connected”. New computerized-brain generations will soon dominate the workplace. Don’t get left behind.

Make friends: When the machine gets mad, we still can rely on people! Seek out all occasions to meet “real people” in “real life” and make “real friends”. One day a simple phone call to someone you met might give you the answer to an organizational nightmare. “Virtual friends” might not be as supportive and involved.

Make choices: Time is a scarce resource and getting involved in too many lines within the matrix will surely overwhelm you and ultimately burn you out. Before stepping into another “global project”, make sure it’s worth stepping into. Assess your potential contribution and make sure that it will be recognized.

Make yourself visible: Matrix organizations are, after all, open fields to play in. There are many options out there. You are no longer stuck in a restricted environment. You are exposed to many other places and people within the global organization. Take advantage of that.

Keep track of your performance: As you get involved in different projects or reporting lines, your own performance depends on a larger group of stakeholders. Still, your annual appraisal will be done by one person, your direct boss. And he/she might not be aware of all the contributions you have made and the performance evaluation scheme might not take this level of complexity into account. So keep track of your contributions and share these with your direct boss at appraisal time.

Know the global map: A global matrix is constantly changing. One of the most important rules for surviving in the wilderness is to “know your turf”. The same holds true for a global matrix. Stay connected; know who’s who and who’s going where. Keep up on the organizational changes that might have an impact on your function, line of business, region or project teams.

In over twenty years of working with our clients, we have seen almost all of them move into a matrix organization. I haven’t heard all that many people say “our matrix works!” But some of them do work better than others and some people succeed better than others too. Improvements can be made if people are committed to making it work. Dealing with global complexity is difficult and frustrating but it’s also an opportunity to live in a more open world and have a much richer set of opportunities to seize.

It’s worth learning how to get the best out of it!

Networks facilitate global effectiveness
With the opportunities and constraints of cross-functional and remote project teams, managers no longer have easy access to those who will ultimately determine either the resources for their projects or the course of their careers. This is very different from our predecessors, who had their immediate decision-makers sitting down the hall. Today you won’t get much done without managing your connections and networks: key people in key places who know you and will support you when the going gets rough and when you want to move on.
In this kind of context, networking is about connecting with people and building relationships that are fundamentally useful to both sides. To say “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” may sound a bit extreme, but is it really? Networks are neither a hierarchical structure nor a matrix. They are sets of paths or links between different individuals throughout the corporate structure. You can think of them as “ad hoc partnerships” that band together when something specific needs to get done. So knowing the right people, or being in the right networks, is more important than it ever was. And besides, if no one has tracked your competencies and contributions in a systematic way over time, who will step up to the line for you?

So, nurture your networks!
Network building is a skill to develop if you want to make your mark in a large organization. The fact is, you are probably already part of networks in your organization although you might not have consciously set out to nurture them and let them work for you.
It could be time to start. Follow these four simple steps:

1. Start with your own area of responsibility
Work out from there: sales, finance, human resources, marketing. Whatever it is, this is a professional “community” and you probably already know quite a lot of people who are part of it. Now’s the time to grow that number. Start asking your colleagues who they know in your area. Take a look on your company’s website. Identify the people you believe you just have to meet, and also those who just have to meet you.

2. Find a way to meet.
Do some up-front planning. Think about partnerships. Networks have to add value to both sides. Think hard about the knowledge, experience and contacts you can offer. Think about what keeps your target contact awake at night and how you might help/ Only then make the call, send the email and find a way to meet.

3. Do this systematically
Don’t stop after one shot. Find out where the authority lies and nurture those relationships. Remember, networks will only work if they truly are two-way streets, so get ready to do the “little bit more” as well. It’ll pay off!

4. Don’t get lost in “vague networks”
One of the lessons one can draw form the “social networks” experience – Facebook, LinkedIn etc – is that “too many friends equals no friends”. A network has to make sense to you, as well as to “them-friends” who are part of it. Making sense of the network, facilitating interactions or communications within it will take time and as time is a scarce resource, you should aim at true benefits for all members. A living network is a network that has gained buy-in and a sense of ownership from its members. Then and only then will it “pay back”.
When working with our clients on “building networks” we always face this challenge of defining goals and limits to an idea (networks) that seems so open to an infinite number of connections. But here as in everything else, defining boundaries and making choices is key.