For ten years in our companies, the digital revolution and the rediscovery of prosocial and collaborative practices have shattered this two-dimensional model of productivist relationships which functioned as if economic actors behaved in a perfectly rational manner. Under pressure from emerging players, we left an environment of certainties and moved into an uncertain, complex and changing world in which knowing how to innovate and adapt are the new watchwords. If no one can predict the future, we do know with certainty that the playing field of our organizations has changed perspective. Competition suddenly appears and disappears, but it upsets the codes of the market. Competitors are not direct: they are everywhere and often where they are not expected.
Take Uber for example. No one saw it coming and no taxi company could have predicted the impact of this innovation on a market that seemed peacefully established. Uber may die of his good death or suffocate in the shackles of his contradictions. But it will have upset (“uberized ”) the market and the uses of urban transport in a surprising and sustainable way, as so many others will have done in their fields of activity.
The moral of this story is that organizations must now reason in new terms to be able to last.
The challenge is not so much to “disrupt” its own market at all costs as to succeed in shedding to be able to play with the new rules otherwise, we are probably doomed to disappear.
It is an uncomfortable situation because it requires changing and opening up to the unknown. By nature, it is anxiety-provoking, all the more so as there are many areas of concern in companies: customers, shareholders, employees, public authorities, etc. each forcefully demands its share of attention: we already have enough priority priorities n ‘is this not ? Our analysis is that this new environment does indeed contain immense potentials, once again not necessarily to “do more” (… in terms of numbers, … customers, … happiness at work, …) but above all to become creative, innovative, adaptable and ultimately resilient.
Like Némo in the film “Matrix” which chooses the red pill of knowledge, it is a question for companies to embark on a journey of initiation of transformation. During this trip, they will realize that they must now reason in terms of ecosystem , that is to say to consider their activity as closely entangled in relations with all their stakeholders. Obviously those that we spontaneously think of (customers, suppliers, employees, public authorities, etc.) but above all the most secondary, those that we do not see but that are affected by our actions. The “shadow stakeholders” who allow us to exist. The added value now also consists in organizing and promoting these interactions because they are sources of cooperation and innovation. The more a company appropriates its ecosystems not to dominate them but to know their codes and mysteries, the more it can add its resources to those of those with which it is in contact and the more this will contribute to its own prosperity.
Today, the tool that best enables the members of an economic ecosystem to work together is a platform. Conceived as places of exchange and sharing in which the protagonists agreed, even before the questions of technology, on rules of interaction and a common language, the platforms promote, fluidify and frame the interactions between the members of an ecosystem. In this regard, we can think of Amazon, which has, alongside its online commerce activities, constituted for the past ten years already an astonishing platform of “cloud-computing” or “cloud computing” for lovers of the French language. It is nothing less than offering, for use on demand, computing power and computer storage. Previously, this power was mainly concentrated on proprietary servers. We therefore enter a world where everything becomes “… as a service” whether it is software (“software”), a network (“network”), a platform, a infrastructure or even an office (“desktop”) or data (“data”). We are far from understanding all the economic, social and human challenges of this innovation, but it is at work today, just a few clicks away. However, building a platform cannot be improvised: there are methods and canvases that allow you to structure the process and organize interactions.
Another important step could be the creation of communities that will constitute as many circles and vectors of engagement of the organization’s stakeholders within the ecosystem. Based on trust and the sharing of common values, a community is both a great space for personal and professional development while carrying out a generally powerful and unifying collective project. It is undoubtedly the most visible expression of the transformation operated within an organization insofar as one cannot cheat when one engages in this way. This requires leaders and teams to have completely mourned the world of yesterday. In other words to have really moulted.
“Building a community” requires implementing parameters that are too critical not to be totally committed, and in particular on a human level.
We experience it every day at Ouishare.
By continuing its journey, the company will be able to stop for a moment on the amazing tool developed by the Catalan Javier Creus of Ideas-for-Change: the Pentagrowth method . If there is no magic solution, the fact remains that the method also emphasizes the concept of ecosystem and cooperation from key resources (or assets) which are widely shared. and connected to encourage interactions. Finally, it is by promoting collective intelligence within the organization that the driving forces (employees, freelancers, etc.) will be able to bring out new solutions in a dynamic of cooperation in a horizontal and no longer hierarchical manner and at the same time resolve the questions of motivation, well-being at work and Psychosocial Risks.
This “initiatory journey of transformation” is in advance difficult because it requires a calling into question of landmarks, practices and habits firmly anchored. Also, to be effective, it will be necessary to cultivate two cardinal virtues. The first is letting go for, in conscience and with all the common sense that everyone is capable of, daring to think outside the box, easy hierarchies, convenient processes, systematic control, … and to embark on this journey of transformation. The second is pragmatism to adapt these approaches and these new rules to the rhythm and characteristics of his business, without pretense.
For us, it is not a question of opposing approaches in a dogmatic way and no more than denying that running a business is an art and not a science.
Our absolute conviction is that in the complex world that we are building, cooperative and collaborative practices are an extremely strong factor of resilience which must at least question our organizations.
The MAIF START UP CLUB & Ouishare offer you a cycle of several Masterclasses to understand and appropriate the codes of this new environment. All the information here: https://www.kawaa.co/fr/rencontre/7171
Thanks to Martin , Taoufik and Hélène for their expert advice.
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This post was previously published on OuiShare.net where the content is licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 France.
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