His society used to practice benevolence “before that word became fashionable.” And yet. Pierre*, commercial director in a large group, was among the victims of a gigantic managerial fiasco five years ago. “The entirety of a sales force which is coming to a halt, I had never known that”, confides, still in shock, the one who found himself stuck between a new general manager “who made reign a climate of terror” and paralyzed teams, ready to throw in the towel. With, to make matters worse, supply problems, angry customers and a world management “disconnected from the specificities of the French subsidiary”. “We tried several times to bring up these difficulties, without success”, recalls Pierre, who somehow “played the role of filter” to preserve his salespeople. Since then, the famous “N + 1” and its medieval management has been thanked, but for this 42-year-old senior executive, restoring confidence to his colleagues “will take time”.
If there remains an extreme case, the example of Pierre illustrates well the malaise that affects some French managers. An Opinion Way barometer published in March 2023 ranks them third among the populations most affected by psychosocial risks, behind those under 29 and women. “Intermediate or local managers are sandwiched, this is the level where the power of decision and action can be the most compromised, at the risk of putting these individuals out of step with their personal values”, analyzes Valérie Flores -Rodriguez, director of the consulting firm Reshura, which supports management committees in their desire for organizational transformation. Another cause of discomfort, cumbersome procedures, from the famous meetingitis – employee productivity is 35% higher when meetings are reduced by 20%, according to a 2022 Harvard Business Review study –, to obsession Excel tables. “It’s too Taylorian an organization, underlines Laurent Cappelletti, researcher in management science, where middle managers have objectives that come from above, with no room for maneuver to negotiate them.”
To boost their motivation, Charlotte Cadé, CEO of the online flea market Selency, recently organized two days of brainstorming with all management, upper and middle, “to reflect on the vision and cross-reference the subjects”. Practices, certainly, easier to set up in small structures, but regardless of the size of the company: “The time of the Codir [NDLR : comité de direction] who gives himself the task of knowing everything, it’s over”, slice Valérie Flores-Rodriguez, “very demanding with leaders who are at high levels of responsibility, because they set the tone”.
Management as a lever of profitability
For Christophe Mosse, senior executive in health, this first involves “letting go”. “You have to accept that things are not done as you would have done them yourself. In general, you are positively surprised.” This former Colgate and Novartis who has fifteen years in management positions “refrains from going into subjects that are not within his purview”, preferring “the posture of coach to that of knowledgeable”. Valérie Flores Rodriguez, she insists on the authenticity of the message: “Today, a leader has no other option than to be connected between what he says and what he does, and between what he ‘it does and what it is.’
If it shouldn’t just be a matter of words, management is sometimes a matter of numbers. “One euro invested in management quality yields four, on average, in increased productivity”, indicates a June 2023 study carried out by Laurent Cappelletti for the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for the Evaluation of Public Policies at Sciences Po. The CMI, a large British management school, did the math: organizations that invest in leadership training see their performance jump by 23%. Management as a lever of profitability? “When we quantify the costs generated by these managerial dysfunctions on a company scale, we are between 10,000 and 20,000 euros per person and per year”, estimates Laurent Cappelletti. An argument that should finish convincing the last refractory.
*Name has been changed.