Jupiter. Everything is said in this divine allegory. The “pros” praise its authority, the vertical line, the hierarchical mille-feuille with its induced cherry: the codes. Demonic for the béotiens, the initiates control the cogs of it which require a bac + 8 at least in informal politics intra-company: it is the French management. No training teaches it, the field and the networks, yes. But whether it is the color and thickness of the carpets, the quality of the costume and the professional and family background of the N-3, N + 1, N + 5 or N + 8, everything is bright for its practitioners. Promotion Voltaire or Senghor? At the top of his Olympus or his building, this Eminem-style manager has succeeded: “But I got my head in the clouds like Zeus- Swear, I could see the game from a bird’s-eye view”. Its detractors, on the other hand, see it as the avatar of an archaic and outdated system, a fat cake with useless and complex layers, far from the fluidity of the horizontal line sought today. It’s Buren against Mondrian. This specificity should not be reduced to an aging Jabba. For Frank Bournois, new dean and vice-president of CEIBS in Shanghai, this “natural hierarchical distance” makes it possible to induce a system where the human being is at the center of the manager’s concerns.
A human dimension
With Ezra Suleiman and Yasmina Jaïdi, academics like him, Frank Bournois wrote The French prowess – The management of the Cac 40 seen from elsewhere (Odile Jacob 2017). Through this scientific work carried out within 20 French groups, most of them listed on the CAC 40 and with 1,200 non-French managers, the expert shows that French management has both qualities and shortcomings. Thus, its culture of hierarchical distance with complicated coding leads to more individualistic than collective attitudes. Little open to uncertainty, it combats it through planning and processes at all levels. No terra incognita, the ground is marked out, solid, the surprise is not in order. Depending on the nationality of the manager, the adaptation time ranges from significant to gigantic. Not easy to understand the role of some in a Codir, who enjoy a special place in the executive board’s plan. It is the Chinese who manage the fastest to find themselves in this “culture of thickness”. However, it takes them 6.6 months, compared to 7.5 months for the Spaniards, 8.4 months for the Indians and 13.8 months for the Poles. The most restive are the Americans (14.0 months), the Germans (16.2 months) and, since Napoleon, the British have still not understood how a leader works (17.1 months). Yet they have a king, Oxford vs Cambridge, when the French have the “Canal spirit” and “Normale rue d’Ulm”, each in their own way creating talent and business. These qualities are to the credit of the managers, “a real source of inspiration” for their teams and who have a human dimension. The French manager is concerned about the employees and “makes them grow”. Even Cartesian and stuffed with gosplan, this managerial mode conceals treasures of creativity that the most agile envy us, a little as if this heavy straitjacket allowed the reign of the D system to find its letters of nobility and serendipity to prosper there. Before Amazon, there was La Redoute. Due to the price of transport, BlaBlaCar was born. In a deregulated world, no one would have imagined setting up a carpooling service between individuals. France was its fertile ground. Education, the Grandes Ecoles and reflection allow actions of genius: a sort of paradoxical alliance between Versailles and innovation.
Meaning and ecology are the next challenges
Many foreigners still stumble on a destabilizing culture of evaluation with direct communication of what is wrong. However, Generation Z demands immediate feedback, which implies more flexibility and verbalization. “The relationship with the hierarchical superior has become more flexible, in favor of more informal interactions on a daily basis which make things more fluid”, underlines Frank Bournois. Meaning and ecology are the next challenges to be integrated into the management of the Cac 40: employees are no longer just turned towards Zeus but towards its actions and its relationship to the planet. And tomorrow, maybe managers from the Gaïa promotion will break the glass ceiling to allow those who don’t have the right networks to move towards collective intelligence for the common good.