What if saying “YES” meant being in LIFE?

Recently, I received yet another customer request for … yesterday. The water drop? I realized that this way of working was creating a great deal of suffering within me. And I asked myself whether I should say YES or NO.

I have stopped counting the number of coaching contracts where one of the objectives is to “know how to say NO”. What if, instead of knowing how to say “NO”, you dared to say “YES”?

You would like to “know how to say NO”? You already know how to do it – too well, actually. By learning to “say YES”, you can move forward, evolve… and enjoy yourself.

Viviane Strickfaden

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A crisis on an individual level that invites each one to sort out to get rid of waste and to create an “After” respectful of one’s Being and Humanity

Individually, the crisis we are experiencing and the long time of confinement it imposes on us gives us the opportunity to connect with ourselves. In the emotional wringer of these few weeks, we can really listen to what is essential for us, we can choose what we want to invest energy on, we can free ourselves from what hinders us. It requires us to critically examine what drives us, what even agitates us, what fundamentally motivates us.

Several questions emerge

Humanly speaking, what does it mean to be in relationship with a person? To have more and more contacts in the same place? But with what depth vs. what superficiality? What place is there for each person in a whole? Is it necessary to shake hands, to kiss, to touch to greet each other? What is the meaning of making a gesture if it is by loo king elsewhere, by not being present? To look straight in the eyes is to welcome the other, to recognize him/her as a person.

What does it mean to be connected? It is quite possible to be connected to others without being physically with them. If the exchanges are attentive, focused on the essential, written and voice messages, calls and video conferences constitute a link. Listening, caring and empathy are essential to the link. A sincere interest in the other in his or her uniqueness as well.

What does it mean to be alive? How does everyone experience it? Even so, what is the price of life?

These are probably haunting questions from the beginning of the confinement. First, the astonishment due to the very brutal change of habits, the loss of personal, family and professional landmarks and rituals.

And the anxiety about a future with an unknown deadline, the fear for one’s health and that of one’s loved ones. Fear of one’s professional and financial future, and even of one’s present. Remaining frozen, looking for information, non-existent, partial. Finding a thread to be able to act: to set up telework (when the job makes it possible), to organize teaching, to carry out the possible administrative steps…

An d to ask oneself, with ever greater force: what does it mean to be alive? What makes everyone feel alive? What does it mean to be free, to feel free? How important, how essential, how vital is it?

To act freely is to take care of oneself, as much as possible. And moreover, it is about helping to take care of others. To consent to the lack of freedom of movement is of great value. It saves lives.

To be free is to free your mind from panic, from negative thoughts that prevent you from thinking. It is to welcome within oneself, preciously present, one’s thoughts, one’s values. It is to give them a large place. Being aware of what is essential for oneself, of one’s inner resources is one of the means to reinforce one’s freedom.

These days and weeks out of the world “before” are a precious time to imagine the world “afterwards” and to prepare oneself for it

To discern what is essential, important and superfluous in the world before, requires listening carefully to oneself. In actions and interactions, which ones are carried out for oneself? To really please oneself? Which are those that respond to a social norm, an injunction?

Leaving the world before is to free oneself from the weight of norms and injunctions, it is to put “I” at the center of the game. Not for selfishness, at all. By commitment. To take care of oneself because no one else can do it. Because to be well is to send a positive signal to others that can help them change their view of themselves.

This crisis requires a great deal of self-awareness and presence, here and now, to oneself

Effectively implementing barrier gestures, for example, requires anticipating each gesture in order to chain them together as well as possible. It even requires being completely focused on the realization of the gesture itself, at least until it becomes a new reflex. This crisis is an invitation to a great awareness of all the automatisms that govern our daily lives. Physical automatisms of course. By going further and holding up a mirror to oneself, behavioral and psychological automatisms.

It is in this area that there is a lot to sift through to free oneself from what does not belong because it does not correspond to the individual in his uniqueness. The danger would be to remain identical in exit and entry, without having chosen. The opportunity is to find oneself, to give birth to oneself, a little or a lot. The resources exist in everyone. Making the most of the time in the working room allows one to (re)appropriate them to make them accessible.

To take advantage of these few weeks, it may be time to call upon a revealer to give birth to oneself.

First, there are all the employees who make it their duty to ensure their activity, even with fear in their stomachs. The fear of getting sick, the fear of infecting their loved ones. Employees are very often “forgotten” because their job seems so secondary at a time of intellectual services. Thanks to this crisis, their role has regained its full meaning. How will they be considered afterwards? Will they once again be workers in the shadows?

The current crisis is causing heckling among staff in companies

Then, there are all the employees who juggle the constraints of home schooling, of cohabitation with a spouse who has his or her own business, and those of telework deployed on a forced march. They mobilize without counting their hours, experimenting with autonomy, agile decision-making circuits, and meetings which tend to last less time. Thanks to this crisis, they are empowered. How will they be recognized professionally afterwards? How will they be managed? How will mutual aid and collective action continue to manifest themselves?

And, there are all the employees who have been deprived of activity for long weeks, worried about getting their jobs back. Some of them are in fact at risk of finding themselves without a job. Others will have to recover their place in a team, work with customers… How will they flourish under new conditions?

HR directors can take advantage of this time to prepare a return to companies that take care of the well-being of their employees

It is unlikely that anyone will emerge psychologically unscathed from the health (and economic) crisis and the period of containment it imposes. A variety of strong emotions will manifest themselves, explicitly or implicitly. They will have a definite impact on relationships. Managerial habits will be challenged.

The agility that prevails in emergency situations is a precious resource. The empowerment and autonomy expressed in telework are vectors of commitment. The ability to decide in uncertainty, allowing for mistakes, is a motivating factor. The solicitation of collective intelligence, the audacity to invent new products/processes are levers of innovation…

And yet some managers indulge in slow decision-making that makes them feel like they exist. Other managers still feel an almost visceral need to control everything, seeking reassurance. Still others show a level of demand, of sclerosing perfectionism.

It is possible, during these few weeks, to set up support systems

Rethink the system of objectives and remuneration… to focus on management style and expected results. Review the training plan… to adapt the contents to the new world. Rely on relationship professionals to listen, welcome, recognize the right to be human… to best accompany the expression of emotions and limit the risks on relationships and quality of life at work. Use professional coaches in individual and collective approaches… to best accompany the expected change in managers’ behavior.

It is crucial to anticipate the return to what, in the same place, will no longer be the same in order to limit psycho-social risks.

As a human being and inhabitant of the Earth, since the beginning of this pandemic, I have been asking myself a question.

What is the message that the universe wants to send us? One of the answers seems to me to be: the planet is taking revenge. It is taking revenge on the way we treat it or rather the way we mistreat it. And it’s taking revenge on the one species that can destroy it. But the planet is self-cleaning. It will always get away with it. Which is probably not the case for mankind. In whose name have we come today to question our own lives?

This major crisis that we must live and go through carries with it a danger or risk and an opportunity as expressed in the Mandarin ideogram “weiji”. While it raises the question of the survival of humanity, the risks it highlights are also economic, political and ethical… This crisis questions what many people have long favored: immediate profit, forgetting the price of life. Let us be clear: this is not the case for all human beings. Those who struggle daily for survival are numerically far more numerous than those who have made choices in favor of short-term profit. This is not the thread of my reflection here.

A crisis therefore exposes a risk. Here it shakes, to say the least, a model in which the economy prevails over people and life in general.

What about opportunity?

Etymologically, crisis comes from “sieve” in our languages of Greco-Latin origin. Crisis thus speaks to us of choosing, discerning, judging, distinguishing, sorting. More precisely, sorting consists, on the one hand, in getting rid of everything that no longer has a place or a reason to exist, in removing waste and, on the other hand, in keeping everything that brings good, the positive. In other words, it is a question of distinguishing what is superfluous and what is important, better essential.

What is superfluous and what is essential in our current lifestyles, in the functioning of companies, in the policies of States? What must we discern? What certainty must we let go, because we are in a period of major uncertainty (one of the sieve senses)? What are the new criteria that we are going to have to highlight on which we will have to base our decisions? This is also one of the meanings of sieve.

What part is the long-term vision of the planet going to play in the decisions? And that of the life, in good conditions, of each human being? How much of it will go to the immediate enrichment of some? What are dividends worth if we have to die younger because the conditions of life are not guaranteed?

Even though the current health crisis undoubtedly affects the poorest more quickly and more strongly, it does not spare the rich or the powerful. A virus, however crowned it may be, has a very egalitarian approach in its action.

When you lead a company, whether as a member of the executive or the non-executive board, one of the key elements that you consider is sustainability and with it, sustainable development. At the current time, we hear a lot about continuity plans. It is indeed vital to be prepared and to know how to keep the company going. What are the critical functions? Who are the critical people as well? What is the acceptable downgraded mode? For how long? What must be anticipated to last? etc.

There is also the question of security: what is implemented upstream to avoid being confronted with a crisis, to have the capacity to respond to it in the best possible conditions and thus ensure the company’s sustainability?

How do multinational groups, mid-size companies and family-owned SMEs address these issues?

One of the very first rules I learned was that you have to divide up so that you don’t depend on one customer or a very small number of customers, or on one supplier, or on a very small number of suppliers. Avoiding dependency means limiting the risks of loss of turnover (a customer lets down the business), of production (which leads to a drop in revenue) if a supplier fails. It is not uncommon to have to explain and prove to public or private structures what part they could represent in the business. This comes down to assessing the risk that their provider-supplier would run if the relationship were to be terminated (or reduced). Not assessing this risk constitutes a fault.

I have been wondering about this for some time and the question has become more pressing with the situation we are currently experiencing…

How many times have company leaders who have decided to relocate everything to a single region of the world asked themselves this question, analyzed their risks? Have they arbitrated for immediate profit and then “we’ll see”?

On a broader scale, beyond companies, what systemic interpretation have States, or even groupings of States such as Europe, had? Have they had one at all? As a corollary of the overall reading, what systemic continuity plan have they defined? How did they seek a balance between security of supply and the resulting independence and total entrepreneurial freedom of economic operators? On what issues and risks did they base their decision? What prevailed in their decision? Taking a step back and trying to get a 360-degre e reading, what actions were taken?

What about strategic interdependence? Interdependence between states, between states and companies

In companies, it is an obligation to draw up and keep up to date a risk map. And for States? I hypothesize that risks of armed conflict, terrorism and population displacement are identified and monitored. Probably also systemic risks in the financial sector, for example. What concerns state independence, energy, defense, etc. is surely mapped and dealt with. But what about industrial independence, including that of health?

For many months now, we have been facing disruptions in the supply of products such as medicines because manufacturing has left the so-called rich countries to be carried out in so-called emerging, poor countries. This is the case for a great many manufactured products, technologies, automobiles, clothing… Not all goods are of strategic importance. A break in the value chain of certain sectors does not jeopardize the population or the capacity of public authorities to intervene. It will only affect companies that have chosen to produce cheaper elsewhere.

On the other hand, running out of certain products can be tragic and raise the question of their strategic structural (always having them available) or cyclical (having them available when needed) importance.

The etymology tells us that the crisis is both a risk and an opportunity, a great moment of sorting. What opportunity(ies) will this crisis unleash? By taking up the idea of risk mapping and control actions, I wonder about the relevance of having an overall vision of production capacities.

A global vision of production capacities at the local level: it is necessary to manufacture locally again. It’s true that this limits carbon dioxide emissions. The obligation to reduce the carbon footprint in the hope that the planet will remain liveable for humanity has already led business leaders to consider manufacturing in greater proximity. Not so much for the sake of humanity as for reasons of financial sanctions, of course, and probably for reputational reasons.

It also gives greater agility: the time needed to change its products, to receive its products, to adjust its supply to demand is reduced. In this matter, the responsiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises is exemplary at the moment. Above all, it limits its dependence on a single large supplier country that is out of control because its weight is disproportionate to its customers. In any case, the increase in labor costs in countries of mass production makes them less attractive as suppliers, even if the increase in living standards makes them potential customers. For companies, a relocation is therefore being considered, or even underway, for reasons of profit. The expected increase in production costs and certainly in sales prices could perhaps become bearable if new industrial jobs were created, broadening the potential customer base.

A global vision of national and continental production capacities

On an economic and industrial level, we are already witnessing a massive and agile redeployment of the production tool of several national industrial companies to produce other goods, as shown today by perfumers with gel and textile companies with masks without forgetting 3D printing… When there is still an industrial fabric, production lines, they can adapt.

Beyond the interests mentioned above, this time it would be a question of identifying on the one hand the core products (what the company exists for and what allows it to be profitable) and on the other hand the goods that could be produced in relay. To define the trigger conditions, the necessary resources and to prepare and test, in a continuous improvement basis, the decision-making processes to solicit these companies.

When the health crisis is over, when the economic dynamic resumes, it would probably be useful, in the light of experience, to identify which companies have been able to adapt their production tool, what they needed to do so. Always in return of experience to analyze the circuits of decision, which facilitated vs slowed down the industrial dynamics, etc. If the public authorities need to carry out in-depth feedback, as the armed forces and law enforcement agencies are very good at doing, it would be interesting for companies to also draw lessons. How have they joined forces, white collar and blue-collar workers, to serve the common good? What coverage of strategic needs can they ensure, either in core production or in redeployment? What global value chain do they need to be part of for this? What ca n they maintain for the next health crisis, because the probability of a new epidemic is far from negligible given what is still the behavior of humanity? What do they need for that? Elements of stability, points of reference in a very uncertain environment? Competencies trained throughout life, resources? Already, in parallel with immediate crisis management, executive and non-executive directors can document the time for feedback, strengthen their monitoring of their wider environment, identify their pillars, qualify degrees of uncertainty, etc. They will thus be ready to make the transition from emergency to novelty without delay.

Europe has been doing badly for years. More than ever, its members are tearing themselves apart, turning in on themselves. They forget how much they need each other. Because of and thanks to this crisis, Europe has perhaps found a formidable way of finding a raison d’être and a mission: to finally form groups of interconnected companies, cooperating on a continental scale. As competition is global, only supportive, interdependent groupings capable of producing locally, taking turns and cooperating to innovate and meet the challenges can exist in the long term.

And beyond the economic aspects, what do we want to live afterwards? To me, this is THE question. In Hebrew, the crisis “mashbèr” speaks of the delivery room, the birth room, a place of confinement where the possibility of a new world is at stake. It seems to me that a key message of the planet is there.

What is this new world that we now have the possibility of inventing ourselves, of creating ourselves, of giving birth to?

It seems to me that a key message of this crisis is to take care of the living, in all its forms. Humans are interdependent with wildlife. The Earth carries within it its ills and its remedies. A marine worm is a hope of breath thus of life for the human being. Plants are poisons and anti-poisons. They nourish when the growth cycle and the soil are respected

A new world in which there would be more balance between humanity, on the one hand, and all the rest of the living, on the other hand, preserving the planet?

The new world is thus one in which there will be more balance between humanity on the one hand and all other living things on the other, while preserving the planet.In order to build this new world, what kind of sorting must we do? What waste must we eliminate? Profit at all costs, the lack of respect for human beings, the demand for immediate satisfaction of every need, etc.? Moving from the (very) short term to the medium and long term. This questions us about what it means to be alive as a person, as a company and even as a State. An invitation to humility, to be anchored in humus.

How are we going to be more agile? How are we going to continue surfing on this magnificent wave of solidarity, generosity and creativity that we are currently experiencing? What do we learn from it? What are we going to do with it?

Are we going to go all the way and become fully aware of our interdependence?

Collectively, what values do we really want to live by? To continue to see the glass half empty, to criticize systematically, to be jealous of initiatives and successes? Or rather to be in the dynamic of change, to be mobilized to contribute to this new, to salute audacity and commitment? Let us listen to Gandhi when he says: “Be the change you want to see in the world”.

At the enterprise level, how can we continue to take advantage (benefit) from the learning and experience of autonomy that is being established through telework? How will this real-life experience of autonomy be able to last? The risk is that an attempt to go backwards, presenteeism, over-control… will demotivate, disengage and harm performance. How will the rules of delegation experimented at a distance last? In other words, how will something that had to be implemented by forced march, which is based on trust and alliance, last and become stronger?

How (and when) will companies decide to mobilize all the resources at their disposal to make the new world that is in the making real? How will they assume their individual and collective responsibility in this regard? How are States going to promote what is respectful of living things, by joining forces? This may seem like a utopia. This particular time invites us to change the software in order to act differently. Selfishness is completely powerless in the face of a destructive living organism.

I read this crisis as a war, far beyond the sanitary and economic war. It is a time, intense, that is reshuffling the cards, upsetting habits and challenging values. And after the war, it’s not the same anymore.

The “After” this health, economic and human crisis will not be the same as the the “Before”.

The question to ask ourselves, individually and collectively, seems to me to be: what do we really want to do afterwards? The responses of States, companies and individuals are all parts of the system that will have to function interdependently.

One article among others in France highlights “A scarcity of women with CEO’s experience, one of the profiles that companies are seeking widely for their board of directors”. This implies that in order to validly exercise a mandate in France, it is almost essential to have managed a company, at least a business unit? Not to mention the essential financial expertise… Do we often become CEOs after having been CFOs? Not so sure: that’s not the point here.

The purpose is to guide the gaze in another direction, to make people aware that there are many women with demonstrated leadership. All you have to do is look and see, open your eyes wide, even better your ears and your heart.

Other types of responsibilities may have been exercised and real added value may have been added to a Board of Directors/Supervisory Boards (BoD/SB). If this works for foreign companies, is it worth missing out on in France?

FIRST AN INTRIGUING QUESTION “A PREVIOUS CEO’S EXPERIENCE” FOR WHICH REASONS?

• Have already held a corporate office? For legal liability? For the complexity of stakeholder relations? For the loneliness of the leader? The reservoir to satisfy these demands goes beyond the scope of companies alone: without looking very far, chairing a non-profit organization already requires knowing how to play, or even juggle, with these components. And in many cases, with the added complexity of the absence of a strict hierarchical relationship…

• Have an ambition for the company, a sharpened understanding of its challenges, a strategic vision? Have the foresight to apply it in activities, taking advantage of transversality up to the operational level? In other words, being open to the environment of the company and the sector of activity, being in contact with its customers and more generally its external partners, its teams and in particular the managerial line and of course the directors? Here again, acquiring and cultivating skills can be done through other channels, other responsibilities.

In fact, it could be a risk. The non-executive director is not a CEO bis. Its mandate can thus be justified through skills that the CEO does not have, whether they are more specialized or from another perspective that enriches the debate.

ONE CAN HAVE SUCCESSFULLY MANAGED BUSINESS WORTH MILLIONS OF € ($) WITHOUT EVER HAVING HELD THE POSITION OF CEO.

This is the case of a contract/project pilot because this responsibility requires knowing how to act in
complexity, to find the right alchemy to satisfy paradoxical injunctions.

A multiple strategic vision.

• External: linked to the client’s environment, its transformations. This has to be taken into account to help the client succeed, decode and take advantage of power games, skillfully set up alliance strategies, ensure congruence in decision-making and the implementation/effectiveness of actions…
• Internal: that of the employing company, which has its own environment to decipher, its ambitions to satisfy, its power plays to take into account… For which an enlightened contribution to the elaboration of the strategic plan and a strong commitment in its deployment are expected.
The strategic evolution factors of the customer(s) may also be factors for the company… or not. It is necessary to be comfortable with this point to deliver value-added products/services.

Various operational constraints.

• Relational: adjusting customer interaction flexibly to meet justified needs, avoiding commercial risks and maintaining a relationship of trust over time, in other words knowing how to combine various relational modes
• Represent the company to the client
• Deliver product/service
• Continuously negotiate (many multi-year contracts/projects now mean a “permanent sale” within the framework of existing legal support. This requires acting as a value-added “advisor”).
• Partners: establish a balanced relationship with partners and service providers to ensure their long-term success, by securing their achievements (at stake: customer) and giving them sufficient visibility on their revenue so that they can organize themselves as effectively as possible. Proactive and reactive management.

• Managerial: exercise a functional and cooperative management, satisfying divergent demands. 

– Actively contribute to the development of teams (medium- to long-term progress, diversity in their activities) and optimize the quality of production.
– Find the right balance between immediate performance (working with those who already  know  how  to do) and  sustainable performance (and commitment) (taking risk)

1 The contract/project pilot has a wide range of skills

• Financial: dealing with the internal pressure that poses a multiple unknown equation:
– Always more profitability by producing at the lowest cost,
– Be 100% focused on satisfying the customer’s right need (medium term) and/or the need to sell (short term),
– Maximize customer contact while supporting non-productive internal activities that are essential to the smooth operation and her visibility inside her company.

A type of experience that therefore combines:
• strategic and operational,
• transversal vision,
• sales/development,
• production,
• management (people including paradoxical hierarchy, and performance)
In other words, significant challenges and risks to be controlled.

2 Skills of the true (?) CEOs

A downside? If you “fail” on a contract/project, you are not likely to sink the company. Not sure. This depends on the contract/project (e.g. share of activity) and the reason for the failure.

This is similar to what a large number of SMEs and even TWAs, depending on major contractors, are experiencing. Is it a strategic or operational error? Who/Where are the safeguards?

In terms of turnover and number of employees, many SMEs are “smaller” than multi-year contracts/projects. Managing a contract/project means managing a profit and loss account, ensuring the level of profitability expected by shareholders… with a team that is not always chosen.

So when you have successfully evolved in a complex universe and have been able to adapt to it, you are, a priori, able to find your place in the group that is a BoD/SB . Able to bring value to it thanks to the speed of adaptation and reaction to situations, to all the relational intelligence developed to successfully manage a contract/project.

These are indeed essential skills when dealing with stakeholders with diverse or even divergent interests. They are very useful to quickly understand what is at stake for the company, the alliance games within the members of the existing BoD/SB, to co-develop the strategy, to act in the most effective way to ensure its sustainability and development.
A contract/project pilot has all these skills.

If you agree to look in this direction, to open up to these talents, the “pool” of female non-executive directors immediately becomes much richer.

Where are the women… potential independent/external directors? Everywhere if you want to get out of the frame, out of the mold, out of the clone and dare (a little!) something different. Want to move forward? Innovation? Agility?

Where are the women… potential independent/external CEOs? Everywhere if you want to get out of the frame, out of the mold, out of the clone and dare (a little!) something different. Willing to move forward? Innovation? Agility?

________________________________________

1 What is valid at the board table can also be valid for managing a SME.
2. As a minimum, let us say from the lower third of the SBF 120 and all the ETI/PMEs

About the author: Founder of 2 consulting and coaching firms; professional background in major international consulting firms. Specialist of management and innovative change. Expert in transformation projects with high profitability. Seasoned experience in designing and developing a new business unit. Click here to view Viviane’s Short Bio