This is essentially the message of Sam Conniff Allende in his book Be More Pirate. It tells how modern-day “pirates”, people like you and me, reject some rules and create new ones, and can really make a difference. He explains everything by drawing parallels with what the real pirates did during the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean between 1650 and 1730. I invite you to watch one of his very relevant speeches in the following video.

Why rebel?

To rebel is first and foremost to offer alternatives. By refusing a situation, one questions its relevance, its raison d’être. One wonders or realizes who benefits from the situation. And one finds ways to make the system serve us, people, better.

Now, probably very few of you have dropped everything by mere rebelliousness. However, I know of several people who have built their careers on a simple feeling of revolt against a problem or situation that they thought was unacceptable, and they made it their main battle. I’m one of them.

But in this article, I’d like to talk about small revolts. Those we can do every day. Those that allow us to move forward or free us a little more when the structures in places won’t allow it. Small rebellions that push causes one step at a time.

What does it have to do with the world of work?

Why talk about this here? Because the workplace is an ideal battlefield for small, more or less harmless, but important, and meaningful acts of rebellion.

A lecturer, whose name I do not remember, once said that 100% of absurd regulations exist because of 4% of people who abuse the system. Difficult to check this statistic. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to believe that a majority of unnecessary corporate rules exist because of a history of a few dissidents who once crossed the line, tried to cheat, tried to manipulate the system to their advantage.

The rather sad result of all this is that 100% of employees must comply with these rules that were created because of a few negative troublemakers, who sometimes have left organizations years ago.

What I suggest is to become positive troublemakers to rebalance everything and change things for the common good.

Stirring up good trouble

The idea is obviously to get things to go forward. To create a reflection, to generate a discussion, to help highlight what is intolerable, what hinders us, what infantilizes us, and to question its relevance. And even better, to offer alternatives and new options better adapted to our realities. But often, it must be done quickly, because organizations tend to stifle popular initiatives. As my partner would say, you need to act faster than the immune system of your organization.

Acts of rebellion with the sole purpose of creating problems are not constructive. It’s all about stirring up good trouble. Let’s be idealistic and constructive rebels, not for the sole purpose of derailing the status quo, but for the realistic and reasonable purpose of taking ownership our work environment for the good of the company (and, of course, ours).

To inspire you, I found many examples of small acts of rebellion. I was able to identify patterns in the different ways that people did it. Here are 4 rebellious strategies I could find in these multiple examples:

• Highlighting the ridiculousness of a situation
• Turning the arms against the system
• Creating a situation that inspires reflection
• Realigning with your own values

11 stories of positive rebellions

These stories are not necessarily related to life at work, but they are all examples where people have created small rebellions that have allowed instigators to inspire rapid change, create important reflection opportunities, or to realign with their values.

Strategy 1 – Highlighting the ridiculousness of a situation

I often say that few organizations make the effort to looking at themselves in a mirror. It is easy to ignore situations when you have developed the reflex of looking the other way. Some people, however, take pleasure in putting a huge mirror in front of the eyes of organizations, often accompanied by a big neon sign that says “HEY EVERYONE, LOOK HERE”.

In short, highlighting the ridiculous removes any possibility of ignoring the situation for very long. As all eyes are turned towards the organization that faces ridicule, it must act quickly to save face.

1. Flowers in potholes

A resident of Brussels was fed up with the number of potholes he found in his town, which grew faster than they were repaired. The 29-year-old Anton Schuurmans, equipped with flowers, soil and a bottle of water, started planting flowers in potholes.

This act did not go unnoticed, as he explains that at least 1 of the potholes was repaired 2 days after planting a flower.

Mr. Schuurmans was not the only one to have had this idea, or he may have inspired others. This is a trend that has been picked up around the world since.

Furious cyclist plants flower display in gaping potholehttp://t.co/oRUgFWios8 pic.twitter.com/tFEe9Qy3n5

— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) March 30, 2015

2. Phallic potholes

A joker who calls himself Wanksy, in honor of the British street artist Banksy, has decided to push the ridicule even further. Rather than planting flowers in potholes, Wanksy, armed with a can of washable paint, draws phallic forms around the potholes of his city, to highlight the ridiculousness of the situation.

Although a representative of the city of Manchester stated that obscene drawings would not speed up the repair of potholes, the majority of those that received the phallic treatment were repaired in less than two days!

Anonymous activist “Wanksy” gets potholes fixed by drawing giant penises around them: http://t.co/BKTkoEv0eA #Smart pic.twitter.com/7WoxWYIiD2

— Lauren O’Neil (@laurenonizzle) April 28, 2015

3. Secret ninja exit

To my dismay, I do not remember where I had heard this anecdote. I once read the story of an office where a huge hole remained unrepaired on the ceiling somewhere in a hallway.

An employee who was tired of seeing that this damage was not enough to make the building management company react simply decided to print a poster saying “Secret ninjas exit” and install it next to the hole.

The following week, the hole was repaired. And while I searched for photos, I saw that he was not the only one to make this little joke!

Strategy 2 – Turning the arms against the system

It is sometimes effective, sometimes not, very often satisfying. Organizations that are so rigid in the respect of their rules can sometimes get beaten at their own game. These small rebellions make it possible to feel that we are doing our part to change things. Sometimes a person is not enough, but a mass movement can make a huge difference.

4. The high price of unsolicited advertising

We all receive advertising by regular mail. Often these unsolicited advertisements include a pre-stamped return envelope. It is no longer a secret that it is possible to use these envelopes to return the advertisement to the company. The pre-stamped envelopes are charged to the companies from the moment they are processed in the mail. Many websites provide ways to return the mail to the sender so that they pay for their own ads.

If a pre-stamped envelope costs $ 1 to a business, and 1 million people send all the ads back to the company, their marketing campaign may cost them more than what been budgeted! That’s the cost of polluting people’s mailboxes!

If 10% of the population began to do this in a systematic way, it is a safe bet that this practice would disappear rather quickly.

Meta-hacking of advertisement in a bus stop

Here I am not talking about computer hacking, but a more interesting form of hacking, which consists of claiming ownership of a system and giving it back to citizens / users.

A citizen of London has simply decided to appropriate a part of his city, more precisely an advertising space located in a bus stop.

In this little “meta” act of rebellion, the person replaced an advertisement with a poster explaining how to hack a bus shelter advertisement. See the result.

Tremendous.#adhackmanifesto https://t.co/BhuFksXjrv

— Owen Williams 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺 (@OwsWills) April 22, 2019

This act of piracy seems to be an organized and growing initiative. It is even possible to download the instructions in PDF.

6. The restaurant with 1-star reviews

In 2014, a San Francisco-area restaurant owner named Davide Cerretini decided he was tired of being at the mercy of Yelp reviews. At the opening of his restaurant, he kept receiving calls from Yelp sales representatives, and when he refused to talk to them, he noticed that freshly received 5-star ratings were disappearing from his restaurant’s Yelp profile.

Being of Italian origin, Davide knew this is exactly how the mafia works and simply refused to be a victim of this kind of machination. It should be noted that Yelp categorically denies allegations of removal of good restaurant reviews and points out its algorithm.

Davide realized that Yelp was completely controlling his reputation. To thumb his nose at the situation, he started using Yelp’s data to turn the system against itself.

He created a newsletter in which he compiled the worst messages he received from the Yelp elite (which he called the Village Idiots). He also made a list of the silliest questions received on Yelp.

Eventually, Davide realized that he could very well live by not caring about his reputation on Yelp. “What if I removed their power from me by making the situation worse?”

One day, he put a sign in front of his store: “25% off for all those who give us a 1-star rating on Yelp“. (Later, this discount is raised to 50%).

He knew it was against Yelp’s rules, and that’s exactly what he wanted. And that was fine because at that time the Court of Appeals had just ruled that the manipulation of ratings and reviews by Yelp was a permissible practice and that it was a form of “hard bargaining”, not extortion.

The owners of small businesses being furious with this news, they found in Davide their hero. Davide has been visited by an avalanche of journalists, fellow owners, and supporters. The same day, he did as much business as in a regular month. He even had to ask for help and had to pizza dough in nearby businesses.

The brilliance of botto bistro, the worst-rated restaurant on Yelp @jillkrasny http://t.co/46abq8pSrk

— Inc. (@Inc) September 23, 2014

Strategy 3 – Creating a situation that inspires reflection

Sometimes, provoking reflection can be enough to become an act of rebellion. Many people, probably all of us, do a lot of things without asking the question, “Why are we doing this, again?” It becomes a reflex, and we quickly stop listening to our original suspicions.

7. The toy that’s neither pink nor blue

When it’s the birthday of my godson or my niece, I still have a lot of trouble being inspired to find a gift. In general, I show up a toy store, and I seek advice from an employee on site.

But as these children grow older, it’s hard to ignore the pattern according to which that girls’ toys are pink and boys’ toys are blue. I know people who are much more militant than me about this. For my part, I wonder: what does it mean, what is being passed on to children by reinforcing these gender patterns, what impact will that have, etc.?

So, to derail this pattern, when I ask for help to find a game, I only specify the age of the child, without saying whether it is a boy or a girl.

The first time it happened, and this surprised me, the employee really wasn’t sure how to approach this. He suddenly had to find a toy which first quality was to be educational. I had feedback, however, that my gifts were much more original and interesting since I was doing this. For this reason, every year, at birthdays and Christmas, I repeat the same thing, and I make an employee suffer a little in a toy store!

8. The right to bare arms

The British Columbia Legislature made headlines last March, since the Sergeant-at-Arms had repeatedly asked women to cover their arms in the corridors of the legislature on the pretext that it was illegal to be bare-armed. He simply affirmed that he was applying the regulation dating from 1980.

This intervention did not fail to create an outcry that found its way into social media, thanks to the hashtag #barearms. And it did not take more for women journalists and other employees to come to work with bare arms.

The initiative failed to get more than a reminder of the dress code, but the reflection went beyond the walls of the legislature and was appropriated by the public.

Do we look unprofessional to you? Women in the @BCLegislature are being told our bare arms are unprofessional, do not constitute proper business attire for the halls of the House #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/1lJSWngP34

— Shannon Waters (@sobittersosweet) March 28, 2019

9. Ginette’s dress code

This is the story of a non-rebellion that really, really needed to happen. My partner Maurice was the one to instigate it as he was involved with a client’s business, and it prompted a lot of reflections. He noticed that several people were wearing a funny outfit in the office: pajama bottoms and slippers, jogging pants and running shoes. When he asked around, he was told “Ah! That’s Ginette’s dress code. “

He dug to understand a little better. The dress code was dating back to the 1970s when very short skirts were fashionable. It turns out that an employee named Ginette really loved to wear the shortest skirts she could find and preferred to walk barefoot. It was highly inappropriate in this type of business, so the owner created a dress code ONLY because of Ginette:

• Obligation to wear shoes
• Obligation to have your legs covered

For 30 years, this regulation was in place for ONE SINGLE PERSON, who had not been in office for decades, and this regulation was abused at will, to the point where, instead of using their judgment, employees wore whatever piece of clothing that allowed them to check both of these criteria. Pajamas and slippers. Let’s be honest, they looked even more ridiculous than Ginette at the time.

It will have taken an external consultant to start wondering why they were following this obsolete regulation that wasn’t made for them, and to resume the habit of using their better judgment.

Strategy 4 – Realigning with your own values

Sometimes, our rebellious instinct shows up for no other reason than because our values are constantly trampled by the structures in place. Human beings have a need to feel aligned and in harmony with their values. When this need is constantly denied, it becomes more and more suffocating, like a plant that lacks sunlight.

10. The non-ethical corporation

In doing my research on small acts of rebellion, I found a rather interesting short story. An employee working for a company that once had very ethically questionable behaviors could not agree to pretend that nothing had happened.

Since the company’s lobby had computers with Internet access, this employee made it a habit go on every computer and load an article about the company’s offenses, and the way it tried to hide or smother the scandal.

Now, this employee is probably playing with fire but still continues to work for this company. But he is certainly a little more in tune with his values.

11. A simple denial of the status quo

Again, while doing my research on small rebellions, I found a very refreshing testimony of a person who acts simply according to his values, even though they seem to be contrary to what is socially acceptable or encouraged in his entourage.

His small acts of rebellion consist of trying to look after the interests of others. Whether it is to hold the door for someone or to ensure that their interests are represented in a conversation where they can not be present but that concerns them. He tries to be fair to those around him.

It may not be a rebellion strictly speaking, but in a world (or a country) where it is everyone for himself, this person likes to believe that by showing genuine compassion and empathy towards his peers, he rebels against a cultural movement that encourages self-centeredness, entitlement, and hatred.

What lessons can we learn from all this?

NOBODY IS COMING TO SAVE YOU!

If you want something, in life or at work, you will have to get it yourself. And it is not always effective or possible to do it by conventional means.

Are there small rebellions that would be safer than an overthrow? What can you do to highlight the ridiculousness of a situation? Can you turn the arms against a system that slows you down or infantilizes you? What small gesture can help you generate a reflection or realign with your values?

What unnecessary or outdated regulations could you challenge? How do you and your peers claim ownership of your work environment?

It’s time to put your imagination to good use and to put in check your ability to tolerate what gets in your way.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

I recently spoke in a private event. A company created an internal initiative called The Innovation Week, and they wanted to ensure that the mindset of innovation kept going for the rest of the year. They hired us to give a speech on the matter. Here is a summary of our conference.

Soft skills at the service of innovation

Innovation is not an goal. It’s difficult to measure. “Our level of innovation has increased by 39% this quarter”, that does not exist. While teams can be dedicated to innovation, such as teams of intrapreneurs, for instance, it is also not an expertise you can find on a resume. There is no certificate in innovation, as far as I know.

Innovation is a mindset. It’s a set of reflexes that can be leveraged, using our hard skills, which is common practice, and our soft skills, which is a little less common. What I mean is that we often have the technical expertise to innovate, but not always the mental reflexes to stimulate innovation. There are technological tools for tangible innovations, we use them every day. There are also other tools – both practical and conceptual – to foster an innovation mindset.

Knowing this, we can say that innovation is a culture, or at least requires a certain culture to happen. We have identified 4 key points that are necessary to foster of an innovation mindset that will last over time: agency, intention-based leadership, our power of influence, and the ability to change intangible ideas into tangible projects by experimenting.

A culture that favors agency

Agency is one’s ability to deliberately affect their environment. Basically, it’s our power to act, to voluntary influence our surroundings. When people decide to wash the dishes because there are too many dirty dishes in their sink, they are being agentive. They take a deliberate action to improve their environment. It’s an innate behavior in humans. However, the workplace is one of the only places where this natural parameter is programmed to be disabled by default. At work, we ask permission to take action.

Agency is not the same as empowerment. Empowerment has its limits, and shows several differences with agency.

• Empowerment is a permission given by another person of higher hierarchical rank. Agency is innate, it is a mindset everybody is capable of, and it is deliberate.
• Empowerment can be withdrawn by your superior, by senior management, and anyone in between. Agency being a mindset, is permanent and can not be removed.
• Empowerment perpetuates the status of followers. Agency allows the creation of new leaders.
• Empowerment works as long as we respect the structure in place. Agency works as long as there is a will.

For more information on the subject, I wrote an article entitled Empowerment Is Not Enough, Go For Agency Instead.

A culture of intention-based leadership and leader-leader relationships

People behave according to the way they are treated. Have you ever heard a manager yell “This is a real kindergarten here!”? I guarantee you that this guy treats his peers like preschool kids.

David Marquet, from the US Navy, has tried the opposite. He had just received his rank of captain for the submarine USS Sante Fe. He had to deal with the worst crew of the US Navy. He stopped giving orders, and began telling his crew what he intended to do, and then let them decide how best to get there. This is called intentional leadership. In doing so, not only did he stop treating his peers as soldiers or executants, but he began to consider their expertise, their collective intelligence and their better judgment. He stopped treating them like followers, and began treating them like leaders.

In the end, his crew has collected the highest score of all armies combined in history. On average, in a submarine with a crew of 30, about 1 or 2 sailors eventually become captain. In the crew of Captain Marquet, 9 people became captains. Other captains began visiting her submarine to learn how to achieve such an accomplishment. This guy has managed to create a factory of leaders in a nuclear submarine, nothing less. This is the story I prefer to tell the most, having tried it myself in business, with very impressive results. I also wrote an article on the subject, titled The Colossal Impact of Leader-Leader Relationships.

Note that leader-leader relationships do not only go top down but also buttom up and horizontally. We can treat our boss the way we would like him to behave, and the same goes for co-workers.

A culture that leads people to develop their influence

Not everyone knows how to ask for something in a proper manner. In 16 years, my son will probably ask me for permission to use my car this way “Hey pops, give me the keys to your car”, and it will be with great pleasure that I will refuse him as a matter of principle because that is not a way to ask for something.

So my colleagues and I have devised a process in 3 simple steps that we like to call “How to convince anyone of anything“. This is often scary to managers, and in the end, they end up thanking us because it will save them 1 to 2 days of busy work a week.

If one has to innovate, one must be able to explain why he would do it. A company will not fund all the ideas that come to people’s mind. In fact, most companies will not be interested in people’s ideas until they can attach a dollar sign to it. So let’s see how we can improve that. It’s good for both managers and employees. There are 3 steps

1. Make sure your idea fits into their agenda

Everyone has an agenda, especially high-ranking people in businesses. They have goals to achieve, aspirations, and KPIs. They also have a gun to their head (figuratively speaking) that is brandished by someone higher than them. If you want to convince them of something, you will need to empathize and try to understand what THEY need to succeed. If you offer them something diametrically opposed to where they are going, it is almost guaranteed that you will have a no. So, basically, you have to see how the idea you are trying to sell helps your manager succeed.

2. Do the work for them

I know I know. It means having to work to get what you want. What we mean here is: give them all the information they need to make the right decision. If they do not have the information, they can not make that decision. They have things to do, they are busy, and have a gun to their head. Finding information to support your request is at the bottom of their to-do list.

There is plenty of information you can provide: costs, return on investment (tangible, like money or time saved, or less tangible, like other benefits such as increased retention, engagement, etc.), comparisons with what the competition does, etc.

A quick and efficient way to get this information is to fill out a Business Model Canvas. Here is a simplified version that we have created to gather important data when it comes to selling ideas. It takes 30 minutes to complete, you can do it with your colleagues, and it allows you to ask yourself the right questions, especially those we often forget.

Problem: What problem are you trying to fix?
Why? : Why does this problem need to be fixed?
Customer segment: For whom do you solve the problem? Who will this solution affect? (Customers, other departments, other teams, users)
Distribution channels: By what means will you set up your solution, communicate its value?
Solution: A summary of the solution you propose
Cost Structure: What will be the costs? What will cost what?
Key indicators: What should be measured to determine if the idea is successful? (Ex: Number of visits, number of users, traffic, customer satisfaction)
Return on Investment: A projection of the benefits you expect your idea to generate. (Ex: Increased customer satisfaction, increased sales, increased revenue by 3% to 6%, reduced workload, save 1 hour per day for employees).

Basically, when trying to convince someone of your idea, make sure that the only thing they have to do is accept and sign. Do not give them the burden of having to do the work for you. And even if your manager needs approval from above, you’ll have given him all the arguments he needs to convince his own boss.

3. Make it so that saying YES is easier than saying NO

Or, the alternative to this title: make it so that it becomes a bad idea, or completely stupid to say no. The goal is to put forward what it would cost NOT to say yes. Take every conceivable risk of not implementing your idea, make them visible, and known to everyone. You can even create a risk chart with your team or department. And when you make your request, with all your ROI information, give them all the risks it would represent not to go ahead with your idea. Risks that are known to all.

At this point, if the risks are higher than the costs, it is very likely that you will have a green light to move forward with your innovation or change. It is always possible for the answer to be no. But if one of the risks raised becomes reality, you can always tell your boss “We told you so”.

Encourage small controlled experiments

Most companies are allergic to chaos and uncertainty. They want to be CERTAIN, before making a decision, that it is the right decision. The problem is that no exhaustive analysis or study provides as much data as trying something out.

So, if you have almost convinced your boss to go with your idea, but that he’s is still hesitant, because it could be risky and we aren’t sure of anything (and also, gun to their head), offer him to do a small controlled experiment.

The two main advantages of these experiments are that they validate your hypotheses, and they test your riskiest assumptions.

SMALL: On a small scale. An experiment can be done on a small group of users, or by a small team. In technology, you can create a prototype on a local server with a partial database, for example.

CONTROLLED: An experiment is controlled when it has a time limit, success criteria, and a list of things you want to verify. You can even have a budget (in dollars or allotted time).

When the experiment is over and you have collected enough data, there are 3 possible paths:

1. Stop everything, we were wrong. It’s a good thing we did not continue, and we did not lose a ton of money on this idea.
2. Stop everything, and we move to the overall implementation because we were right and our assumptions were validated.
3. Another controlled experiment is required to collect additional data and or verify other or new assumptions.

Conclusion

A company that can gain and own these 4 mindsets has no excuse not to change, improve and innovate. A team mastering these 4 mindsets naturally has the necessary qualities to be a team of intrapreneurs. It could help you innovate where your competition does not. But hurry up. Your competition definitely is already innovating.

At GoPyrate!, we offer workshops to help teams acquire these reflexes and mindsets, and we offer practical tools to support them. Feel free to contact me if you want a conference on this topic in your organization!

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

Employee empowerment has the wind in its sails, but it also has certain limitations. Agency, however, goes much further in the development of your employees.

Empowerment

Definition of “Empowerment“
In the sphere of management and organizational theory, “empowerment” often refers loosely to processes for giving subordinates (or workers generally) greater discretion and resources: distributing control in order to better serve both customers and the interests of employing organizations.

Empowerment, according to Wikipedia

The concept of empowerment is not new, but I have mainly heard about it in the last 5 years. Companies, seeing that the command and control approach is equivalent to accompanying each employee towards the door one performance review at the time, changed their mind and began to think that giving more room for decisions and responsibilities to their employees could have a positive impact on their motivation and therefore their performance.

None of this is false. If we trust Daniel H. Pink’s works, intrinsic motivation is composed of three aspects: mastery, meaning, autonomy. It is this autonomy that is aimed at when a company or a manager take initiatives towards the empowerment of their employees.

The problem with empowerment

The great problem with empowerment is that this increase in discretion and decision-making power is granted to employees by a hierarchically superior force. A manager can choose to move forward with the empowerment of his employees, usually with the goal of increasing motivation, growth, and performance. Corporate empowerment is often an initiative of management, which is spread across various departments via a management and training structure.

That being said, what happens if a manager who is a big fan of empowerment leaves and is replaced by someone who is quite less benevolent? No more empowerment. The organization decides that it does not work? No more empowerment. The organization is bought by a multinational corporation that “does not believe in these things”? No more empowerment. And the fallout from these change of minds will be dangerous. One does not take back the freedom of motivated people without suffering the consequences.

In short, empowerment exists in a relationship of power. And the name says it. “I elect to give you more power.” I empower you. Captain David Marquet explains this problem very well in his book “Turn the Ship Around”, but through leader-follower relationships.

He argues that many leaders have the reflex of empowering their collaborators, but the consequence is that this further strengthens their own leader status, as well as the follower’s status. If the leader must be there, and must voluntarily and consciously confer more power to his followers, their empowerment is directly dependent on the will of the leader.

So, basically, empowerment consolidates, strengthens and maintains the status of followers of your peers, because they can not give themselves these powers. It will never turn them into natural leaders. Here lies the limit of the concept of empowerment in businesses.

Agency

Definition of “Agency”
In the social sciences and philosophy, agency is the faculty of action of a being; his ability to act on the world, things, beings, to transform or influence them. In sociology, agency is the capacity to act, as opposed to what the structure imposes.

Structure and Agency
In social sciences, there is an ongoing debate about the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behavior. Structures are sets of devices that influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. Agency is the ability of individuals to act independently of social structures and to freely make their own choice.

Agency and Structure and Agency, translated from French on Wikipedia

Agency is the ability of a person to make decisions and act on their free will, and to influence their immediate environment. It is more natural in some people, less in others, but it is something that one can work on and develop.

We can’t remove the agency of a person, unlike empowerment. You can certainly prevent someone from exercising agency, however, at our own peril, it would be like depriving a plant of air, water and sun. A person who takes a lot of initiatives and innovates shows agency. Limiting this person’s agency basically means turning him into a pawn, an executant.

Hierarchical and corporate structures are not always tolerant of people’s agency. As defined above, agency is the ability to act as opposed to a structure. But employees with a strong sense of agency will be those who stir good trouble. Those who question for the common good. Those who will go around or bend a few rules to create new ones, or bring value in a way no one would have ever imagined. Those who will take over part of the structure that does not work for them to improve or adapt it to their reality, resulting in the optimization of their team’s work and its efficiency. And all of this without asking permission.

Now, imagine an entire team that demonstrates an increased sense of agency, and that receives the research and development mandate in a company. The potential of such a team will be dangerous for the competition.

The advantages of agency according to GoPyrate

In our workshops, we like to tell the participants that we are there to help them develop their super powers. Because our goal is always to increase the agency of a team. The techniques taught are all meant to involve more the team in their own work as well as in business processes. 

This is also the reason why we push to use real cases that the team is (or has been) involved with. It helps ground the teachings their own realities. Every company is slightly different and, as trainers, we can’t cover every variant. But your own realities can. We don’t even adapt our teachings to your realities, but we help the team do it. That way they own what they learn a lot more, and their agency develops as their confidence with the material grows and as they can directly sees how all theses ideas relate to them in a very concrete fashion.

It’s all about growing their agency.

By capitalizing on agency development, teams become more autonomous, more engaged and more innovation-driven. They also learn to communicate more with management and become more involved with business goals instead of just executing orders.

You pay your experts quite a lot, better make sure that they can contribute to the best of their abilities.

Our training is very freeform. The first thing we’ll do will be a small retrospective: We look at what they tried so far and how did it go, what are the things that they’d like to improve at work, what are the greatest challenges. From that short session, we’ll have all the priorities of your team, and all the material we need to improve on what they learned as well as what new ideas to introduce.

That’s the key with our workshops : It’s all about you, your team, your company, your needs. 

It works well with engineers, but also with managers, salespeople, HR people, etc… Most of our clients are teams of managers.

Training a team takes time. In fact, it takes quite a lot of time outside the time we’re there. We’re just the tip of the iceberg. We aim to teach principles rather than hard techniques. We want people to understand how this work and what is the value for them, and then we let them experiment over weeks. That’s good for any company.

You need people that are curious, stimulated, and bent on improving. When the employees stop being alive, the company itself is moribund. Good training is stimulating and give them a jolt. 

If you’d like to know more about GoPyrate services, visit www.gopyrate.com

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

This short story, besides the fact that I’m one of its protagonists, really caught the attention, and inspired many in the room, to the point where quite a good amount of people have asked to meet me as a result of this event. And as a bonus, it is a tangible example of what it is to be an Everyman Leader, a leadership role that’s accessible to all and that you can explore further in the article Of the 3 Leader Roles, Which One Are You Perfect For?.

It happened a few months back…

While I was still a manager in a company, I received a LinkedIn connection request from a complete stranger. She explained to me, in private messages, that she just moved to Canada from India, where she was born. She was looking for a job as a business analyst and asked me if we needed her services in my workplace.

I told her that I couldn’t help her with such a position in my company, but that I would be pleased to put her in relation with some recruiters from Montreal who could help her a lot more than I could myself.

*badang*

Even though she lived in Toronto (she was ready to move anywhere in Canada), I almost heard her fall from her chair from where I was sitting.

“Why are you helping me?”, she asks.

She specifies : “I have more than 2000 people in my network, I have contacted dozens of recruiters and managers, and you are the first who one does not just answer me in the negative, but also offers to help me.”

I realized that I was simply acting the way I would like others to act with me if I were in her situation. It is not more complicated than that. I was surprised that she was surprised.

To answer her question …

“It’s five minutes in my day. But to you, right now, it means the world, and maybe even a career. Who am I to deprive you of this?”

She asked me what she could offer me in return. I simply told her to take 5 minutes, as soon as she could, to help someone in turn.

Being an Everyman Leader isn’t rocket science

Whenever people say they are not leaders, they are usually Everyman Leaders. You know, those people who will sometimes take a few minutes to help you, and who end up making your day? They are the ones. They are not always aware of their leadership.

It’s a leadership style that you can develop. I like to compare it to going to the gym or brushing your teeth. No one gets in shape by going to the gym a single day in the year, and you don’t avoid having cavities by brushing your teeth for 24 hours straight once a year. A few minutes a day are enough. The same goes to become an Everyman Leader.

The trick is pretty simple. It’s about being vigilant, and trying to find opportunities for helping someone. It can be anything: lend a book, send a video, help someone to do something, or, as in my story, introduce someone to people who could help them better than you could.

We become a good Everyman Leader the day we succeed in creating opportunities to help people before they ask for it. Sometimes even before they think they need help.

What if…

Can you imagine if everyone took 5 minutes a day, just 5 minutes, to help someone like that, what an impact we would have?

What’s stopping you from doing it?

PS: Today, this woman does not work in Montreal, but she got a new job 1 month later in Toronto.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

I could have titled this article The Destructive Potential of Leader-Follower Relationships, but sometimes I prefer to see the positive side of things, you know.

This article is based on the theory according to which people behave exactly the way they are treated. In short, if we treat people as leaders, they will behave like leaders. If we treat them as schoolchildren, they will behave as such as well.

At the time of writing this article, I am reading the book Remote: Office Not Required, a book about remote work, written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of 37Signals. Here is an excerpt from this book:

People have an amazing ability to live down to low expectations. If you run your ship with the conviction that everyone’s a slacker, your employees will put all their ingenuity into proving you right. If you view those who work under you as capable adults who will push themselves to excel even when you’re not breathing down their necks, they’ll delight you in return.

Source : Remote : Office Not Required, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

After reading this excerpt, I challenged my memory to find situations that could help prove this theory. I found some, and they are good ones.

The Corporate Kindergarten

In 2006, I worked for a few months for a company that was… special. It did not turn out to be a great experience, to the point where you won’t find it on my LinkedIn profile or in my resume. In this company, employees were treated as kindergarten children. No kidding. Just like a daycare.

For example, every Friday afternoon we had a 30-minute period where everyone had to actively clean their desk. It was not an employee initiative, but a business initiative, and it was mandatory. They would come and watch over to make sure it was done. Each time, it reminded me of the end-of-year days at the primary school where we used to clean our desks for the class that would inherit them in September. But these Friday afternoons are anecdotal compared to what follows.

Every day at 3pm (yes, our work schedule was from 7am to 3pm, you see, because the boss was an early bird, so all his subjects had to be too), we had to pick up our belongings, and wait in line near the door.

And when the boss was satisfied with the way the chairs were placed, the overall look of the office and our attitude, we had the right to leave the office and go back home.

So you imagine the kind of environment all of this generated. Many pretended to go to the bathroom at 2:50PM so that they could leave earlier, and of course, those who stayed were paying the price. Others would make it a point, in a spirit of contradiction, of joining the queue a few minutes late just so that the boss would also have to wait for them before leaving.

This company was able to successfully turn a bunch of adults into 6-year-olds. People were putting more energy into not getting caught by the bosses than doing their job. Small conspiracies, gossip, and denunciations had become the daily life of this business. After 6 months, I was the one with the most seniority there, because most ended up leaving or being fired. I did not wait for my turn to come, and like a rat following his survival instinct, I left the ship before it sank deeper.

This company still exists to this day. They moved, and changed their business model, but they still exist. I’m not really curious to know how they pulled it off. They probably deserved their school children. I do not know if their higher management learned anything from this situation.

Turn the Ship Around

On the other hand, I would like to give you a short summary of the work of Captain David Marquet of the United States Navy. Captain Marquet wrote the book Turn the Ship Around, in which he recounts his first experience at the head of a submarine.

David Marquet had been studying the USS Olympia submarine for months ahead of his captaincy. He had studied all the pipes, cables, parts, he knew the files of his crew members by heart. He absolutely wanted to be a good captain.

Some time before his nomination as the captain of the USS Olympia, he received a call informing him that he would instead be the captain of the USS Santa Fe, a newer submarine, but very different from the Olympia. Oh yes, and by the way, the crew of the Sante Fe was the worst performing crew in the entire US Navy. Just a detail like that.

Mr. Marquet, with confidence and pride, accepted the challenge. He thought that he would be a good captain, and if he gives good orders everything will be fine. So he became captain of the Santa Fe. On his first outing, the crew ran some simulations, Captain Marquet gave orders, the crew executed them, everything was fine. This was repeated a few times, without pitfalls.

One day, Captain Marquet decides to simulate a crisis situation. The idea was to pretend that the nuclear reactor of the submarine had melted, and that they had to return to port using the emergency batteries. During this exercise, Captain Marquet decides to add a little stress to the situation. He gives the order to adjust the speed to 2/3.

—  Ahead 2/3, he orders to his second officer.

His second officer repeats the order aloud, so that all may hear it.

— Ahead 2/3!

 Nothing happens.

The captain walks towards the officer in charge of executing this order, and asks him what is wrong.

— 2/3 is not a setting that exists on the Santa Fe, captain.

Captain Marquet turns to his second officer.

— Were you aware of that?
— Hem, yes
— Why did you give the order then?
— Well … Because you told me to…

Oh. It was at this point that Captain Marquet realized that the system was optimized for his officers to do whatever he ordered, in a nuclear submarine of which he knew nothing about and that spent most of his time in deep waters… “This is how we die,” he thought.

It took no more for him to gather his crew, and announce that from now on, he would give no more orders. He was going to announce his intentions. In short, rather than saying what to do and how to do it, the captain began to express the results he wanted to achieve, and then let his crew find the optimal way to achieve these results.

Captain Marquet adopted and maintained a leader-leader relationship with his crew. This dynamic allowed his crew to give free rein to their agency, their expertise and their sense of initiative. Captain Marquet started treating his crew members as the leaders they naturally were.

Guess what happened?

At the next evaluation of the crew, they got results that were not commonplace: they received the best score in the history of the army, all countries combined.

In a submarine crew of about thirty members, one or two officers on average eventually climb the ladder to become captains themselves. This represents 3% to 6% of a crew. In the crew of Captain Marquet, nine officers finished their career as captains. One in three!

Captain Marquet had managed to turn a nuclear submarine into a leadership factory.

From that moment, captains and crews from other naval units began visiting the Santa Fe regularly to see what was happening there. When he retired from the navy, Captain Marquet became a speaker and an author, wishing to share his story in other areas where it could be useful.

Obviously, I have removed a lot of details from this story by summarizing it. All of this did not work the first time, and the crew had to do a lot of trials and errors before finding what worked for them. But the essential is there.

Now, just do it

It was while reading the book Turn the Ship Around that I decided to change my career path and to return to a management role. I wanted to apply these principles. And I confirm, it works very well with a motivated team that craves autonomy.

Today, leader-leader relationships is a topic I talk about in my conferences, and I reproduce this approach in work units from all walks of life with GoPyrate!. Besides, we are very comfortable to compare traditional management to “telling children what to do”, and modern management to “trusting adults”. The same goes for leadership.

The world of work has everything to gain by getting rid of the tired old dynamic where it’s commonplace to treat employees like schoolchildren, soulless executants, obedient cattle…

We harvest what we sow, and we deserve what we harvest …

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

When I was asked (with a little too much enthusiasm) to make a speech, I started by saying “My departure is not bad news”. And it’s true for several reasons:

• I felt that I had done what I had to do for my department.
• I felt that I was bringing less and less value, having pushed the autonomy of my teams to its peak.
• The projects I had that were parallel to my work contributed more to my motivation and my fulfillment. I just decided to focus on what was bringing me the most value.
• This job helped to establish my Purpose and Meaning in life. It would have been absolutely counterproductive not to go all the way.

Having to explain this made me think a lot…

My problems with the turnover rate

As a manager, I was boasting that our department had an excellent turnover rate. And my departure was going to increase it. Yet my departure, as I said before my colleagues, was good news.

That’s when my thinking started and I discovered several problems with the age-old concept of turnover rate.

The turnover rate is reactive

It’s a bit of the same problem that I’ve already denounced with exit interviews. Although the turnover rate may be an interesting metric for many, it has little meaning over a short period of time, and requires people to leave their job for this metric to “work”.

But this metric provides no context. It is only an observation after the fact.

The turnover rate suggests that change is not welcome

It’s well known that you get what you measure. In this case, we measure the whether or not people stay in the company. It seems, at first glance, to be the right thing.

That being said, is the company moving forward? Are people progressing in their work? Have people had promotions? We do not know. But we know how many people have stayed.

We want people to stay in office. It is the objective. And that brings me to my biggest problem.

The turnover rate does not ensure that people are thriving

If the goal is for people to stay in office, what do we do with people who are miserable but still stay? And for whose who do not like their work? Who have aspirations? We tie them to their chair and cross our fingers?

Too often, I’ve seen companies keep people in a role they did not like, because they “didn’t want to lose them”, and guess what happened? They lost them much earlier then they thought.

For me, stagnation means death. The death of motivation, the death of self-fulfillment, and personal development. I’m the kind of person whose role is changing extremely fast. I need it. Can a company that optimizes for a good turnover rate help me in my journey?

Or, will the company try to keep me in a role I do not like, hoping that I bring as much value?

The turnover rate will soon be irrelevant

I have once stayed 8 years in the same company. Twenty years ago it was commonplace, nowadays, especially in IT, it’s almost unthinkable. And the trend will continue, and spread to other business domains.

People are increasingly looking for meaning in their work, and are now willing to make many sacrifices to fulfill their daily lives. Labor relations are expected to be shorter, or in another format. Companies that are very good (I will not even talk about companies of dubious morality) may have turnover rates of 60% in a few years, and it will be commonplace.

The question to ask is: are people leaving because of us businesses? Or do they leave because they no longer need us, to do things bigger than they could do with us?

When we’ll get there, I think the turnover rate will become irrelevant. People will grow, find meaning and achieve their dreams. The questions that companies will have to ask themselves will be:

• People who leave to do greater things, are they doing it in spite of us, or with us?
• How did we contribute to the emancipation of these people?
• Will these people be willing to refer people, or even find those who could replace them? Or have we broken this relationship by holding them back or preventing them from fulfulling their dreams?

In summary: Have we created an ambassador?

So I propose the emancipation rate

If I want to pretend to cultivate the awesomeness of people, I can not just keep people in office. I absolutely do not think this is beneficial. People with career aspirations will not all be able to develop in their role forever.

Isn’t it our job, we, the companies and their representatives, to make sure that our valued employees grow and thrive? Even if it’s in spite of us and our needs?

I know a ton and a half of companies that would rather have miserable employees in their jobs rather than help them grow, even if it could mean they might find work elsewhere. But I refuse their reality.

I sincerely believe that a happy person elsewhere is better than a miserable person who stays in office.

I sincerely believe that it is the duty of every manager and every company to raise people beyond their potential and their motivation to the risk of seeing them leave.

Will my recent departure bring a shadow on the company as it increases the turnover rate? I am one of those people who used his role as a stepping stone to accomplish important things for myself, for others, and for the world of work. I’m still talking about Marine Press saying “We”. I am still an ambassador for this company, I still refer candidates. It’s still my baby. I have elected myself as an ambassador for them. 

If I count myself among those who were under my responsibility, my emancipation rate is 75%. 75% of the people on my team who voluntarily left did it to flourish in other projects, and no longer needed the company for this to happen.

It’s a much more interesting metric for me. It proves that the company has done its part for happiness and fulfillment at work.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

“Do you have a minute?”

Who did not experience this situation? A boss or an HR representative wants to talk to us, and asks, “Do you have a minute?” as he heads towards a conference room or an office.

Aren’t these the worst 30 seconds of our life? “What have I done wrong, what will he tell me, I will have to update my resumé“. There’s a lot going on in someone’s mind between this question and the moment they sit on the chair.

And in the end, he just wanted to know how you were doing.

The reflexes of the world of work

The reflexes of the world of work have corrupted the manager-employee relationships. So many people are met by their boss only to receive bad news or “constructive criticism”. It’s now a reflex. My boss wants to talk to me, it can only be bad.

Except that…

Not all work environments are like that. Where I work, managers care about their people. It’s my job to care for them. My title (which I myself chose) is People Manager. My role is to create an environment where everyone can be at their best. And by that, I don’t mean “making the most out of them”. I mean them being at their natural best.

In short, I make sure that everyone:

• Are satisfied with their work
• Are motivated by their work
• Feel in control of their work
• Are going in the direction they wish to go 

To this end, I asked everyone what they need to be at their best. I know their criteria of success on topics such as culture, the work itself, the physical work environment, and working conditions. In short, what they need is known to me, and it’s my job to make sure they have what they need, or that they can get it themselves. It is a common understanding that we have.

And despite that…

Guilty of caring for people

A few days later, our Human Resources Director meets with the same colleague. 

“HR. Oh oh! What’s happening?”

Our HR Director wanted to make sure he was doing well, after a month with us. She wanted to ask him how the onboarding process was, and how it was going to the colleagues.

It was the first time in her life he was asked something like that after a month of work. It was the first time someone from HR was doing a follow-up with him.

But how did this happen?

We are at the point where we have to announce our intentions in advance when we want to talk to someone we care about.

We are at the point where a gesture of good will and caring for someone causes a reaction of fear and anxiety.

“Do you have a minute” is now the trigger of a Pavlovian reflex of fear at work. A corporative and organizational post-traumatic stress disorder.

I’m not trying to find who’s guilty. I’m looking for solutions. It’s our job, your job, benevolent managers, to break this.

What are you ready to do to fix this?

Managers of this world, it is your job to destroy this anti-pattern.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

A good part of my career’s antifragility resides, amongst other things, in the strength of my network. Mostly thanks to LinkedIn.

There are at least a few thousand articles on the topic of online networking. The good thing about this is that it allows readers to try multiple things and do short and controlled experiments, which is something one must master in order to become antifragile. The bad thing is, well, there are so many tips and hints everywhere, and some of them contradict one another.

So I’m not speaking as a LinkedIn expert. I’m speaking as someone who had no network a few years back, and who now has a very strong network, and all of this without being an expert. I experimented, I kept what worked, and discarded what didn’t.

How do I know it worked? Not necessarily because of the number of people in my network, but because the number of random people who would reach for me and say things such as “Your profile is so inspiring! How would anyone not want to work with someone like you?“

So, here is what worked for me.

1. Surround yourself with people who believe what you believe

While adding recruiters will definitely help you in case of a catastrophe, it isn’t enough to become some kind of influencer. Unless you are in the recruitment field, that is. You must find people who connect with your values. My first tip is to join some LinkedIn groups that are dedicated to the topics that relate to what you do (or what you want to do), and start discussions.

When someone replies, send them an invitation to join your network, with a nice presentation message. That’s a good way to do it. After you added someone, LinkedIn will also suggest other similar profiles that you can choose to add. 

Maintaining your network is a lot like leadership, hygiene and working out. It’s not something you do once or twice a year. Take a few minutes every day to do this. You will see a great difference after a few months.

2. Impressing people is not enough – inspire them!

Something that you need to remember is that your LinkedIn profile isn’t your résumé.

A while ago, most of my LinkedIn profile was a listing of my past experiences, and for sure, it was impressing people. It was somewhat efficient, but I thought it was missing something. A human touch. It was too cold, too strategic, too “this is what they want to hear”.

I then deleted everything and started over, and used my profile to tell people not about where I’m from, but where I’m going. I stopped talking mostly about my past experiences. I still kept the job history of course but I focused on what I learned from them rather than the responsibilities I had. I rewrote my whole profile by keeping my objectives, my why, in mind. My passion, my vocation, my why. And you’ll see that my summary contains a very nice Golden Circle (Why, How, What), inspired by Simon Sinek‘s work.

It was a game changer. Not only did people start writing to let me know of how inspiring my profile was, but they started asking for help and tips to improve their own profile. Sometimes they write just to let me know they wish we’d work together one day. I was impressed at how much a human touch could make a difference.

If you want more insights on how to improve your LinkedIn summary, I highly recommend downloading Jena Viviano‘s Ultimate LinkedIn Summary Template. It’s free, and as a bonus, you’ll see my face in it, as Jena displayed my own summary as one of her multiple examples.

3. Find content that supports what you believe, and share it

Nowadays, I’m really into organizational culture, humanization of workplaces, modern leadership and such. This is my niche, and everything I share supports my beliefs in these fields. People who are also interested in these topics, and believe what I believe, love it and share my content as well.

There are many ways to gather relevant content on a given topic. Medium.com is an incredible source of articles. You can also create Google alerts on any kind of combination of words and it will notify you when related content is indexed. And just as I stated above, LinkedIn Groups will also come very handy to discover new content.

For sharing the content you found and like, I suggest using a tool such as Social Pilot or Buffer to organize the content you want to share on social media. These tools can automatically post for you at any day and time you deem the best. Very handy for when you’re busy working!

You like what you’re reading?
Book us for a conference on this topic!

4. Become an everyman’s leader on LinkedIn

An everyman’s leader is someone who helps as soon as there is an opportunity to help. You’ll find plenty of those on LinkedIn. I try to be this guy. In my case, half the time, it’s just people who reach for me and want to have a cup of coffee with me to get to know me. I’m always happy to oblige! It also creates more opportunities to help.

One very easy way to help someone it to introduce them to someone else who might help them more efficiently than you could. Both these people will remember how they met, and they’ll remember you.

It’s important to never ask for anything in return. If you do something for someone else only to ask something back, you’re doing this for the wrong reasons, and you’re certainly not being a leader. And by helping others for the sake of helping others, know that in the eventuality that you might desperately need something, your network will be there to pay it back to you.

For more information on everyman’s leaders, and other leadership roles, read this article by my friend Maurice Lefebvre: Of the 3 Leader Roles, Which One Are You Perfect For?

5. Engage with people

Recently, I figured that asking questions on LinkedIn was bringing me a lot of likes, comments and views. Not that I care really for those: comments, likes and views are less important than helping people or generating discussions, but it’s a good metric of success.

I simply figured that by asking questions, I was creating new opportunities to help people. And it does.

Also, observe what’s happening in your network. Read the comments on other people’s posts. There are tons of people there that could benefit from knowing something (or someone) you know. Don’t wait for people to ask. Reach for them directly!

In conclusion

This quote is one of the most important about networking, and there’s a very good leadership dimension to it that I really like:

The true value of networking doesn’t come from how many people we can meet but rather how many people we can introduce to others.

– Simon Sinek

Help others, and do it because it’s the right thing to do. This habit is not a networking habit, but a leadership habit, so it’s a pretty good one to adopt! People will eventually reach directly for you. That will be the first indication that your network is getting pretty strong!

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

It was a wonderful experience, the audience was incredible and we got a lot of feedback. To my surprise, we were applauded twice during our talk. Quite destabilizing, but I guess it meant we were saying or doing something important!

I would like to leverage this amazing experience by sharing the content we presented. In this post, you will find all the topics we talked about.

Contextual setting

Olivier Fortier

Author of this post. Having experienced lots of pain points in my career, I once decided that I wouldn’t be a victim anymore. I’d use my pain points to propel myself. And my biggest pain point was that only in very few companies are people taken care of properly. Fixing this became my vocation.

Today, I’m an empowering manager at Marine Press, and I spend a lot of time and energy on inspiring my network to adopt a more human approach at work. The rest of the time? I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

I write about my adventures, experiments and reflections on this blog, Primos Populi. Which means as you have probably guessed, “People First” in Google Translate language. 🙂

Marc Roussy

Marc is a developer specialized in cloud. He’s been working for Marine Press for close to a year, and he was able to witness the transformation of his department. He’s been in the software development for 15 years, was active in 5 different industries, and survived multiple management styles.

For Marc, Marine Press is an environment where he can thrive and work on what he loves. When he was approached by Olivier to speak at Spark the Change, he was delighted to have the opportunity to share the way his department evolved.

Marine Press of Canada

Marine Press is a company that develops products that facilitate maritime navigation, from the ship’s deck to the office that manages fleets. Our headquarters are in Montreal, and we also have offices in Singapour, and soon, Japan.

One must know that the maritime world is slightly reluctant to new technologies, which are adopted a bit slower than other transport domains. This reality gives us the opportunity to more than just developing products: we build technological solutions to help introduce the maritime world in the 21st century.

Before: Marine Press, a little over one year ago

One big team

At the time, the Products and Technology department of Marine Press had only one big team. I’ll use a quite obvious pun, everyone was in the same boat. The team was composed of developers, quality assurance expert, data and Geographic Information System experts, design

and User Interface / Experience designers, product managers… You can imagine it was quite a challenge.

It was quite hard to coordinate anything and take decisions unanimously. It was also quite difficult to put oneself forward in such a big group, as one’s contribution was quite diluted and hard to measure. The size of the team would make it subject to misunderstandings, as the complexity in communication can be quite exponential.

In a team of two people, there is only one direct connection. In a team of 5 people, there are 10 connection possibilities. In a team of 12, there are 66 connection possibilities. It’s important to understand that all those connection possibilities are open doors to misunderstandings and miscommunications. This is why the easy “2 pizzas” rule is interesting to determine the proper team size. If you can’t feed your team with 2 pizzas, the team might be too big. With 2 large pizzas, you can feed between 5 and 7 people.

I encourage you to read about the Metcalfe law, which explains the concept of network effects more in-depth.

Traditional titles

This big structure was reinforced by traditional titles as well as the hierarchy they go with. We used to have junior, intermediate and senior developers, technical leads, architects, etc. Such a structure was greatly limiting the possibility to innovate. As one could expect, a good idea had to climb the ladder to get an approval, and the decision had to climb down. It wasn’t unusual for an idea to die in the middle of this process.

Since a lot of people had to give their input in the decision-making process, it was heavier and slower and didn’t encourage anyone to make decisions. In fact, this system was optimized so that people would ask for the permission to do their job (which is taking initiatives and making decisions).

The hierarchy in this environment would also create the Gorilla in the room syndrome. Have you ever talked with a team, and asked them a question, only to see all the heads turning towards someone in particular? That’s the Gorilla in the room syndrome. It’s the perception that people aren’t entitled to an opinion when some kind of “lead” is in the place, so they turn to this person immediately rather than use their judgement or initiative.

A traditional management approach

Nothing surprising here: the management approach was quite traditional. The decisions were taken at the top, and the action happened at the bottom, and everything had to go through many hierarchical levels created by the traditional titles.

And employees? They’d wait for someone to give them something to work on, just like nestlings waiting for their mom to feed them (and also, they didn’t know how to fly by themselves either). People were told what to you, why to do it, when to do it and how to do it.

In short, everything relied on people’s attitude of subordination.

Low level of ownership

Of course, by being told what to do and how to do it, people would quickly become disconnected. When no one feels responsible, why would anyone long for taking new responsibilities? For a developer, it’s quite difficult: it’s like being perceived as a coding machine, or a code monkey.

Since initiatives were limited, people’s interest was also limited, as well as their engagement. This environment wasn’t creating many opportunities for ambitious people and go-getters.

The first round of initiatives: The first steps towards an environment of increased ownership

Please note that Marc and I arrived at Marine Press during this phase. A series of initiatives were taken to foster an environment where people would be comfortable taking more ownership. Hiring me as a technical manager who is more focused on people rather than technologies was some kind of statement: we want to change to help you grow, not to tell you how to work. Here are these initiatives.

Creation of squads

If a team is traditionally a group of people of the same expertise, a squad regroups multidisciplinary people of various skills who are working towards a common goal. This concept was made popular by the Spotify Model, that a lot of companies try to reproduce (and I would suggest to find what is it from this model that works for them, and come up with their own formula).

We created one squad per product, and also support squads, that are of service to the product squads. To this day, we have 3 product squads and a total of 8 squads.

The number one quality of a squad is that it’s self-organized and autonomous. Squad members have all the necessary authority to take the necessary decisions. No one tells a squad how to organize their work. It’s their responsibility to create, optimize and maintain these processes. Moreover, product squads are in part owner of their product, meaning that the squad is a stakeholder of its product, in collaboration with other groups in the organization. In sum, they are actors in the life cycle of their products. Not victims.

Contrary to a big team (where everyone is on the same boat), squads have more in common with a navy carrier group. While all ships are going in the same direction, each ship has its own crew, can go at a different speed, use different tools and technologies, and correct their course without putting the entire fleet in jeopardy. Each vessel can have precise objectives that support the fleet goals. It goes without saying that it’s a much more interesting and much less fragile strike force. If for a reason or another, a squad was to disappear, the rest of the fleet could continue their voyage.

Self-organization of squads

It’s worth spending some time discussing the concept of self-organization. First of all, working as small entities leaves much more flexibility for the squads. No need to ask 27 people every time a decision needs to be taken, as there are between 5 and 9 people in squads. There are no one size fits none processes either, as squads are responsible for their own processes. Self-organization also leaves some room to inter-squad negotiations and collaboration.

Self-organization also allows for collaborators to diversify as well as optimize the value they bring to the organization. Squads are 100% responsible for the product they deliver. They are composed of people who have all the necessary skills to deliver the product. The squad members don’t have a fixed role with fixed tasks. Everyone is responsible for the delivery, and we expect that they will do everything that is necessary to deliver. Which means that they will sometimes have to do things outside of their field of expertise.

One of the main benefits of squads is that they are living, breathing organisms that evolve and grow. They can be created organically to answer to a new need. And a squad could also dissolve if obsolete, and be reborn under another format without putting the organization in danger.

A system that leverages ownership

Since a squad is part owner of its product, each squad member has the possibility to put forward their passion when making decisions, while having a real impact on our business domain. As squads participate in making decisions, squad members do the work because they decided what had to be done because they believe in their product, and volunteer to do their work, rather than doing it “because we were told to do so”.

It goes without saying that work that’s done voluntarily and with pleasure as one takes ownership of it is generally done better and is of greater quality.

Titles give way to roles

Rather than using traditional titles, Marine Press started leveraging people’s role. The difference is significant. While a title is static, fixed in time and is very much linked to the infamous job description, a role is much more organic, evolutive and voluntary. Someone’s role is determined by their interest, their capacity to bring unique value. When we say someone does something “because they believe it has to be done”, that’s their role taking shape.

Here’s a concrete example: I manage developers. Nothing in my job description says I need to talk about organizational culture, or that I need to create a work environment that’s psychologically safe. No one asked me to treat others as leaders rather than followers. I do it because this is what I believe in, and it has to be done. It’s the same for all of us: everyone can forge their role in our department, as long as it’s relevant and needed.

We also flattened hierarchy to a certain extent in squads. All squad members are developers, in the sense that they develop a product. It doesn’t matter much if they have the experience of a junior or of a senior. Everyone’s advice is considered equally. It’s the relevance of what is communicated that matter here, not rank.

Leveraging roles also created something rather incredible. Entitled leadership (that’s determined by one’s position of power) made way to people’s natural leadership. Everyone’s leadership started emerging naturally.

We could witness the birth of different styles of leadership that we didn’t know existed among our colleagues. There is some technical leadership, which is expected in our domain. Product-oriented leadership emerged for a few people as well, who happened to have an increased interest towards our products and their evolution. And, finally, we could see social leadership emerge, as a few people started showing how much they care for their squadmates and other colleagues, and now try ensuring we have a more sane and safe work environment. They really do care about people’s happiness.

What we believe: The theories behind what we’re set to accomplish

The initiatives above took place before Marc and Olivier started working at Marine Press. For our presentation, we wanted to crystallize the principles behind these initiatives. In short, what do we believe in?

Innovation in management

Have you heard of the Peter Principle? In short, it’s the theory according to which, in a closed system, everyone who gets promoted will eventually end up being incompetent. Meaning, they will all end up in positions in which they won’t be good because these positions require skills they simply don’t have.

And an incompetent person will stay in this position forever, as they won’t be able to get promoted since they are lacking the skills to make it happen.

In a context closer to me, a good developer will certainly be promoted to senior developer, and eventually to tech lead, maybe even director! But oh wait, being a director, you need to take care of people and you don’t know how? “I got here because I’m good at coding, so I’m just going to tell them how to code!” would be a quite popular answer to this equation. And the answer is wrong. That not how you help people grow.

To counteract its Peter Principle, Marine Press decided to hire me since I’m a manager who takes care of people, rather than being one who tells them how to code.

Marc, for example, declared during our speech that for the first time in his life, he was having no technical discussion with his manager. All the time we spend together is entirely focused on Marc, his ambitions, his aspirations and his potential. Last winter, after I asked him “What would you like to improve?”, Marc answered “I’d like to be better at speaking in front of people”. And a few months later, we were speaking at Spark the Change Montreal in front of many dozens of people.

Back to innovation in management now. One must know that I’ve never had any formal training on the topic. I ended up as a manager almost by chance. I always managed people “the way I needed to be managed earlier in my career”, rather than simply reproduce the patterns of traditional management. I like to compare my work with making experiences on human beings, in a safe and sane environment, and with curiosity while keeping the focus on people’s well-being. Something works? Keep doing it. It doesn’t work? Stop it…

Making people awesome

It’s the first guiding principle of Modern Agile, a more recent and refined of Agile that is less centred on technologies. Making people awesome. This not only means investing energy in making employees better employees but also making your boss a better boss, making clients better clients, making candidates in interviews better candidates.

It is simply the idea according to which it is our duty to help people grow, no matter their role. People are the heart and blood of a company. We might as well take care of them.

Making psychological safety a prerequisite

It is the second guiding principle of Modern Agile, which I keep very close to my heart. What do we mean by psychological safety? It’s the possibility to say “I don’t know”, “I need help”, “I screwed up”, “I was wrong” without fearing for our safety or our job. The idea is to put the emphasis on the lessons learned rather than blame for the problem.

How can we make the whole company gain from the mistake we made, or by asking for help?

Please note that we are still careful and try not to make mistakes, but not because we are scared of making them.

Lowering the center of gravity of the decision-making process

That’s a long subtitle, but the words carry a lot of meaning. I adopted this expression after seeing it on some website, and I thought it was so powerful and relevant that I made it my own. Sorry for the person who used it first!

I base this principle on to fundamental beliefs that I have :

1. People who are the closest to a problem are best suited to resolve it
2. People who will live with the impacts of a decision should, at best, make the decision, at worst, be included in making the decision.

This makes a huge difference in the work environment. If people don’t end up doing what they said they would do, you can imagine there is a big difference between “Hey, what did you guys decide again? You’re not doing it” and “Hey, what did I tell you again? You’re not doing it”.

What strengthens this belief further is that for people to put their brain together and make a decision for themselves, they actually need to care for their team and the company. By never giving your people the opportunity to make decisions, you give them an excellent reason not to care about their work. And I’m weighing my words here. We can’t underestimate the power of the disengagement that will ensue when someone thinks “Nobody listens to me anyway”, or “They never ask what we think anyway”.

I’ll conclude this topic by quoting the former president or Starbucks :

“The person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom”.

– Howard Behar

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Now: What did we do to apply these concepts in which we believe?

We had to take a few actions to apply all these concepts in our day-to-day. Here are the initiatives that were taken to concretely put these principles into action.

A squad of managers working for employees

I could write a very very long paragraph here, which would say the same thing as a post I already wrote in the past. It was the post that started it all, and that made us apply as speakers for Spark the Change. I invite you to read this post titled Turning the Tides – A Squad of Managers with Employees as Stakeholders, which covers everything we talked about in this portion of our speech.

Our employee handbook

We were 2-3 managers discussing in a room when one of us asked: “Hey do we need an employee handbook?”. The rest of us cringed. There was an unanimity of prejudices towards employee handbooks. Since we like to challenge our reflexes, we made a list of the prejudices we had :

• Employee handbooks generally focus on what you’re not allowed to do
• People read it once, and it ends its life at the bottom of a drawer and people do what they feel like anyway
• When someone actually takes it out of the drawer, it’ll often to prove someone else wrong. “See? It says you’re not allowed to!”

We didn’t go much further since we were doing pretty much alright without an employee handbook so far. Right after I left the room, the first thing I see is this poster that I put up on the wall a few months back. The poster says this :

You have the right to

• Take a decision you think is the right decision to make.
• Start something that needs to be started.
• Ask for help whenever you want it.
• Help others whenever you can (even if they don’t ask for it).
• Take time off to do something that inspires, excites and energizes you.

“Here’s our employee handbook right there”.

Only positive things. The incarnation of common sense, coupled with our faith in people’s judgement. We had a few more printed and displayed them for everyone to see in the office. If you’d like to buy one of these posters published by Simon Sinek, you can download it on Gumroad by giving any amount of money you think it is worth.

The Wall of Enlightenment

Non, we didn’t start a sect! Here again, I’ll reduce the length of the present post by referring you to an article where everything has already been explained: Making Psychological Safety a Prerequisite in the Workplace.

It is important to note that even if the environment is safe, not everyone is comfortable sharing on the wall, and we’re good with this. It certainly isn’t mandatory. Also, I knew it was a success when our CEO came here and put his own epic fail on this wall.

Hack-a-thon

A concept that gaining in popularity. It is a gathering of developers where everyone works non-stop for 1 or 2 days on a product or a project of their choice. It is generally an excuse to lock yourself in a dark room with your headset on and eat a lot of pizza.

Marine Press had its own hack-a-thon, and the only directive was that the project or product had to be related to the maritime industry. Almost everyone was interested in participating, and it created an amazing opportunity to work with colleagues we didn’t work with before. For the organizations, this has an interesting potential as people could create innovative products that the company could eventually sell.

Innovation Fridays

Inspired by Google’s approach, people can invest their Friday afternoons on anything they want, as long as it brings business value to the company.

This could be, for instance, fixing non-prioritized bugs, learning new technologies, optimizing code. The results are pretty interesting, because those improvements are pretty insignificant individually, but taken as a whole, they have a much more interesting impact.

Hiring process

When the time came to find new colleagues, we elected to renew our approach. In the past, we were selecting developers mostly based on their technical skills, and we neglected way too often other soft skills. Not taking attitude into account cause us some problems. This time, we decided to meet the challenge and hire for both attitude and expertise. We simply adopted the following mindset: we are looking for people we’d like to work with, not code monkeys.

To that end, we had to decentralize the hiring process. Our colleague in HR is very often overwhelmed with work, so she was happy to delegate. Since developers will spend 40h/week with this new colleague, it only makes sense that they choose who to hire. So, we agreed that developers should sort the candidates, tell me who to contact, and would run the interviews. I would only have a role in the first contact with candidates, just to measure their interest and understand their aspirations and see if our paths are meant to cross. Other than that, I would simply book the interviews.

Candidates had to do a technical exercise at home, in their own environment where they are comfortable and relaxed. They would decide when to send us the solution. Simply the opposite of those stressful tests made in an office you don’t know with hardware and software that you didn’t configure yourself. We are trying to reproduce what really happens when we work. Yes, it includes having access to Google. The idea is to understand how the candidate thinks, not if they are able to come up with the right results.

Having suffered from interview processes that are less and less human, I was categorical: our hiring process must be more human than most hiring processes, and I think we were able to do a pretty good job. It gave an interesting push to our employer brand as well. Some candidates what were not selected liked the hiring process so much that they referred some of their friends to us. We created ambassadors for Marine Press just by interviewing people. I’m still impressed by this unexpected consequence.

You can still an example of the job opportunities we are using on the Marine Press website.

What can you do?

This part is meant for managers, directors, decision makers, leaders. What can you do to concretely create an environment of ownership in your department or organization? The Roman poet Ennius said: “The good is mostly in the absence of bad“. Rather than changing all your organization at once and risking everything to try and find the best solution, start by changing a few bad habits that harm or reduce ownership. You will see that it is much easier, less risky, and it pays off more quickly. Here are a few tips and tricks.

Learn to let go of control

There are people who really love control. Not only controlling people, but also information. Knowing everything at all times. Putting in place processes for control. Some companies even hire people to control other people. How much do you think this costs? Control is much more expensive in terms of money and morale than trust.

Trust doesn’t cost a penny. On the other hand, control can cost you your people’s trust. Control creates limitations. Trust removes them and allows people to go further. Just like leadership, painting or athletics, trust isn’t something you learn in one day. It needs to be practiced every day. Start today!

Try to be less and less useful

I know, scary, right? Managers very often end up being silos, and at the same time, indispensable. I wrote a quite detailed post on this topic: Being Indispensable is Dangerous; Make Yourself Essential. But start with your immediate environment. You’re a manager and everything has to go through you? You are a risk to your team and to your company!

If it’s the case, your value is determined by how much it would cost if you left. Is it really the value you want to have? Don’t you want to be recognized by the value you actually bring to the organization?

By working on your team’s autonomy, you will be less useful to them. You will be able to work on tasks that bring more value while your team is in action. You will even be able to take your vacations without stressing out. And let’s be honest: as a manager, if the members of your team can make decisions by themselves, without you, it means they are autonomous. It also means that you succeeded.

Remove limitations

I wasn’t the only one to say it at Spark the Change: 100% of rules exist because of 4-5% of dissidents. Are you ready to penalize 100% of your colleagues for 4-5% of dissidents who will probably end-up removing themselves from the equation? I’m not.

Rather than using the old ball and chain on your colleagues, give them a springboard! Opportunities to innovate, to be creative and bring unmatched value to the organization are very often blocked by limitations. It is a very common antipattern to see organizations brag about innovation and creativity, only to adopt limitations that will kill any hope of innovation way before it can emerge.

If you want to learn to let go of control, as I suggested above, it also means letting go of limitations. Companies hire people who have extraordinary skills, and the first thing they do it restrict them. Let’s trust people’s judgement. And don’t forget: people focus on what we talk about. If you only talk about what’s possible, it will stick in their imagination. If you only talk about what’s not allowed, that’s the only thing they will think of.

Do not treat your employees like children

This may sound obvious when I say it. But I can swear to you, it’s not that obvious. When someone is treated in a certain way, they are encouraged to follow this pattern and act accordingly. Do you want to work with leaders? Treat people like leaders. You will see a difference very quickly. A leader who treats people like followers will get followers. For my part, I prefer to treat people like leaders. One thing is certain: every person you hire is an adult. Treat them like responsible adults.

While I was speaking, I had a quick trip down the memory lane, and I remembered a very good example of this. In 2006, I worked for a company that was treating us like kids. It was a real kindergarten. When the day was over and it was time to go, we had to line up next to the door, and at 4 PM sharp (and not one second before) we would receive the permission to leave. What do you think was happening? Every day, people were acting like children: they’d find ways to flee earlier. They would pretend to go to the bathroom 5 minutes before the end of the day to leave earlier. This company was reaping exactly what they kept sowing. I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t stay in that place for very long…

3 key takeaways

If you had to remember 3 things from our speech, we would like them to be this :

1. People are the heart and blood of organizations. What would your company do without its people? Keep your heart healthy: take care of your people!
2. Trusting our colleagues costs much less and is much more fruitful than control
3. Don’t give your people a reason not to care about their job

And now, please imagine how it would be if ALL your colleagues, from the janitor to the CEO, profoundly loved their job and really wanted to be there every day. Can you visualize it? It’s up to you now!

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

The traditional way to manage people is easily identifiable. In a traditional context, people are generally called “resources” just like chairs and printers would be. Sometimes, they are referred to as “assets” and even “human capital”. If they are assets, why don’t we sell them to get some money and increase stability? Oh, you can’t and shouldn’t sell people? Well, the benevolent leader believes that we shouldn’t treat people like objects of numbers.

Now that we defined what a benevolent leader is, let’s dig a little deeper discuss the benefits and disadvantages of benevolent leadership.

The benefits of benevolent leadership

The benevolent leader is appreciated

For leaders who don’t care much about power and prefer to be appreciated by being of service to others, this is the main advantage.

We all had, in one job or another, a boss who was feared by everyone. How was that going for you? Did you ever invite him for a drink? Did you ever tell him about your awesome weekend? Would you have gone to him if you needed help with a personal problem? Asking these questions is pretty much answering them. The benevolent leader will experience these things. He isn’t feared. People trust him.

Employees love their job

Let’s be honest here: 80% of people who resign actually leave their manager. It happens less to benevolent managers. Without surprise, people enjoy being treated as human beings in their workplace. They like that how they feel and what they aspire to aren’t inconveniences but something to be considered when making decisions.

I know it may seem super obvious the more I repeat it: people don’t like being treated like objects or cattle… However, I assure you that it happens every day, even in the best organizations. Let’s not forget this.

Employees feel safer

A benevolent leader will generally adopt a growth mindset and focus much more on the lessons learned after a failure than the failure itself. This leaves more room for learning and continuous improvement. The benevolent leader creates a psychologically safe environment for his employees.

The benevolent leader knows to show and leverage his imperfect and vulnerable human side. He makes mistakes too and isn’t afraid to talk about it openly. What’s good for leaders is good for others as well, so he leads by example.

The benevolent leader can create ambassadors for the organization

“Wow! I’d really love to have bosses like yours”. Does this ring a bell?

It is likely that some employees will try to have their friends hired in the place because their managers are using a more human approach, and they like it. You might even observe situations where candidates who were interviewed (and might not have been chosen for a position) will refer someone to your organization. I’m not inventing anything, as I lived it myself.

Treating people in a proper manner isn’t only the right thing to do, it also gives you a serious advantage over your competitors. People will talk about you in a very positive way, and others will want to come and work with you. Isn’t it refreshing?

Employees volunteer to do their work

And this happens primarily because the benevolent leaders generally have the reflex to include their colleagues in the decision-making process. People who feel included and know they can participate at any time will see themselves as actors in their work, not victims of it.

Victims tend to wait for someone to give them something to work on since they already accepted their faith: they have nothing to say, can’t choose what to work on, and can’t suggest anything… Those who are actors of their work aren’t doing it “because they were told to”. They do it because they have been given the opportunity to want it, to believe in it and to make a difference and have an impact on their product or clients.

The disadvantages of benevolent leadership

Making difficult decisions seems… more difficult

Benevolent managers are still managers, and they too will have difficult decisions to make from time to time. Letting someone go, for instance, is sometimes necessary and it will probably feel it’s in contradiction with their management style.

Even if, according to a lot of people, there isn’t a good way to let someone go, there is always a way to make it more human. How? I’m not even sure of this myself, and it always depends on who we’re dealing with. One must also trust his feelings.

At any rate, one shouldn’t forget that a difficult decision must sometimes be made for the common good. And one must not forget about those who remain. It’s worth the effort to ask them how they feel in regards to the decision and if they have any apprehensions or questions.

It is difficult to keep everyone happy at once

Of course, wishing for everyone’s happiness isn’t a bad thing. The problem occurs when one hesitates to make a difficult decision out of fear of displeasing someone. Don’t forget that what you don’t do will often have more impact than what you do. At this moment, things that would normally be intolerable will sometimes become (wrongfully) tolerable. By wishing not to displease a person in particular, one can end up with a whole team that’s unsatisfied, and thus disengaged.

Sometimes, as stated in the previous point, one must make a choice. I’d rather have 9 people whose morale is at 9/10 and one whose morale is at 4/10 (and maybe it’s a symptom that’s worth investigating further) rather than have 10 people whose morale is at 5 or 6/10.

Benevolent leaders sometimes need to support decisions that contradict their values

The benevolent manager will often have a manager himself, who can also (or not) be benevolent, and who also has to make difficult decisions.

It will so happen that he won’t agree with a solution but will need to support it. It can prove extremely difficult, especially when it creates a conflict of personal values. In a traditional setting, this is pretty commonplace. In a benevolent environment, it will generate more waves and thinking.

I won’t pretend to have a solution for this. One must show transparency and have the courage to have discussions concerning the disagreement, and adopt a growth mindset: how can we reach a state where we are better aligned?

The benevolent leader can be perceived as “weak”

Especially to the fans of traditional management. Those who are more directive, and have no problem sleeping well after taking decisions that will turn other people’s lives upside down. Those who stand firm on their position of authority. For those people, taking a benevolent stance can rhyme with weakness, and suggest a lack of managerial courage. You know what? I think it’s a good thing.

Would a benevolent leader prefer to be perceived as a heartless person? Would he really be comfortable with being good at firing people? I think benevolent leaders will be able to accept the perceptions that come with their management style, even if it isn’t universally popular. After all, leadership is not about the leader, but about those he cares for and looks after. If his team is happy and performing, the leader’s reputation isn’t really that important…

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com