Attention, breaking news: “people want to do their job well”
It was Jean-Michel, a consultant with whom I worked on operational performance issues, who made this remark to me: " You know Claire, with some exceptions, people want to do their job well. When you ask them the right questions, they have 80% of the answers that can be activated."
Overwhelming truths of banality and common sense, too rarely exploited, yet keys to lasting success. To fully understand what Jean-Michel says, you have to understand who he is.
Jean Michel is a method expert who talks about quality, productivity, profitability . A high-level athlete of process and procedure, a hunter of efficiency and effectiveness. "A guy who knows".
We then called on Jean Michel because we needed support. We were launching the industrialization of several innovations. We were navigating in the unknown and uncertainty.
We didn't know, and " Jean Michel would know ."
And then finally, Jean-Michel said, “ What I know is above all that the teams know .”
Badaboum! Misery! Jean Michel did not want to inundate us with expertise and injunctions. He preferred to descend into the bubbling arena of everyday life, as close as possible to the team, to feed off their experiences.
This approach, which is based on agile management methods , goes against a classic managerial paradox that is still prevalent, which would have it that, while talking about employee engagement, organizations consider managers as the only ones able to identify, prioritize, solve and optimize.
However, in such a configuration, managers, who do not have daily experience in the field, sometimes miss critical issues simply because they do not experience them. Beyond any question of criticality, it is sometimes impossible for them to imagine the frustration, irritation and lack of efficiency generated , in the field, by sometimes minimal dysfunctions.
The agile approach chosen by Jean-Michel, for its part, restores its letters of nobility to the field and to those who do it. Among others:
#1- She chooses trust as her starting point.
Trust in the healthy intention of employees. Trust in their commitment.
#2- She gives voice and relies on those who do
It values their perspectives, their experiences and feeds on them. It does not censor or contain anything. It keeps the channels of communication always open.
#3- She co-constructs
She does not decide unilaterally, she uses the team to write solutions that can be implemented quickly. She willingly frees herself from the weight of silo operations, or hierarchical biases to focus on the objective. She adopts a posture of humility and pragmatism.
So how can you put a little Jean-Michel in your life? Maybe by starting by writing on a small post-it on your desk the first principle of the agility manifesto: “individuals and their interactions before processes and tools”.
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