If this crisis has served any purpose, it has been to reveal people’s temperaments – in private life as in professional activity. A real opportunity, then, to commit fully to the “world of tomorrow”.
Have you noticed how much the events of the past months have allowed you to discover yourself, and to discover others? With confirmations, good surprises and disappointments.
Have you also noticed how deep the rifts these events have caused are, whether within families, teams or society? Acceptance of lockdown, physical or even social distancing, adopting – or not – a carefully selected vocabulary, wearing masks, accepting or being averse to risk, giving priority – or not – to health at the expense of certain freedoms, ease or terror in the face of uncertainty, taking part in quarrels between specialists and/or practitioners of power… So many fault lines that have often gone beyond disagreement to become contempt, hatred, exclusion, the all-too-easy search for a culprit…
In companies, reactions have mostly been more measured: linked to work–life balance, working conditions and managerial relationships, but also to each person’s added value, real or perceived, depending on where the spotlight – media or internal – fell.
In a time of change, rebuilding collectives
All these rifts will leave traces. Acknowledged or not. Implicit or spelled out. Because they have sometimes revealed different “sensibilities”, preferences or opinions – and these differences are the richness of a society, a group, a family. But also because they have expressed sometimes irreconcilable oppositions between “paradigms” or “world views”, as far as society is concerned. And, as far as professional activity is concerned, between affirmations or revelations about the meaning of working life and the conditions in which it is carried out.
Such rifts may look like so many weaknesses.
For individuals as for companies, many changes are indeed coming, and are already under way. There will be organisational changes, at the level of teams, companies and even ecosystems, no doubt with new relationships to build with suppliers and partners, old and new. There will be skills to acquire – technical, managerial or relational. And there will be a meaning to (re)discover in each person’s work: an added value for personal development and collective performance.
At a time of these changes, chosen or imposed, these fault lines can become, more than weaknesses, assets for (re)building tomorrow’s collectives.
Provided the collective is seen as a factor of performance and of individual and collective resilience, rather than of “resistance” or “solidity” – as long as it feeds on different perceptions and talents, brought together for a shared objective.
A necessary systemic approach
In this crisis, the vertical, “expert” approach of the public administration has shown how ineffective it is – even harmful in terms of engagement and social cohesion.
In the eternal complementarity between “the scholar” and “the politician”, technocrats have claimed the authority of scientists (and then, where necessary, designated them as culprits).
For example: the exclusive priority given to the “carers” treating Covid-19 patients marginalised many essential functions. Starting with the other “carers”, many of whom had to carry on their work in severely degraded conditions. And many of whom had to stop working, held “in reserve” for a hypothetical call, at the expense of the necessary prevention and treatment of the many other illnesses affecting a great number of people.
And forgetting that in any “war” (what an inappropriate use of the term!), without logistics, the fighters – even the toughest – collapse. Eating, getting around, clothing oneself, recovering, being able to rely on everyday public services, being sure that one’s family is well…
Little by little, certain categories of workers were “re-valued”, haphazardly, according to people’s affinities or some people’s influence, or the need to find a new subject to feed the information Moloch…
In companies too, and between companies, the rifts multiplied. Between those who had to stay on to produce and the functions judged less “essential” – and yet, if they were not, why had they been kept until then? Between those whose pay was maintained – or their “salary”, in the civil service – and the others, somewhere between an in-between status and nothing at all. Between those who received managerial attention thanks to their temperament and skills, and those who found themselves isolated, forgotten, abandoned. Between those who showed initiative and commitment, and those who took refuge, in good faith or out of opportunism, in an often comfortable distance.
Too often, technocratic and vertical approaches were adopted, when the complexity of the situation called for a systemic approach – modest, interactive and participatory.
The meaning of work, the meaning of life
As activity resumes – or in order to allow it to – it is essential to rebuild collectives on chosen foundations, as far as possible. To rebuild, at every level, a “company pact”, and perhaps a new “social pact”, in which each person’s contribution, and the interactions and complementarities between everyone, are clarified and owned. What are you ready to change? Whom and what do you need? What do you want to bring to others? Why and how do you want to share a common future?
These are not questions of bourgeois comfort. They are the fundamentals of strong, and therefore effective, commitment, serving all the collectives in which we deploy our energy, our skills, our lives.
And in the light of the answers given, it will then be time to recreate the links and complementarities between all these human resources.
It will no doubt also be the time for certain choices. Out of economic necessity, in the search for effectiveness – and for coherence too. And also out of the meaning each person must give to their life, in the private as in the professional sphere. This will no doubt lead to departures, but also to new alliances.
It will certainly not be simple. It will take time, energy and talent. Empathy and consideration for each person.
But it will be essential to recover balance, performance and the now unavoidable “resilience”. Individual, but also collective.
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