In business as in the public sphere, organisations regularly swing between centralisation and decentralisation. The search for an ideal organisation? The fashion of the moment, or a managerial fad? What if we looked at these changes differently?
The starting point for this reflection is first of all a conviction: there is no ideal organisation. If there were, the international consultancies that drive the sharing of “best practices” worldwide would already have found it and sold it for a fortune.
So why put organisations through these changes, which are, all things considered, fairly frequent? Out of a taste for “change”, a need to sell new ideas, or to make one’s mark? Beyond assumptions about motives or the realities of corporate life, one thing is clear: since there is no ideal organisation, each swing of the pendulum between centre and local forces a rethink of the relationship between these two poles. And it is this questioning that can be virtuous – provided it is not too frequent, because any change causes, at least for a while, a drop in effectiveness.
Some decide on it or accept it with humility, thereby acknowledging that the many interactions in complex organisations can, by nature, only be partly mastered and, pragmatically, accepting how difficult the art of management is. But others look for the incompetence, the faults or even the guilt of their predecessors – and this is hardly productive, even if it is the “simplest” path. Because when you look for culprits, you never find solutions.
The matrix, or the power to act together
The traditional opposition between centralisation and decentralisation has given way, in modern vocabulary, to matrix organisations – with two dimensions or more. Beyond the words, this latter notion has the merit of making it easier, more than the opposition between centralisation and decentralisation, to understand the real issues of balance and complementarity for the company as a whole.
This is where the perception of what “power” is becomes crucial.
Being anchored in the archaic perception of power as domination, à la Max Weber, is both ineffective and destructive. Because the “dominated” will never stop resisting, or even seeking revenge at the next swing of the pendulum, which will inevitably come. Whereas all the bodies of the company must not seek to neutralise or destroy each other, but to work together. Otherwise, some are surplus to requirements; and why keep a hostile body in one’s ranks when human, material and financial resources are scarce?
So whether between the “central level” and “outlying structures”, or between “functional departments” and the “territorial network”, the challenge is always to foster complementarity, by seeing “power” not as domination but as a relationship, à la Hannah Arendt: the power to act together. Or relationship as the way to balance “powers”.
Because, contrary to many deep-rooted ideas, there is no hierarchy of talent between central and decentralised staff, between functional and operational staff. Except, perhaps, for those who believe that pure ideas always win, even if they are never implemented… Indeed, while theoretical analysis and the development of complex decisions require real skills, the concrete implementation of the strategies adopted also calls for precious talents. Because it means confronting theory with practice, and facing reality – the fog of war.
A Taylorist, hierarchical French culture?
Yet French culture remains vertical and hierarchical. At best, “the rank and file are consulted”. And the theoretical mind is often favoured over the practical mind, placed in a hierarchy unrelated to each person’s added value. Nobility thus traditionally belongs to “strategy”, while execution is considered subordinate, a matter of obedient, even blind, execution.
A scientistic fantasy inherited from Taylor’s thinking, in which people are interchangeable, with each other or with machines? Or the mythology of the providential man? To those nostalgic for traditional, charismatic, vertical and omniscient “bosses”, we would suggest – since they often refer to them without really knowing them – that they leave behind the comfortable caricature and follow closely the career paths of the best leaders of our armed forces, with their organised alternation between operational command and staff work. Because these dual experiences allow them to better know and understand the strengths and constraints of the other – who remains an equal, since function takes precedence over rank – and to foster, in the action and responsibility of command, effective collaborative work.
Beyond caricatures and moral judgements, the traditional “pre-eminence” of the central level over the local level has several flaws:
- It locks talent into limited career paths, and deprives the company as a whole of a virtuous circulation;
- And when the pendulum swings back to “the field”, the field may want revenge for the past.
Also present in many of our organisations, Anglo-Saxon culture draws far more on the balance of powers.
The temptation, in France, may then be to claim a form of cultural exception. And to cling, endlessly, to the cult of the infallible, vertical, sovereign leader. But in a multipolar world like that of our nations and our companies, without neglecting the cultural specificities of all organisations, even beyond shareholding relationships, it is both more realistic and more honest to seek synergies rather than domination. And to foster collaborative work between central departments and local levels. Because the former carry ever-evolving expertise, and also the sharing and development of skills that flourish everywhere – pools of expertise. While the latter are responsible for production, but are also sources of initiative, proposals and contributions to everyone’s performance – force pools.
Customer proximity regained, with “phygital”
Proximity to customers (customer centricity, or “customer orientation” in older terms) is an interesting application of this alternating movement between centre and local.
We are indeed emerging from the excitement of the early years of “digital transformation”, which convinced many that the “customer” could be known intimately through digital data and costly but indispensable technological tooling: customer knowledge as the exclusive product of digital marketing… And we are returning to the time of the real, in which digital transformation – and therefore the proximity to the customer that is claimed – fully regains its human dimension: because “what matters is on the inside”.
From then on, customer knowledge regains its place through a relationship with the “salesperson”, or even with the “producer” themselves, the best ambassador of their own skills and constraints. This is the return to physical proximity – given a modern facelift under the label “phygital”, so as to make the most of previous investments all the same. And therefore, mechanically, the return of the local level.
After the technological investments and the learned proposals – or even injunctions – from central departments to local “transmission belts”, this change may prove tough for many organisations.
Above all, the balance of powers, as the capacity to act together
Once again, previous choices were not the result of strategic errors, but of a normal cycle in all organisations (every ten to fifteen years over recent decades). In some – particularly those with a rich engineering culture, always in search of a scientific ideal, or more bureaucratic ones that see local levels as those of obedient execution – the pendulum may have swung a little too far towards the pre-eminence of the centre and a lack of recognition of local added value. The desire for change must not result in the opposite excess: through strategic choice, or through a desire for revenge on the part of the supporters of decentralisation, whose hour has finally come.
The matrix approach may be decried by supporters of a vertical, monolithic society. Yet it is a model – even a visualisation – of the complementarity between all the organisation’s resources and of the balance of tensions. Sometimes also of the confrontations between them and their resolution, for the benefit of collective action, over the long term, thanks to everyone’s full contribution. Because the key to collective success is not to move forward “at the same time” – a nod to the French President’s favourite catchphrase, « en même temps » – but rather “together”.
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