Governance in the digital age

At the risk of repeating ourselves, digital transformation is not (only) technological, but above all human and organisational. And since large organisations sometimes like to talk about “governance”, it may be interesting to look at what this term means today.

First of all, what does “governance” mean in a business leader’s plain language? For some, it means “governing” – that is, giving an informed opinion, demonstrating one’s intelligence, administering… But more operationally, it is the ability to take decisions in the light of the context, and to implement them, contributing to their successful delivery.

So the governance of organisations, especially the largest ones, must be radically transformed to adapt to the changes of our so-called “digital” age.

What is new is not the tools

Because what is new is not the tools, despite the promises and fantasies that delight IT service companies and start-uppers addicted to fundraising. Well, yes – but that has been the case for decades at least, even if the pace at which they appear seems to be speeding up.

What is really new is that innovations can come from “nowhere” – that is, from new entrants, not from the dominant players one watches and knows. And that some of these capture a great deal of wealth, with fundraising and market capitalisations out of all proportion to those of the “old world”. And talent, crucial in the knowledge economy as in all the others, more traditional ones.

What is also new – or at least extremely structuring – is everyone’s shared appetite for immediacy. A consequence of the new digital tools, or the pursuit of an old fantasy that drove their creation? The chicken and the egg… In any case, in daily life, we no longer accept waiting, when information is at our fingertips and the coveted object in our letterbox…

Combined, this plurality of actors and stakeholders and this pressure of immediacy have led to the increased complexity of the technological and human systems that those involved in an organisation’s “governance” must face.

For centuries, the Cartesian mind (and, across the Channel, the Newtonian one) has enabled tremendous scientific and technological progress, and it presides over most organisational approaches, seeking to simplify the understanding of systems and therefore the systems themselves. Production and its governance are organised; perfect systems are designed, to which nature and people will have to conform – with a shoehorn if necessary.

This has always been the lot of implementing transformations, when the ideal objective has to be reconciled with delivery, when one must move from idea to action… Governance, then, with steering committees and technical committees, decision loops, and often delays and cost overruns, frustration on all sides – for example between head office and those who do not understand, or do not want to, or more generally between experts who know and those who ought to listen…

The pressure of immediacy

But in the age of email, Twitter and the IoT, of this pressure – and in some cases this comfort – of immediacy, when it seems so easy to “produce” an image, or even a 3D object, in real time, each of us finds it, consciously or not, inconceivable to wait for a decision or a modification… Since the new tools are so powerful, since technology supposedly makes us omniscient, how can one explain – except by people’s ill will – that immediacy is not within reach?

Faced with this pressure of immediacy, which each of us has fully embraced in daily life, the classic Cartesian reflex in organisations is therefore to increase pressure on the “human factor” in charge of “governance”, as on those who must implement. At “governance” level, this means increased demands for reporting and consolidation. Ever more pressure… With the result of exhausted or disengaged management and executive committees, often fascinated by their dashboards and unavailable for what used to be their added value: exchanges and sharing between opposing but complementary functions, strategic thinking and the medium-term steering of the company. And if it is no longer possible for them to take the time to make decisions? Patience – there will no doubt be technological offers to outsource to AI this contribution that is nonetheless so human, based on experience but also on intuition and emotions… Reality will be modelled, in the hope that it accepts this straitjacket – the proud dream of conceptual intelligence dominating the complexity of the living.

Ever more pressure, then, ever more of the same… Faced with the approaching wall, speeding up in the hope of breaking through it.

Putting the human factor back at the heart of governance

And yet… The world of “digital transformation” should lead us, almost paradoxically, to put the human factor back at the heart of companies. Because it is not a source of weakness, but the key element of organisational resilience in complex environments. With the tools it has acquired over centuries of technological progress, but also with its whole “irrational” dimension. Its gut feelings and intuitions, which emerge from its skills, its experience and the extraordinary complexity of human beings.

Large organisations have grown heavier over the decades to centralise skills and resources. It was “rational”, even at the cost of “overheads”. Because knowledge and resources had to be captured. Today, in an economy of dispersed knowledge, individualised tastes and practices, and new economic dynamics, what is the added value of bureaucratic organisations, except for those who belong to them? Max Weber no doubt never imagined the possibility of extended enterprises, ecosystems, distributed intelligence…

And while this world is one of immediacy, bureaucracy creates its own rhythm. In a totalitarian or monopolistic world, this way of operating can last. But in a world hungry for transparency, democracy and competition…

A necessary humility

So, governance in the digital age?

It (simply) means trusting the women and men who produce the wealth of organisations and who are recruited for that purpose. It also means leading them and helping them grow, so they can face the inevitable uncertainty that comes with living, complex systems. It also means giving up, at least in part, the Cartesian myth (“Descartes, useless and uncertain”, as Jean-François Revel wrote) which leads us to believe, consciously or not, that complexity is always ultimately reducible to human understanding. It also means stepping back from its offshoots, such as Lean Management – no doubt keeping the concern to improve the efficiency of systems, but without ruling out the possibility of having been wrong, and also accepting that yesterday’s choices were not mistaken, but are no longer suited to a world that is changing in non-linear ways – pivoting. Because emergence is a key characteristic of complex systems.

It therefore also means rediscovering a necessary humility, which does not replace effort or intelligence – or sometimes genius – but which restores dignity to human work. Organisational and human transformations, collective and individual, above all.