At the risk of shocking some classically minded people, turning to a providential man (or woman – that is not the point) is, in business as in politics, a real curse. Because this is not merely a moral stance, by nature open to debate, but, at best, an undeniable source of inefficiency.
Our world is complex. More so than before. Because technological systems multiply human action, its capacity for transformation, its power and speed, its positive effects as well as the related risks. Because the tools and practices for producing and disseminating information have made exchanges instantaneous – if not in reality, at least in the habits and expectations we all adopt, willingly or not.
In this context, how can we be satisfied with the old stock of magical thinking that feeds the fantasy of a providential man, a perfectly rational, omniscient being – and therefore legitimately, if not naturally, omnipotent?
Modern corporate organisations are now matrix organisations – and not only in two dimensions – much to the dismay of supporters of an idealised, vertical, hierarchical “boss”. This choice did not arise from the perverse desire of a few consultants to undermine legitimate authority. It aims to adapt the company’s resources to a complex, shifting world, by allowing organisations to adapt more quickly – opening or closing an area of activity, geographical or business, acquiring new expertise or dropping obsolete products, without destabilising the whole system. It is a necessarily dynamic system.
Function takes precedence over rank
Even the armed forces, though seen as the archetype of a hierarchical system, adopted this approach twenty years ago, with the logic of “force pools” and centres of expertise. This unsettled, for a while, commanding officers – and their troops – all attached to the figure of the pater familias. But only for a while. Because the serviceman is both a soldier and a civil servant.
The soldier lives from and for the mission to be accomplished, knows that “function takes precedence over rank” and that, tactically, while one must constantly make sure to act within “the commander’s intent” – and implement his decision – the “leader” is the one who leads the action, including when the pace or context requires autonomy. Everyone knows who they are, what their role is and what their legitimacy is. And the pater familias, even if he is no longer the direct source of the resources allocated to his troops, has learned to seek them out – despite a growing difficulty that owes far less to these new organisations than to the general scarcity of resources.
The civil servant, on top of the complexity of the fog of war in which the soldier operates, must add to his working environment the complexity and inertia of a sometimes bureaucratic system that stifles and discourages the man of action. More than the leader, it is the bureaucrat who “pulls rank” – reminding others of what he is, not of what he does.
No one is ever right on their own
The paradigm of modern organisations, even more than that of the world’s complexity, is one of cooperation and balance of powers. The point is not to be “right” against the other. It is to reconcile constraints, and to take a decision informed by all the opinions, often opposing ones – and fortunately so. Because no one is ever right on their own when it comes to moving from concept to action. Reconciling profitability and quality, finding a balance between customer demands and team availability, getting experts and users to work together… Some organisations even advocate institutionalising a dissenting opinion, as essential to reaching a legitimate decision.
These tensions, these conflicts, this complexity cannot be resolved by a single person, without risking a dangerous schizophrenia. Or, far more likely, without letting a single, reductive point of view prevail over the rich diversity of others. In the public sphere, this diversity is expressed more generally in the balance of powers of our democratic systems, considered by some to be not very “efficient”, but which remain legitimate – “except for all the others”.
Isolation and the solitary exercise of power, in every organisation and every context, lead to inefficiency and to the “absurd decisions” that modern approaches to safety – in industry, aviation, healthcare, military operations… – hunt down.
What is more, turning to the “providential man” inevitably leads to disengagement – at a time when many lament declining civic involvement, or seek to develop their staff’s engagement. Because belief in the “providential man” is disappointing for those who want to commit to a collective adventure, with their skills and resources. It ruins organisations that fail to make the most of all their resources, especially human ones. In the past, it may have satisfied courtiers, driven by the advantages granted by the “boss” of an inefficient but opulent system – which no company can now afford to maintain, quite apart from the legitimate and essential questions of ethics.
A French curse?
French tradition seems to carry not so much a choice as a real curse. Because it seems impossible, in a crisis, to free ourselves from this recourse to magical thinking, to the providential man. If complexity is too difficult to grasp together, it would seem wiser to hand it over to a single person.
This tropism seems to be that of an outrageously Cartesian tradition, in which reason erases emotions, and of a reductive causalism from a proto-Taylorist era, in which man is always seen as the “weak link”. Because since Plato and Aristotle, the debate has raged… In this tradition, we need strong, disembodied minds, pure intelligences – even artificial ones. So why not switch to machines?
Unfortunately – or fortunately – every human being is also the seat of emotions, which shape, chemically or psychologically depending on the tradition one favours, their perception of the world and its complexity, their decisions, their interactions. And which mingle with their “intelligence”.
And the observations and practices of industrial safety show that, contrary to technicist mythology, the machine is never infallible. And that, in the end, it is the human–machine system that ensures optimal safety – by nature always fallible, even for “ultra-safe” systems.
The providential man is therefore doubly fragile, combining the worst of human biases with the inevitable flaws of complex systems.
Finally, this curse of the human organisations that devote themselves to it is also a curse for the person who raises hopes that are bound to be dashed. The “saviour” of a company initially headed for bankruptcy can sink without trace in a matter of days, whereas a team always lasts longer in the face of adversity. In our interconnected societies, which constantly refer to networks, we forget that a net – horizontal and multi-nodal – is always more resilient to strains and attacks than a vertical, isolated pillar.
Working together is always difficult
So, of course, working together is always difficult, especially in a crisis, whether it is threatening or full of opportunities. Aware of the competitive world in which they operate, most companies have had no choice but to adopt these principles of action – as far as possible, and even if the collective often seizes up and everyone has to surpass themselves, together, to succeed.
Today, innovative organisations promote collaboration, participation and engagement. For some, these are only superficial changes, more about image than about real transformations of how the collective works. But for others, it is now a reality – always open to improvement, since the ideal is not of this world.
And you – where do you stand?
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