General Pierre de Villiers has commanded 250,000 men and women as Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces. Today, he divides his time between advising senior executives and acting as a consultant.writing. As guest of honour at this 2019 edition, he will be testifying to the crisis of the collective that we are going through today.
General de Villiers © Stephan Gladieu
When we met you last April, you were struck by the title of the study, "Et si on se parlait?
The title speaks for itself, and the stakes go far beyond the world of business. It is THE challenge of the 21st century. What do I see when I look at France today? Yellow waistcoats, suburbanites, urban and rural dwellers... People who no longer talk to each other enough and who don't always understand each other.
Faced with all the current fracturesWe need to put people back at the heart of our personal and professional concerns, at the heart of our society, at the heart of the thinking of all our leaders. Because great projects are built with people, with their eyes, their words, their guts, their hearts... Intellectual quality is fine, but the quality of dialogue and support is much better.
You were the man behind the move of the headquarters to Balard. What objectives did you have in mind?
Over the course of my military postings, I have acquired a deep-seated conviction: efficiency depends on location. Infrastructure determines the atmosphere, the quality of work and therefore performance. There are a few constants: in particular, we need to create convivial spaces at strategic crossroads so that people can find their way around more easily and talk to each other. The companies that succeed will be those that take this into account.
Location dictates efficiency.
Balard was a response to a fundamental need: to bring together the 9,300 people from the different headquarters (Navy, Land, Air). This means that we can now bring together decision-makers and different areas of expertise in the same place, to find synergies and improve efficiency. If I had to do it all over again today, I'd add even more convivial areas, including a bar, to enable the military to get together even more often...
THE CHEF'S 3 MAJOR CHALLENGES IN 2019
Challenge no. 1: Individualism, the bane of modern management
Individualism, accelerated by technology, is a phenomenon to which every leader must be attentive if a group is to be united. I remember Kosovo in 1999. After each operation, the soldiers would return to base and meet up in the foyer for a drink and to decompress. In 2007, in Afghanistan, the operations were even tougher, with casualties, but the soldiers spent more time on their screens when they got back. This anecdote illustrates the change that has taken place in less than ten years. But it's not inevitable. In the army, we've worked on it, through football for example.
Challenge no. 2: Time is speeding up, time is pressing, time is stressing us out
Managers must not allow themselves to be overwhelmed by short-termism and an obsession with immediate performance. Fundamentally, this is a strategic error, in the true sense of the word: strategy is about taking the long view. Having a vision on which to base a course is vital for uniting teams and creating synergies. In the army, if we don't know how to establish a dialogue around an objective, if we don't have this link that unites us with the rest of the nation, how do you expect soldiers to be prepared to carry out their mission to the point of making the supreme sacrifice for France?
Challenge no. 3: The crisis of authority
We need to restore the sometimes damaged bond between leaders and their colleagues by re-establishing trust, i.e. friendly obedience, where adherence prevails over coercion. Authority comes from the Latin auctoritas. It means "to increase", to make grow, to make solutions spring from execution. A good leader doesn't stay at his desk but goes out into the field, to stay in touch with the difficulties. At the end of my days, for example, I'd take ten minutes to think about each person I'd met. Who is this person? What did they say to me? What did they teach me? What can I do for them? It's an essential exercise, because the real wealth is in others.
