Eight years ago, at ICM Associates, we had the intuition that our developed world was somewhat out of breath and that it had to prepare for repeated and devastating shocks. For many industrial and corporate sectors, the issue would be less one of development than one of survival. There had been crisis in 2008 and […]

When I open the paper, here’s what I read: Volkswagen is surreptitiously warming the planet. HSBC is laundering money from dubious sources. Servier is making money off of a health risk. The Carlton offers room service that goes way beyond the mini-bar. A minister, self-styled tax-avoiding Savanarola, proves to be overly fond of Swiss and […]

The Europe of past centuries knew all about cementing alliances. Royalty and nobility married their children into one another’s families. Love had little to do with it compared to the political challenges and the future of peoples who were all too often at war. The goal was peace: durable, fruitful peace between heretofore enemies. Sometimes […]

We remember the sixties as a time of major worldwide controversies and changes. Eastern Europe had its Iron Curtain; Vietnam was caught in an endless war. In America people were battling for civil rights; France was giving up its African colonies. And in Nanterre it was finally legal for boys to go into the girls’ […]

“I want to have at least some control over what I do and where I do it!” “How in the world do I fit into the big picture?” “I don’t even have the freedom to do what I’m supposed to do!” Isn’t this what the people in our organizations are demanding from their companies today […]

There’s nothing more “in” than “corporate DNA”. Which only goes to show that people are ready to buy any old metaphor wholesale. It’s as though before having been “birthed”, corporate culture had already begun to develop in the genes of those who “conceived” it. But this is only partially true and it’s partially worrisome. It’s […]

“So you’re going to give ballet lessons??” This is what a French executive asked me in the late eighties. I was trying to convince him to pay attention to his company culture as he thought about how to implement the organization change he had initiated. I should have answered yes, because when it comes right […]

It’s obvious to everyone that the digital revolution represents a total paradigm change. We’ve gone from the civilization of the written word to the age of code; from the word to the icon; from the pyramid to the network; from verticality to horizontality. This is so overwhelming that for the moment no one can fully […]

Slogans of the times are always meaningful. There is an old French saying: “Literature always develops in the cracks of societies”. In other words, we talk a lot and write a lot about our unfulfilled aspirations. When it comes to management, today’s word is “agile”. Organizations should be agile in order to adapt to an […]

Manpower Group s’est associé à une matinée d’échanges informels organisée par HR Channel vendredi 24 juin 2011 sur le thème de la « révolution des talents ». Charles Gancel y a été convié. Retrouvez ci-dessous son intervention. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgmm7yV0yi0[/youtube]