Rebuilding Collective Strength: The Strategic Edge of Resilient Companies

Clarifying a shared strategic vision is key to preventing each function or activity from pursuing its own priorities. But having a vision is not enough. To get a group moving in a common direction, you also need to define how to get there. This is the group’s mission: the means that will enable it to contribute to the ideal vision that has been defined. This helps to restore momentum and  redefine each team’s contribution.

Cooperation cannot be imposed. It must be repeated.

Creating regular, shared benchmarks for jointly developing solutions, sharing key information, making decisions, and providing feedback promotes cooperation. This creates a virtuous circle: regularity breeds security, security enables collective learning, and learning strengthens cooperation.

It’s something that’s often overlooked in business: the same words can have different meanings between teams. My added value is helping teams to co-create a shared lexicon, to take ownership of messages, and to clarify the principles of collaboration. This knowledge base and these common reference points facilitate mutual understanding.

Less interpretation, more fluidity and transparency, and a stronger collective identity. Creating your own jargon means creating a common language to convey the spirit of the collective.

Imposed change creates resistance. Change embodied by peers creates buy-in and promotes collective performance.

It takes 25% of a group to change an existing norm. Beyond this threshold, other members of the group quickly tend to follow, as our love of social coordination is more powerful than our attachment to tradition. There must be enough ambassadors of change, otherwise they risk burning out without reaching the critical mass needed to succeed. They need a stronger base of allies to create a collective shift.

In large groups or mid-sized companies, identifying volunteer ambassadors, in addition to managers, to support and network in order to experiment with new practices and convey messages is very powerful. Within a few months, action accelerates, feedback is gathered, and the collective norm evolves.

A resilient organization operates on multiple levels. 

There are several types of levels, and the more complex the organization, the more we need to combine them to promote collaboration: between the subsidiary and the group, between different functions and areas of expertise, between business activities, between global and local (world regions, countries, or cities).

Then we create moments and spaces for collaboration:

• Inter-sphere spaces for co-constructing solutions: these are rituals (defined places and times) in which the different spheres come together, with good representation from members of each sphere.
• Intra-sphere spaces to strengthen cohesion. These are smaller “home bases” among peers where people can recharge their social batteries.

And in these two types of spaces, we vary the scale of collaboration: the entire subsidiary, the entire team with the other team, just a pair…

Overall cohesion depends on the strength of the smallest units of collaboration, which must be maintained.

Three human needs promote motivation and commitment to change:

• Autonomy: our desire to make choices and control our own lives
• Competence: the feeling that we have the necessary skills to accomplish the tasks we want to achieve
• Connection: we need to feel connected to others and to form authentic and meaningful relationships.

Supporting change therefore means creating a safe environment:

• Where teams dare to ask for help in order to develop their skills and gain autonomy
• Where each person feels valued within the group and recognized by their peers: the more we feel valued in a group, the more we feel we belong. And the more we feel we belong, the more we want to commit to it.

Engaging the collective means, above all, learning to value the involvement of its members. 

A team’s performance does not depend on the sum of its members’ individual intelligence. It has been shown (Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone) that the average IQ of a group’s members has little influence on its collective intelligence. In other words, bringing together brilliant experts does not guarantee a high-performing team.

What makes the difference is:

• The emotional intelligence of the group: the ability of members to perceive subtle signals, pick up on unspoken messages, and understand relationship dynamics in order to resolve complex situations.
• Balanced speaking time: the least effective teams are often those where a few voices dominate the discussion. Conversely, when everyone has a chance to express themselves, the quality of decisions improves.

Cooperation is not simply a matter of combining talents. It is about orchestrating their interactions.

Those managers and experts who have the ability to clarify a course of action and empower others to take action. These leaders are those who already embody what we want to see happen, so that teams follow examples, not just words. Every transformation is an opportunity to recognize and identify the leaders of today and tomorrow.