We need enemies!
If you criticize me, my dear enemies, so much the better! It's you I'm talking to, with a high-pitched, almost provocative voice. You're going to help me grow and progress.
In Anglo-Saxon culture, failure is seen as a springboard for progress. In our cultures, I'd like to say old-fashioned, failure is sanctioned, not glorified.
You, my enemies, do your job of criticizing; I, for my part, do my job of questioning. Failure is often seen as an end, when in fact it's only a beginning. It's a kind of medal that we might receive each time it propels us towards progress.
Let's face it: we're not going to fail on purpose in order to learn, but we are going to learn every time we fail. And we need leaders who encourage us in this rare paradigm. Humor, and its corollary derision, are very useful in the process of questioning one's own managerial practices. No, boss, you're not shooting yourself in the foot by valuing my failure, you're developing me. This action has a name: leadership.
Some people are great on the inside, but haven't yet broken through to the outside world. In the history of Swiss companies, there is a case in point. Swissair's management was able to manage the most classic paradoxical injunctions of corporate management ("do as I say, not as I do"). All team management was based on a simple principle: exemplarity. This can be explained by the fact that the managers came from the line.
"We Swissair", I had the immense pleasure of working for this airline where the corporate culture was at its peak. Relationships were almost fraternal, and everyone was passionate about their job, from baggage handlers to captains. Relationships ran deep, which made for strong leadership, even with its authoritarian paternalism. People were friends with their colleagues. Twenty-five years on, former participants in our seminars see each other again, talk to each other, and all share the same nostalgia for a culture of closeness.
But what polluted this unique culture transcended by relationships? A desire to do more business? No, both are compatible and even recommended. It's management with antediluvian conceptions. That's when I realized the importance of aligning culture and managerial behavior. You have to make the effort to understand your cultural environment in order to imagine your management style. In this case, another alignment was missing, that of management strategy and market reality, and this disconnect led to the company's downfall. The elites' ego-fueled imaginations failed to realize that their desire to acquire the company was not realistic, but chimerical. But that's another painful story.
