But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
logical, oh responsible, practical.  (Extrait de Logical Song –  Roger Hodgson – Supertramp 1979)

Le 1er février 2019, le fil Twitter d’Europe1 a publié la vidéo d’un interview de Rand Hindi accompagné de cette citation

.@snips est un assistant vocal. “L’obsession qu’on avait c’était surtout la question de vie privée. C’est-à-dire comment on pouvait faire de l’intelligence artificielle sans nécessairement avoir accès à toutes leurs données”, dit @randhindi.

@DucheminRapha #Europe1

Le 11 février 2019, le compte Twitter du service de presse d’Europe1 a révélé ce mini communiqué

🔵 Le trophée de la santé est décerné à @Hemarina par le Professeur Lantieri et @laurentguimier #TropheesEurope1

En moins de deux semaines, la station de radio qui n’est plus paradoxalement numéro 1 grâce à RTL, mettait en avant deux start-up dont kchehck avait attribué à chacune, la plus mauvaise note possible, kd… et… kd.

Mais était-ce vraiment une si énorme surprise ? ÀMHA, pas réellement. Moins une entreprise dispose de résultats tangibles, que ce soit en terme de chiffre d’affaires, de profitabilité, de produits disponibles véritablement désirés, de parts de marché ou de références clients nominatives, plus elle se sent pousser des ailes pour communiquer à tout vent, afin d’essayer de maintenir absolument coûte que coûte les apparences.

C’est du pur window dressing !

Dit autrement, plus elle est faible, plus elle ressent le besoin de devoir faire continuellement la démonstration du gonflement de ses petits biceps, remplis surtout d’hélium, de manière la plus publique et la moins pudique possible.

Ces exercices de style répétés lors de conférences, de remises de prix divers et d’interviews à toutes les sauces de leurs fondateurs respectifs, m’ont irrévocablement fait penser aux pratiques de nombreux cadres supérieurs d’IBM, dans la deuxième partie des années 80’s jusqu’au sifflement de la fin de la récréation/dispersion dès avril 1993 par un outsider.

Pourtant il est plus que urgent de mettre fin aussi en France à ses pratiques qu’il faut bien avoir le courage de qualifier d’enfumage. C’est un préalable indispensable si on veut davantage de scale-up. Le Président de la République française Emmanuel Macron a eu l’occasion d’exprimer cette volonté entrepreneuriale dans son discours du 9 octobre 2018 à Station F, devant plus de 2 000 entrepreneurs dont pas mal de représentants de start-up zombies.

J’ai voulu relire ces derniers jours Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?, le livre autobiographique de 282 pages hors annexes, de Louis V. Gerstner Jr., publié en 2002, après ses 9 années passées chez Big Blue depuis Armonk dans l’État de New York.

Je me souvenais très bien après une première lecture, que l’ancien CEO d’IBM était particulièrement allergique à toutes les pratiques mortifères du window dressing au point de ne jamais citer ces deux maudits mots explicitement dans son texte.

Therefore, rather than go with the usual corporate impulse to put an happy face, spin things optimistically, and declare the turnaround over as soon as possible, I decided to keep the crisis front and center—not irresponsibly;

Le nouveau boss a agi pour le faire savoir de façon aussi inattendue que démonstrative, dès les premiers jours après son arrivée le 1er avril 1993…

At that time, the standard format of any important IBM meeting was a presentation using overhead projectors and graphics transparencies that IBMers called—and no one remember why—“foils”. Nick was on his second foil when I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector. After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said, “Let’s just talk about your business.”

I mention this episode because it had an unintended, but terribly powerful ripple effect. By that afternoon an e-mail about my hitting the Off button on the overhead projector was crisscrossing the world. Talk about consternation! It was as if the President of the United States had banned the use of English at White House meetings.

Ce CEO décidément hors-norme a mis fin également très très vite aux lourdes sollicitations de nombreux Ibmers envers les médias, autre pratique courante du window dressing

Typically, IBM executives believed that the only real problem the company had was the daily beating it was getting in the press. They felt that if we had more positive stories in the media, IBM would return to profitability and everything would be normal again.

…

I’ve always believed that less is more when it comes to the press.

J’ai sélectionné en toute subjectivité, après ma deuxième lecture de cet ouvrage, 20+2 Practical Lessons de management que pourrait également appliquer un CEO en charge de la mise en musique de la Scale-up Nation. Il n’aurait à répondre de ses décisions qu’au Président Macron himself, qui l’aurait choisi personnellement.

Practical Lesson #1: I made it clear that I was going to move quickly, make all changes necessary, and return the company’s focus to the customer.

Practical Lesson #2: There’s been a lot of speculation as to when I’m going to deliver a vision of IBM, and what I’d like to say to all of you is that the last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.

Practical Lesson #3: Fixing IBM was all about execution. We had to stop looking for people to blame, stop tweaking the internal structure and systems. I wanted no excuses. I wanted no long-term projects that people could wait for what would somehow produce a magic turnaround. I wanted—IBM needed—an enormous sense of urgency.

Practical Lesson #4: This process of selecting markets and competing on the basis of a distinctive, sustainable competency is essential to the new IBM, and I know it will be an ongoing challenge.

Practical Lesson #5: And, as with any consumer product—from automobile to bubble gum to credit cards or cookies—marketing and merchandising mattered.

Practical Lesson #6: Our wonderful technology (OS/2) was whipped by a product (Windows) that was merely okay, but supported by a company that truly understood what the customer wanted. For a “solutions” company like IBM, it was a bitter but vital lesson.

Practical Lesson #7: I said in 1993 that the marketplace would drive every important decision we at IBM made. But when it came to the PC business, we weren’t paying attention to either our customers or our competitors.

Practical Lesson #8: I think for a lot of people, the “e” in e-business came to stand for “easy”. Easy money. Easy success. Easy life. When you strip it down to bare metal, e-business is just business. And real business is serious work.

Practical Lesson #9: We had to take our businesses, products, and people out of a self-contained, self-sustaining world and make them thrive in the real world.

Practical Lesson #10: Yet the hardest part of these decisions was neither the technological nor economic transformations required. It was changing the cuture—the mindset and instincts of hundreds of thousands of people who had grown up in an undeniably successul company, but one that had for decades been immune to normal competitive and economic forces. The challenge was making that workforce live, compete, and win in the real world. It was like taking a lion raised for all of its life in captivity and suddenly teaching it to survive in the jungle.

Practical Lesson #11: I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.

Practical Lesson #12: Successful institutions almost always develop strong cultures that reinforce those elements that make the institution great.

Practical Lesson #13: In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.

Pratical Lesson #14: I believe all high-performance companies are led and managed by principles, not by process.

Practical Lesson #15: IBM has to focus on serving our customers and, in the process, beating the competition. Success in a company comes foremost from success with the customer, nothing else.

Practical Lesson #16: We just need to funnel that knowledge into developing products that serve our customer’s needs above all else.

Practical Lesson #17: And no company is a success, financially or otherwise, without satisfied customers.

Practical Lesson #18: IBM has to move faster, work more efficiently, and spend wisely.

Practical Lesson #19: I like to call this “constructive impatience.” We are good at research, studies, committees, and debates. But in this industry, at this time, it’s often better to be fast than insightful. Not that planning and analysis are wrong—just not at the expense of getting the job done now.

Practical Lesson #20: I’m looking for people who make things happen, not who watch and debate things happening.

Je vous propose pour terminer deux bonus tant il est difficile de vouloir résumer un livre au contenu si riche en vingt courts extraits même si ils n’ont pas été complètement choisis par hasard. 😉

Bonus #1 : I like kicking competitor’s butts. And I hate, hate, hate losing.

Bonus #2 : Success, therefore, will go to the fittest—not necessarily the biggest.