Translator: Dungan Mc Ewan
Reviewer: Denise RQ When I first spoke with the organizer
about the idea of this talk, he told me, "Sylvain,
the liberated company, that's your topic." At this point I said, "Stéphane,
we're getting off the wrong foot. I don't believe in the liberated company." And yet, I co-founded one. I am 32, my name is Sylvain, I have been
living in Vietnam for the past 9 years. I was born in the Vosges area. I followed a pretty classic path:
high school, college, engineering degree. Not much questioning indeed. In 2006, like many other young engineers, I start looking for
a "graduation internship" with a self-proclaimed
"cream of the crop" degree in my bag, I land a last-minute interview
at an audit firm, Mazars. They told me I was not suitable
for the job; they were right. I go back to my internship seeking,
time is running out. That's when I have the encounter
that is going to change my life. "How about coming to Vietnam?" I don't know anything about Vietnam,
I have never been to Asia. That said, I know
how to use chopsticks... I accept. Three weeks later, at 23 year old,
I land in Saigon. That's the first step in my liberation. All expats will tell you that: nothing better than being abroad
to see what's going wrong in France. And spending your time observing it while living in the world's
most optimistic country, Vietnam, that helps too. At first it starts with cliches. Yeah, we French are
a bunch of grumpy people. And then little by little,
I start refining my judgment. I also realize how lucky I am:
I made a first step outside of the box. On the work side,
our company is in its infancy. It's just three of us,
everything is yet to be done. How does a company work? I learn everything thanks to two strong
allies on my side: books and experience. To be honest, at first,
we did not try to reinvent the wheel. We stick to what works.
Well, what supposedly works. I read classic books, the ones
with corporate world's buzzwords: budget, reporting,
evaluation, performance. My life is made of business trips,
demanding customers, 60-hour workweeks. It goes on like that for six years. And my close relationships seem
to live the same life as I do. All my friends work
for large corporations, They all report to a manager,
and for most of them, he's an "asshole." A rebel side starts waking up in me. Questions are going through my mind: Does it really work?
Is there any better way? What are managers useful for? Two opposing visions
are growing in my mind: on one hand, I am wearing a mask,
I am just pretending. Like these poorly cut suits
I wear for business meetings. On the other hand, I want to be myself,
to say what I truly think. One morning, on a business trip
in Paris, I open my eyes. The clock shows 10:45 a.m.; I overslept. Long day, hard night, work till 2 a.m. The thing is, that day, I am supposed
to attend a business meeting, at 11 a.m. What excuses am I going to come up with? Then I remember these Sunday nights
I used to spend in front of the TV, when I was suddenly realizing
I had to take a math test the next day. These Monday mornings
going to school filled with fear, knowing I'd score an F. I arrive at the meeting, I sit down, I let out, "I overslept." Awkward silence. Oversleeping, that's not a common word
in a company's user guide. I look around, these people judging me
have their own lives too, sometimes even tougher than mine. They have kids crying
until three in the morning, they fight with their significant other
during lunch breaks, they get stuck in commute. But the thing is, in most companies,
having a life is forbidden. "I overslept," that sentence represents
the second step of my liberation. I then decide that my life
and my work will become one. Not a balance, but a true fusion.
Starting with the way I dress. So I go to work wearing t-shirt
and flip-flops on Monday; it's Vietnam. My customers become
my friends, and vice-versa. Facebook replaces LinkedIn. No more business trips for two days, no, I travel. Singapore, Tokyo. My trips get longer. I take that chance to start photography. I don't join meetings anymore,
I meet people. Worst, I pay attention to them. Then during a random
bar conversation in Paris, a friend asks me a question
that is going to take me here today, "But are you sure that we can wish
everyone this lifestyle?" The answer seems obvious,
but the question comes around so often that it becomes
a legitimate one, even for me. I fly back to Vietnam one more time. We're now a large 300-people company. Coincidentally, a few of us are going
through the same phase, having both feet outside of the box. It's decided, if we want
to prove that it is indeed possible, that yes, we can wish everyone
this lifestyle, Let's put back people at the heart
of our company, let's liberate it. But how do you liberate a company?
Well, not with textbooks. There's no textbook for that anyway. So you feel your way,
you test, iterate, you make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Like that one day when we had the genius
idea to say, "No more managers." In theory, the idea seemed
like a good one. But the thing is, managers are
not only a symbol of our organizations. Becoming a manager is
a career evolution, it's a social status. It's the guarantee of a high income. Managers are also supposed to embody
the leadership that we all need. On the salary topic, we also couldn't do
as everybody else does. So we said: each person
can decide of their own salary. I still remember the day when a team of ten people
decided to take a 50% pay raise. So we sulked, we did not expect this. On one hand, if a co-founder
refused this pay raise, it was probably end of story,
no more autonomy. On the other hand, if it went through,
pay raises would probably escalate, and the company
would probably collapse. Well guess what, it did not go through. Anyone could indeed take a 50% pay raise, but they had to tell everybody else. In full transparency. And when people started knowing about it, someone raised their hand
to ask a question, a rather nice one, "So you want a 50% pay raise, fair enough. Could you explain how it'll help us
move forward in our mission?" And then another person
raised their hand, and a third one. Unpleasant questions this time, "Hey, are you sure you deserve
this 50% pay raise?" The team suddenly became accountable,
but not to the manager, not to the boss; to their colleagues. And each person became
responsible for their own decision. Thanks to these experiments,
these mistakes, we started understanding what are
the keys to a liberated company. A liberated company is first and foremost
people gathered around a cause. We believe in the same ideas, we have
the same mission and the same values: let's work together. The mission becomes the new shareholder. We work at its service,
and every single decision, including pay raises,
are made with the mission in mind. The mission also helps us choose
our customers, for instance, or guide us to decide
which new services to launch. At this point, we share a mission,
we know where we're going. But how do we organize ourselves? We figured we all need
some sort of leadership, so we came back to a definition
of leadership that we liked. What is a leader? Well a leader is someone
that people decide to follow. So we simply ask everyone
to share who they were following. And that's what came out. No more pyramid, each person decides. Leaders change depending
on projects and colleagues, people are linked with commitment
towards each other, with mentoring relationships,
and with trust by default. We transition from a hierarchy based on
power to a hierarchy based on influence. By the way, this is nothing new. Instead of relationships
defined by a pyramid, we simply revealed natural relationships. Now we share a mission, we know
where to go and how to organize ourselves. But how to move forward? Well, we can work from any place,
whenever we want, on any topic we choose. We self-manage, and we regularly share
what we are working on. Sharing what we work on,
this part is critical. It helps build trust,
as well as to synchronize with others. Anaïs decides to work from home,
she advises her colleagues. And since we trust each other,
she can even afford to be a bit humorous. That example comes from Google+: Google+ is our tool for transparency, the same transparency
that allowed a certain salary balance, or helped us to synchronize. But we also discovered
and even more interesting way to use it: we share our doubts,
our everyday troubles. That's where I can say,
"Sorry guys, I overslept." Yeah, it still happens. We also share our joys,
our successes, and cat pictures. Can you imagine e-mailing
a cat picture to your CEO? Well thanks to Google+,
we uncovered a form of intelligence that is still rarely used in the corporate
world, the emotional intelligence. Not only do we share what we do
but we share how we feel, what we like. Each individual can show
sympathy or empathy, towards one another. Each person can trust their feelings to become a sensor of the company's mood. Finally, each person
can start taking off their mask and be truly themselves. Through this unique and liberated usage, Google+ becomes a more human tool,
a truly social network. These are some key points that helped us to understand how
a liberated company works. You surely noticed
that these key points are not processes. Today we hear a lot about
liberated companies. Documentaries are showed on TV, articles are written
in management magazines, debates are piling up. And with all these documentaries,
articles, and debates, a single question comes:
does it actually work? Well that's the kind of liberated company
I don't believe in. The one that is simplified,
turned into cliches and processes, advertised through clickbait titles,
"the end of management" for instance. The kind of liberated company that is only
evaluated through revenue and growth. Liberating a company is
not another management process that is going to singlehandedly
change everything. True, the decision to liberate a company
has to come from management. It's actually the last strategic decision
that management makes. Obviously, claiming to be a liberated
company doesn't just make it true. It's more than just a decision, it requires deep motivation
from a company's founder. It means accepting to show fragility, and to be able to sometimes say,
"I screwed up." It also means accepting to take some distance from profits, growth, or people turnover rate. Because a resignation
can actually be a good thing, if it allows someone to liberate
themselves, if the person leaving decides to pursue our mission
through other means. A conflict can be seen as an opportunity
for each to share their doubts, and to move forward
towards more integrity. Liberating a company requires
from each of its members to get out of habits
that they took or learnt, to bring back feelings, emotions, and individual responsibility
to the front stage. I know what you're going to say,
"I don't want that." And yet, I can't help
but wish all this to you. The kind of company I believe in allows each of its members to free themselves from a certain type
of organization and relationship, which allows
a kind of individual liberation. Today cases of liberated companies
are still quite rare. Too rare if you ask me. But I believe there are many things
to learn from this real-life experiment that more
and more people are making. No matter the team,
the department, no matter the scale, we can all experiment and open the door
to a corporate world in which everyone, every day, can decide to become wiser,
happier and more open. Thank you. (Applause)
