In theory, the stakes for public entities (states or municipalities) and companies are very different: public entities are tied to the territories that define them, whereas companies are almost all potentially nomadic. Some serve inhabitants; others serve customers. Nations and cities can hardly die, even after bankruptcy, whereas companies can’t withstand it and disappear.
And yet, companies, like cities and nations, all depend on the availability of talent, money and raw materials; both face technological, ecological, social, cultural and political change; both influence the world.
The leaders of these companies also have something in common: in democracies and dictatorships alike, in private companies and those quoted on the stock exchange, they are all too often concerned only with the short term, obsessed by the demands of their shareholders or public opinion; they then refuse to see the profound changes and weak signals, locking themselves up in internal quarrels and procrastinating instead of reforming; many of them think that their careers will be longer and more glorious if they do nothing.
And yet, there is a big difference:
Companies generally reform much faster and better than governments, when their leaders are prepared to risk their jobs to do so, and when shareholders give them the time to reap the benefits of their reforms. To achieve this, companies have developed numerous methods of change, often inspired by great professors, many of them American (among the most famous: Peter Drucker, Daniel Kahneman, John Child, Martin Ihrig, Lisa Lahey, Robert Kegan), whose theories are taught in countless schools and universities, and implemented in many countries by armies of consultants.
At the same time, governments, whether democratic or not, have no real incentive to reform or cut costs. Instead of eliminating what is no longer useful, they add services, departments, agencies, ministries and high authorities. And the work of great professors, such as Michel Crozier and his disciples in France, has never had the same impact on state management as that of their counterparts working to reform companies. And while thousands of pages have been written on how to transpose the theories and methods of corporate reform to public administrations, this rarely succeeds.
The reason is simple: the more an organization is aware of its fragility, the more likely it is to reform itself. In other words, a company (like a human being) will live longer the more it knows it can die, and the more it wants to live. This is not the case for states, nations and cities, whose fragility we are generally unaware of.
And that’s what we need to make state entities aware of first: you’ll only live if you know you’re mortal.
In a given country, this would mean creating a sense of vulnerability in administrative and ministerial institutions, and deducing survival behaviors from this. In particular, this should be the case in France today, for both local entities and the State, whose vital parameters have been severely affected.
To create such a feeling, we would need, for example, not to hesitate to abolish (while protecting the social interests of those who work in them) a great many public entities that are ill-suited to managing the challenges of the future, and which, over time, can only accumulate more parasitic layers. Such a strategy, which would demonstrate the mortality of institutions and the need for their survival, would also free up resources to launch new activities and entities, without increasing either taxes or deficits. We could then apply to the State the numerous methods developed in business to innovate, motivate and change. Without jeopardizing acquired social benefits.
This would require a real mental revolution, which conservatives on both the right and the left will refuse to accept, as they are overly concerned with preserving their rents. Particularly in France, where a carrier pigeon service existed in the Ministry of Defense until the middle of the 20th century, even though the use of carrier pigeons had long since ceased.
j@attali.com
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