I had a call from a young lady working
for TEDx and she said to me fab it’s
about time good pick what I thought ok
tom is an important topic in religion in
philosophy I studied it you know and in
science but it’s also true for business
so I thought I’d dig in a little bit and
I started to search on it and I ask the
usual suspects mr. google and mrs.
wikipedia and i found an interesting
definition that i’m about to share with
you time is a component quantity of
various measurements used to sequence
events to compare the duration of events
or the intervals between them ok ok I’m
losing you already it’s complex it’s
complex and it’s true from the moment I
started to work for mid-sized or large
organization I have been confronted with
the issue of time I don’t mean the usual
choices that are only made to us women
when we have to decide whether we want
to work full time part time if we want
to build a family or make a career or
even if you want to try to do both know
it’s important but not for today I mean
in the manager time in the managerial
dimension when change is a necessity and
speed is the ruler if we cooperation
want to achieve greater success or
simply survive in the large corporations
or even in the smaller one the agenda is
rather full of change we change to
optimize we change to restructure we
change to be lien which tends to be more
jile these days we all try and change
too
utilize of which try and change to be
ueber izing or to not be actually
authorized as you can see there are
dozens of reasons to change and probably
am forgetting and forgetting some of
them equally we’ve got tons and tons kal
tiles MSA of books talking about change
management sixteen thousand titles are
for sale on Amazon if you just Google
with a small kind of denomination that’s
rather a huge quantity of reasons and
explanation explanations of how we do
and we conduct change management so
you’re going to tell me but what has
this got to see with time well actually
there is a another interesting number
sixty percent of change management plan
fail could be wrong it could be true in
some kind of ways it’s not really
important because let’s face the reality
we know that change management plans
that fail leave us with exhausted people
with demotivated people we don’t know
what tomorrow is going to be burnouts
and in the worst cases suicides so yes
it is about time that we employees
leaders and reproduce consultants
working for this whole ecosystem stopped
wasting that precious time to actually
that produces so little change in other
worlds could we change and move from
wasting time to making time in my daily
practice I believe very strongly in
three important virtues slowness truth
and emotion let’s look at slowness
slowness by slowness I don’t mean
inertia I don’t mean lack of action I
mean active slowness I mean the
necessary time to
back the time to think you know it takes
time to think I mean the time to digest
the change the time to learn to learn
with the people we manage the time to
connect the organization to its most
important mission when when we’re in
business satisfying our customers making
them as happy as possible I know I know
I already see some of the eyes nose kind
of wondering this is a little bit
provoking at a time when where we are
all asked to go fast furious and even
fast and furious let me share with you
an example I was used to be working in
the aluminum industry and in this
industry we were making place big blocks
of aluminum to make the wings and the
fuselage of most aircraft we fly with we
had a bit of a problem to meet the
undetected quality that our customers
were expecting we had done a lot of
things implemented good processes we had
tried new sort of you know key
performance indicators but we couldn’t
resolve it just by doing all of this
including executive decision and
engineers you know we’re scratching
their heads at the time i was in
marketing and i knew little on
industrial processes so i had only just
one question in mind why why and why it
doesn’t work anymore so I asked the vips
the very intelligent people customers
and employees yes indeed customer then
please and I interviewed them I asked
them what was going on I was actually
shocked you know very surprised to see
that at the end of the day those guys
those workers were making those plates
for these customers had no idea what
these parts were all about and what they
were for sometimes they didn’t even know
who was the customer their job became
without any purpose they
became like robots so how did we fix it
I don’t want to say simply I took the
workers of the line and I met them meet
with the customers the sales force
brought the customers in the facility in
the production facility understand the
time to explain the purpose of the work
they spend the time to explain those
guys what was happening with those
plates let me say that again I took the
workers of the line so imagine at the
time I’m in marketing I’m still I was a
woman and I had to explain the floor of
the plant managers that I had to take
those guys off that means time not spent
producing and explain that that could
improve quality and productivity it
sounded revolutionary truth I’m noticed
over time that I get the best of my team
when I tell the things as they are I
know it can be scary good or bad and
when I encourage transparency you know
startups today they fascinate everybody
they go faster why that well because in
startups people speak more openly more
directly they share the same value they
are aligned to world the same goal let
me see another experience in healthcare
in healthcare products must comply to
Public Regulation and Public Regulation
very often change the change to improve
patient safety their change to follow
science that means that companies have
to assess reassess their processes their
products their packaging pretty much
everything and that means a lot of work
for the teams that the managers have to
make sure that it’s it’s done it’s done
others set deadlines and you know what
with deadlines it’s about time so as to
close so what happens well well
sometimes teams they just
stay half where they are right they just
do a little bit of it and they know that
they’re going to miss the deadline but
they don’t say anything and that’s the
problem but the biggest problem is not
so much that we don’t meet the deadline
is that they don’t they’re saying what’s
happening they don’t they are saying the
truth and that can be a big problem in
this kind of industries you could be
caught and be getting into a crisis
reputational image it could be also a
patient safety issue so of course we had
to fix the problem and how did we do
that well the first thing was for the
management to recognize recognize there
was a problem be conscious there is a
problem therefore you can move the
second thing we had to do was to
encourage but listen to this we also
rewarded transparency we make people
telling the truth there is power in
telling the truth truth creates trust
and Tyler emotion change means moving
people emotionally physically sometimes
as well remember those workers who were
in the plant well some of them cried
they were so proud to discover they were
making parts for the Airbus a380 yes
they cried most change management plans
today the motto of them what is it
reducing costs increasing revenue
unfortunately people don’t get up in the
morning to increase productivity by 5%
to exactly they don’t get up in the
morning to you increase market share by
ten percent they don’t get up in the
morning to reduce the work force
particularly when it’s their colleagues
they get up in the morning to build the
largest aircraft in the world so do we
need to be Mandela or Michelle Obama to
do that I don’t think so what we need to
do is to find that little thing that
moves
we need to take the time to understand
that little thing or that big thing that
is hidden behind piles sometimes of
process throws that we forgot this time
like this situation in the plant I call
it meaning so yes it is about time when
we embarked in the corporate world for
destination change that we make space
for slowness truth and emotion thank you very much