Existence at the heart of concerns

What if the big question for leaders in 2023 was an eminently existential question. Not a question of debt or prices, innovation or supply chain, but a more central and eternal question.

That of Time. The time of the manager, but also that of his employees who are so difficult to recruit, retain and engage.

The crisis as a tell-tale

This is undoubtedly what the great period of health and geopolitical crisis we are going through is emerging.

Krisis, moment of mutation, is in fact one of the three terms that the Greeks used to express Time, with that of Chronos, the long time, and Kairos that of the unexpected event.

It is with these three times that the manager, in spite of himself, is permanently confronted.

Urgency is the long term.

The long duration of the story, the one that gives meaning and is translated into a Reason for Being before even being embodied in a strategy that gives substance to it.

The long time vs. the short time

We can see how today this ability to promote the long term, to give back a real perspective, is one of the essential factors of commitment for young generations, in contrast to the short term of finance that prevailed for several decades.

It is also a factor in the rejection of those who do not know how to embody it with authenticity. The manager is primarily responsible for it.

Work-life balance

Another dimension of time is that of its balance between professional and private life. Lockdown and teleworking have shown that there can be a better balance between the duration of these two periods.

That one could not allow itself to be sacrificed in the long term for the benefit of the other, but that each time could nourish the other and give it meaning.

This quest for balance is still in gestation as organizations are in the process of reinventing themselves by combining verticality and horizontality, individual and collective intelligence. Positive hybridity is on the way.

The director is the first actor.

The new time

But this hybridity will only be possible and sustainable provided that this professional and collective time is a new time that makes us grow.

This quality of time spent together is crucial and required to unleash commitment, creativity, and innovation. And here we touch on one of the first factors of resignation and withdrawal, that of toxic organization and management.

To close our eyes too much to practices from the past world that privilege control, infantilization and the lack of exemplarity, we condemn ad vitam all strategies for the future in a VICA world that calls for, on the contrary, trust, transparency and psychological security. The manager is the first guarantor.

What if 2023 was less the world after than the Time after.