Although for French leaders, the urgency to transform seems to be taken for granted today in words, its implementation is far from being committed in practice.

The denial at the highest level remains strong. It confirms that the first threat for a manager is to believe that he has understood, and to delegate his commitment to a few technological or marketing expeditions in order to preserve an economic model that is already undermined from within.

More than a statement, transforming your business requires a constant commitment. CEO now stands for Chief Engagement Officer.

The first step in this commitment is, first, to succeed in one's own personal transformation, the result of an intimate and lasting understanding of the new ecosystem.

It is only on this new foundation that he will be able to really change the culture of his company, before tackling the implementation of a new strategy.

It is at these three levels, and in this order, that the leader must act to succeed in La Grande Traversée to the new digital continents.

Understanding, Learning, Transforming and Innovating are the key words of the CATI approach developed by VISCONTI, which makes it possible to conduct a new management experience, structured and adapted to new market conditions.

It must plunge into the heart of the ecosystem, no longer simply be on the Internet but in the Internet.

Becoming a visionary, agile and relevant player rather than a defensive, cautious, and disconnected follower.

1/ Understand

Understanding requires us above all to master the key drivers of the new world: hyperexpansion, platformization and culture reversal.

Hyperexpansion means a massive fall in barriers to entry, encouraging a new type of competition in all areas.

Technology facilitates and generates, in fact, a natural growth in the number of actors and consumers. Both now form a multitude that produces and consumes at the same time, suddenly leading to a rapid increase in the level of competition, served by a constantly renewed and improved customer experience.

The “mass market” is followed by “tailor-made mass” structured by the indispensable mastery of the new black gold that is data. Amazon demonstrates this remarkable every day, disrupting entire sectors of retail.

This collapse of traditional monopolies is also based on the ability of new players to integrate intelligence and external added value into their ecosystem, as demonstrated by Apple's success with its applications.

Platformization is the direct consequence of this massive openness. It is the result of a continuous and inevitable disruption of most models.

Through their agility, their art of innovation and their sense of customer experience, the most successful players have slipped between the product and the end user, thus controlling use, monetization and value.

In the war for attention and available time they took the only possible place, that of number 1 on a podium that only has one seat.

GAFAs are the symbol of these new monopolies that capture the majority of the value produced by others in a logic of increasing returns radically opposite to the logic of decreasing returns of traditional economies.

Booking, Blablacar, Netflix, so many actors unknown a decade ago who are now undermining the most beautiful brands in tourism, transport or television.

The reversal of culture is characterized by the shift from the “product centric” of organizations inherited from the industrial era to the “customer centric” specific to these new players.

For them “the client is the boss”. The CEO's obsession, the lifeblood of the entire organization, everything starts with the customer before starting with the product. The latter is the result of a permanent work of innovation that overturns the historical organization to move from silo to lego, from vertical to horizontal, from plan to project.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, calls it the “Day One” culture, that of the first day, of the agility of the start-up that does not allow itself any comfort zone, at the risk of dying from a competitor more imaginative and aggressive than oneself in the face of an increasingly demanding and unfaithful customer.

A hybrid culture that combines hyper-centralization and broad decentralization, ambitious vision and excellent execution. The new golden rule of executive experience.

2/ Learn

In an environment of profound and permanent change, understanding is not enough. Learning is becoming the essential condition for success.

But learning means first and foremost unlearning, that is, questioning many of its fundamentals, being more open to questioning, and leaving an assertive posture.

This is a particularly difficult exercise for a manager. As Keynes said, “What is difficult is not to accept new ideas but to forget old ideas.” This new watchful attitude cannot and should not be delegated.

It involves a radical modification of the manager's practices and agenda, oriented towards new uses, thus allowing him to experience himself and to confront a multitude of different customer experiences as closely as possible.

From the use of applications from all sectors, to the mentoring of start-ups, through the immersion in remote and particularly innovative environments, not to mention the prolonged exchanges with the most advanced customers in the search for new solutions:

Every effort must be made to make it one of the first sensors in a world in continuous recomposition.

This is the essential starting point for a successful cultural transformation of the company and its employees through a virality effect that only the manager can really engage and amplify over time.

3/ Transform

In addition to the cultural and human challenge, there is a race against time, which requires structuring the approach and maintaining a steady pace, for which the manager is primarily responsible.

As Winston Churchill often said: “If you don't take change by the hand, it will catch you by the throat.”

This challenge of time imposes a real long-term strategic vision, coupled with excellent short-term execution, which is often lacking, as it is gladly delegated to those who always favor a little more comfort at the expense of saving risks.

The management of these dilemmas cannot be delegated or resolved at any level other than that of the chief engagement officer, whose first decisions will be to act urgently before implementing new performance indicators.

A single objective: to make everyone aware that priorities have changed.

In an era of silent revolution, that of information, profoundly different from the industrial revolution marked by noise and the transformation of landscapes, it must send visible signals of the transformations undertaken and their progress.

This is the condition for the successful implementation of a new strategy which, based on a renewed culture, must be gradually implemented by the greatest number of people, and not reserved for a few experts or start-ups clumsily integrated before being definitively suppressed.

This shift obviously requires that the company's mission has been previously revisited in order to allow it to embrace the broadest possible potential field of action, from a platform perspective whose decisive nature in the new digital ecosystem has been underlined.

As Jeff Bezos readily recalls, “if you stay in your core business, you are in danger.”

To date, Amazon's track record shows the success of its approach.

4/ Innovate

If the CEO must be the Chief Engagement Officer, he must also be the one who puts the culture of customer experience and therefore innovation at the center.

This is not natural, as it breaks habits, displaces lines of authority, and puts risk back at the center of the game in a constructive process of learning through continuous experimentation and its series of formative failures.

Any attempt at a new strategy is in vain if it is not accompanied by this indispensable cultural and practical leap in which the leader must be the first actor and the best evangelizer.

This obsession with innovation must be embodied primarily in its agenda, its leadership style and the performance measures of its employees. It must also directly impact the organization set up to promote its emergence, in order to ensure the viral development of this process of permanent openness.

The mastery of innovation techniques by the manager (Design Thinking, Lean Start-Up, Business Model Canvas, etc.) is now as important as that of traditional technical knowledge.

It cannot be an end in itself or a simple communication lever but the preferred way to ensure that any new idea is transformed into income and profits and thus shapes the company's growth drivers.

As we can see, the challenges are numerous, as are the obstacles and obstacles that accompany them. Overcoming them requires a real desire on the part of the leader to no longer simply sail along the coast but to face the open sea, as did the great explorers who transformed our vision of the world, our imaginations and our economies in the 16th century.

The adventure is exciting for any true leader, as it must be for all his employees, if he knows how to lead them into the future by giving meaning, rhythm and ambitious perspective to the Grande Traversée in which he asks them to engage with him.