What if in this crisis the biggest risk was internal to your organization?

Entrepreneurs, leaders or line managers, The crisis the world is going through is a true

rupture. It questions all structures, regardless of size. Moreover, it undermines even the most robust schedules, the best thought-out perspectives, renders business plans obsolete and disrupts all strategies. It has also highlighted necessary modifications to your organization or production apparatus, whatever it may be. It will in any case have pushed you to rethink the fundamentals of your company. As you emerge from this period that will have, collectively, shaken you strongly and permanently, you have probably planned, as a manager or leader, to question yourself, revisit many of your strategies and adapt your production means. And that's good. However, do not forget, in your thinking, what constitutes the first value of your company and your most precious capital, namely your employees! Adapting your production tool without involving them is a choice that can deprive you of: - First-rate information only they hold, - A creativity and collective intelligence that only you and they, together, are capable of implementing - Finally, full buy-in necessary to initiate change.

_**In the absence of cohesion, the risk or threat to your company is no longer

external, but internal.**_ It results from the inability to recognise a common culture, a common mission, thus a common desire. More pragmatically, the risk or threat to your company is facing a significant loss of effectiveness at a time when optimum efficiency of the entire structure is more necessary than ever.

How to make the most of the feedback? But to be able to mobilise all

your vital forces best, you still need to: - understand their feelings, their expectations, the springs of their engagement and motivations, - by collecting elements and representations from each, understand and come together to a shared awareness of challenges and risks to face, - work on necessary adaptations and actions by mobilising collective intelligence, - give everyone the space of responsibility and freedom necessary for collective performance, - to make all this possible, create conditions for psychological safety for everyone. This involves exemplarity and explicit commitment from management and establishing rules of behaviour and attitudes between employees that facilitate exchanges virtuously.

_**Draw inspiration from high-risk industries to

manage internal risk**_ To feed and start such an approach, it is relevant to draw inspiration from the approach implemented in high-risk industries such as nuclear. These have understood, based on feedback from errors, incidents and accidents, that the best way to mobilise their vital forces against a risk was to develop a safety culture within their company.

_**Where to

start?**_ Best practice recommends a self-assessment of employee perceptions of their environment. This makes it possible to stimulate individual and collective awareness and provide measured and objective elements on which to build new mobilising actions. Under its apparent simplicity, it is an eminently powerful tool which has the merit of being both systematic (everyone participates) and systemic (it reveals internal organization). It also allows exploitation in cohorts which leads to internal exchanges, formal or informal, as well as indicators at the organization level.

Team cohesion This questionnaire will take up the fundamentals of the

company's safety culture, with emphasis on the sense of belonging to a work group and its values. That's the famous "team spirit". It could be particularly prudent to also target a few contextual subjects such as: telework and management, information circulation within the company, real involvement and proper understanding of challenges by employees, sharing of responsibilities and training…

What advantages? It makes it possible to both reveal strong expectations,

help set priorities and implement an appropriate action plan. Above all, it enables each person to recognise their importance in the process, that they have a role to play, and that in difficult situations, the company's success rests on their shoulders and those of their team. Finally, this work on safety culture being above all a work of appropriation by each person of internal culture in the company, it has as a side benefit of strengthening group cohesion, thus improving overall productivity. Such an approach, both systematic and systemic, requires genuine work of preparation, implementation and mobilisation. It must moreover be followed by effects and concrete plans resulting from collective thinking. The care given to implementing this approach by and for collective intelligence and effectiveness will be all the more impactful that it will be protective and mobilising of your human capital. Do not hesitate to contact us to learn more about the practical challenges of such an approach!