HBR France / chief, yes chief? companies would be well-advised to draw inspiration from the organizational and managerial methods of the French navy

This article, published on the French site of Harvard Business Review, offers a fine overview of the conditions for creating the "alchemy of the crew" specific to the French Navy and which is so dear to us at All Leaders Initiative… It reminds us, among other things, of the importance of caring for what we call relational processes (facilitation, regulation) as much as the operational activity itself or even the conditions of subsidiarity, for powerful and sustainable collective performance. Extract: Link to the article

"Subsidiarity makes it possible to assign the responsibility of a task to the person most capable of doing it: "Every superior level refrains from doing itself what a lower level could do. [...]

This subsidiarity, however, requires two managerial prerequisites: meaning and trust. With regard to meaning, according to Admiral Prazuck, "it is up to the chief to decline it into concrete objectives, without curbing initiative." The declination of this vision is done in favour of a posture of attention "downwards", anchored as close as possible to the reality of the teams, and allows better individual appropriation of each person's role, such that the discipline emanates from the sailor. Such autonomy requires that the vision be clearly shared beforehand, so that each person is perfectly aligned with strategic issues. > > > > Secondly, regarding trust: it is necessary, as it is conducive to taking initiative and commitment. Better still: it fosters the emergence of potential. "