Reflets Magazine #148 | Managing the Complexity of Sustainable Transformation

In the face of climate change, the growth of AI or the pandemic, what if we gave up trying to control everything and learnt to live with uncertainty instead? This is the solution put forward in Reflets Mag #148 by Cédric Baecher (E00), partner and co-leader of the Sustainability practice at Wavestone, in association with Professor Laurent Bibard (E85), to address more effectively the complex challenges of sustainable transformation. Here is a free online translation of the article… subscribe to get the next issues (in French)!

‘A ticking bomb’, ‘a regulatory monster’, ‘bureaucratic folly’ or ‘a necessary evil’...Many CEOs mince no words today when evoking the new obligations gradually being imposed on their businesses with regard to extra-financial reporting (taxonomy, CSRD, etc.). It has to be said that in recent months, national and European governments have been pushing strongly to create measures and impose new rules aimed at including major contemporary challenges (environmental and socioeconomic) in world affairs, and thus better regulate key market players’ conduct.

A dominant control culture

Humanity, out of entrenched habit, is thus doing what it appears to do best when facing complex phenomena which interfere with our ambitions and plans; we come up with the most sophisticated solutions (a saturation of procedures, protocols and indicators, etc.), often without taking enough time to question, reflect and elucidate collectively. Why? Because we cannot bear to lose control of what we see as our destiny. It’s better to act fast, even if we don’t ‘know’, as long as we can maintain the illusion we are at the helm. This dominant control culture is both deep-rooted and often unconscious.

Yet the interconnecting crises we are experiencing (climate emergency, pandemics, socioeconomic and geopolitical unrest, etc.) raise a great number of fundamental questions about our way of life, and above all incites us first and foremost to stand back and take stock rather than panic. Our response up to now has been through the semantics of ‘transition’, based perhaps a little haphazardly on the premise that we all fully understand the meaning and implications of this word. However, there is a serious risk the (very real) diversity in perceptions, expectations and concerns will re-emerge negatively when the time comes to implement the complex solutions we are so impatient to see in place. 

This attitude applies in equal degree to climate change, artificial intelligence or COVID 19. When faced with ‘subjects’ which both fascinate and awe us, we spend more time talking about the problems, threats and short-term projects than truly working towards mutual understanding and preparing for the future together. 

The imperatives of sustainable transformation are entering a business world which remains highly driven by short-term interests. On one hand, we obsess over future changes (which triggers a form of immediate anxiety conducive to ideological solutions); on the other, we continue to demand immediate economic results. Dealing with this fundamental cognitive dissonance is probably the primary factor for successful sustainable change. 

Let us not take the meaning of words (such as ‘transition(s)’, ‘CSR’ and ‘ethics’) for granted. We must question their meaning on a regular basis, if we are to move ahead in the right direction together. If all the players in a company start ‘doing CSR’ without really agreeing beforehand what this means, there’s a fair chance that, in the end, no-one is actually ‘doing it’. The development of standardised extra-financial reporting frameworks could create the illusion of us all speaking the same language, but also threatens to strip it of any meaning.

Complexity and uncertainty are inseparable

In the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) model of change management, which mirrors many of the current characteristics of sustainable transformation, uncertainty is juxtaposed with complexity, as if it were a different subject, when in reality it constitutes an essential and intrinsic aspect. 

While the Anglo-Saxons have developed an approach to complexity which is wholly focused on systems theory, the philosopher Edgar Morin advocates the idea of an alternative approach explicitly including our inevitable ignorance of world matters, despite all our knowledge.

When it comes to sustainable transformation, are we ready to accept that ignorance, and thus uncertainty, form part of our action frameworks? Do we need to understand everything, measure everything and solve everything all at once using a plethora of models that are inherently flawed? Especially given that the unknown does not necessarily herald difficulty, it may hide solutions and even wonders.

If our collective aim is to remain that of nurturing a certain resilience to all kinds of crises, let’s remember that a reed has more chance than an oak of resisting a hurricane... If simplism is fundamentally problematic, simplicity, on the contrary, is often a strength... 

In order to base sustainable transformation on simple solutions, we must rediscover the time, habit and taste for reflection, prioritising a simple and precise use of language; an essential prerequisite to drive sustainable transformation smoothly and effectively.  

Learning how to relearn is a priority

Sustainable transformation offers the prospect of a theoretically desirable future (preserved environmental balance, a fairer society and so on), but at the cost of a complex and uncertain process. 

To move towards the future, we must therefore call on all our existing and all too often under-estimated skills, as we are more preoccupied with discussing problems and challenges than considering the tools already at our disposal. We know how to do a lot more than we realise, so we can have infinitely more confidence in ourselves than we think.

In addition to systematically seeking to develop new ‘hard’ skills, we must relearn how to live with uncertainty, encourage speaking out to build awareness, formulate and internalise the fundamental issues raised by sustainable change. This is obviously a far less immediate process than imposing rules, but it is in our fundamental interest to bet on the long term. 

As phenomenology very seriously teaches us, we must relearn how to connect with the issues of sustainable change from a simple, adapted, precise and empirical perspective, in particular via a ‘de-sedimentation’ and a freer flow of language, ideas and experience. The aim is thus to avoid trapping ourselves in outdated and ill-adapted ways of addressing subjects as important as what we currently call sustainable transformation. 

The past is like the unconscious in psychoanalysis: the more we deny it, the more we entrap ourselves. Paradoxically, if we are to avoid imprisoning ourselves, we must devote greater attention to the past and find the right points of support therein, without which change cannot be initiated effectively. In the business and managerial world, we often have a naive tendency to focus exclusively on the future (future professions, trends and objectives, etc.), perceiving the past as a burden and never as a support. Yet from a biological perspective, we are shaped by genetics and thus the past. This also applies to organisations. There can be no sustainable change without capitalising on past experience, without a systemisation of feedback, whether positive or negative. 

To advance in all these aspects and offer sustainable transformation a real chance of success, we must encourage, at all levels of hierarchy, the emergence of a leadership and managerial culture with a genuine focus on hindsight, an approach which remains all too rare in companies. 

Translation of an article published in Reflets Magazine #148. Read a preview (in French). 
Get the next issues (in French).