Les rapports de force dans l’entreprise toxique

Hello, my friends. You know, I left it because I found that IT companies were too toxic. Really, really toxic. And I've changed companies quite a few times. And you find the same thing. People who slap you on the back, people who talk about you, people who are ready to walk all over you when it suits their interests, people who can even come up to you and pretend to be friendly or close or sympathetic or whatever, and then they'll talk to you, argue with you, report what you said, use it against you, all of that. It's just too toxic. And in fact, I recently did some thinking on this subject because it's destroying this industry to be with you. This industry is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit, to recruit people, worthy people. And even when it does recruit people, it has trouble finding people who work.

Huh.

I have a lot of friends who are still in this industry who tell me, and it's a disaster. Out of one who's working, there are nine who have quietly resigned. I spoke to an ex colleague the other day and he said, yeah, I'm going to change companies. I said, oh yeah, great. So have you found an interesting place to advance or progress in your career? I mean, I thought he wanted to go somewhere for positive reasons that he had in his head. Oh, he said, you know, oh, between us, it's the same everywhere. Okay, So I, I go to other companies because they pay better.

That's all.

Okay?

That's where we are. That means today we have people who no longer even have any hope of finding companies that aren't toxic or that don't foster bad attitudes. It's a real disaster. I'm even starting to see company bosses or high level executives contacting me and saying, I've watched your videos on the world of work. I understand you, but I don't do it on purpose. What's going on? I'd like to avoid this in my company, but I know it exists. Oh yes, that's the million dollar question, my friends. The thought I've had about this is that people who are toxic in the workplace, all those people who, I've told you I've had bad interactions with them and you've probably seen people like that. I want to tell you, in civilian life, in everyday life, what are they like? They're not necessarily toxic people in everyday life. These are people who are fathers, who are neighbors, who take care of a cat, a dog, who maybe participate in community work. All of these people may be very nice people, but why do people in the workplace become toxic? Why? Because I am using A statistical approach. That is to say, when I go into companies, I see that almost the majority of people there are toxic. Whereas on the street, in everyday life, despite the bad experiences that we may have, I want to say that the majority of people are good people. The majority of people are not toxic in everyday life. So how is it that these same people become toxic once they are in the workplace? There's something to it. I thought about it with regard to a particular example. A few years ago, a plane crashed in the Indies. There was a football team on that plane. People, strong people, healthy people, people who don't do drugs, who don't drink, who are very sporty, who appreciate each other, who support each other, who still have very positive values. If you hang out with these people, they are probably extraordinary people. They are on the plane. The plane crosses the Andes. The weather is terrible. The pilot gets lost. He ends up on the side of the mountain. The plane crashes. And in fact, because the pilot had made a mistake with his navigation, he had been carried by bad winds and it is very far from where we could have hoped to find him. So later on, the plane crashed. And later, when rescue teams started looking for him, well, they were looking for him along his theoretical route, except that he wasn't there. He was much further away and they didn't find him in the wreckage of the plane. There were dead people. There were survivors. What happened? Well, the story went around the world because a few weeks later they found a few survivors. It turned out that the survivors had eaten to survive, had eaten the dead. There had been cannibalism in this story. And do you know how long it took for them to get to the point of cannibalism? Three days. Three days means that we take someone on Monday. On Monday, this someone is athletic, strong, young, very healthy, very healthy in body and mind, with extremely positive values.

Okay?

And then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, he's eating humans.

Okay?

Thursday, he's eating humans. What do you think?

Okay.

The environment. The environment we create can turn people into monsters. Of course, what I'm saying here is not a happy ending. It's not a blank check given to the toxic people of France and Navarre. Huh? That's not my idea. I'm not saying that people are completely controlled by their environment. What I'm trying to say is that the environment has an extremely significant influence on people. And people who are able to resist the impulses that come from their environment are very rare.

Okay?

People who arrive at a place and find that, for example, everyone is looting the Store and leave. Well, there are people who will probably say, hey, they're looting. I'm looting too, and I'll leave. There will be a minority who will say, everyone is looting. I'm not doing it. There are very few people who resist movements of this nature. So we have a company, a company that, through its management, its values, its structure, its organization is like dog eat dog. It's a cannibalistic company. We can find very peaceful people who arrive, very nice, very friendly people who join the company. They join the company, really, to work, to go home, to make friends and all that. These people become monsters very quickly, okay? Because the environment in the company will push them to do that. There are companies, for example, where you have a role or roles that overlap. You have someone who has a role, a role that is very stressful, very demanding, and you recruit a colleague with an overlap in responsibilities to create internal competition, to force the two to crush each other and then move forward. And then it's the fights against each other. We have companies that encourage spying, gossip, that punish this kind of thing and that punishes in the positive sense of the term. You know, when someone is particularly disgusting, they move up in the company. And we sometimes see it all the way to the CEO. To the CEO, who is a real scumbag, A declared scumbag, okay? And this kind of attitude will then cascade down to the bottom. I'll tell you a little story. Sorry, I touched the microphone. I hope there's no noise. Check my system, because my battery is flashing and I'm afraid the system will shut down so quickly. Who owns the company? Who owns your company? Where you work? In terms of ownership, it belongs to investors who are generally billionaires, right? They're big, big funds. Big, big families. All quite discreet. You can look them up. You can even find their names if you want. But in general, they're discreet. They're not people who like to show off. Who is it run by? It's run by millionaires. The CEO, the people around him, they're millionaires. They earn salaries of tens of millions even. They have stock options, shares, benefits in kind. And that costs a lot of money, okay? That's a lot of value, okay? Going all the way down, all the way down to the employees. Employees are people who live from month to month, from salary to salary, and who are trying to last. They are the ones who actually carry out the company's mission. If the company is a plumbing company, for example, well, it's the employee who is welding. It's the employee who is pulling copper wires and all that. It's a company that does anything. It's this employee at the very bottom who actually carries out the work and who is in front of the customer. They are the most competent in reality, and they just want to last. They just want to continue to exist and they want to get by, and they want a little bonus or a little raise or something like that. Between the bottom and the top, what do you have? You have middle management. Middle management, MLE management. What does it consist of? MLE management, in terms of skills, are not necessarily competent, okay? They are not capable of doing the work of the people below.

Okay?

So we're going to find someone who is very competent, who is managed by someone who isn't, who doesn't even understand the job, okay? But he still manages it, right? He's the one who manages it, even though he doesn't know.

Okay?

That's extraordinary. It's like if on an airplane we took the captain and the captain isn't a pilot. We took a first officer who is a pilot. We're going to say, you're piloting the plane, okay? And then we're going to bring you a captain. Except that the captain didn't even study aviation. He studied science. He has a bachelor's degree and he's going to manage you. He's there to manage the cockpit, okay? You would get on a plane like that. Today we have clinics, we have hospitals that are run by people who are more like doctors, who are run by administrators who strictly didn't have a doctor before. He's a chief physician today. The chief medical officer is not necessarily a doctor.

Okay?

It's a disaster, though. This management in the field is all about the cross. I was saying competence, but I forgot. They're not necessarily competent. Are they millionaires? They're not millionaires. Sometimes they're even paid less than some highly qualified executives. So what do they work on? What's their currency? What's their currency at that level? Their currency at that level is power. Well, of course it's power. It's neither money nor competence nor anything. It's power. They're there to exercise power. If we were in trouble, you know, trouble would be a ship with people rowing. They don't row. The management in the field doesn't row. They're saying, hey, you're rowing, you're letting it go. Pick up the pace. Go ahead, row again or I'll whip you.

That's the role. That's the role. That's the role.

It's to force execution. It's to be there to push execution. And of course, they ruin companies because they have responsibilities that go beyond their stake. Right?

Okay.

The people who are at the top very often are also shareholders in the company. The guy who is on the board of the company, on the supervisory board, has a strike force. He has influence, yes, but at the same time he has a portfolio, sometimes with millions of shares in the company. So in a way he is involved. He has put his money into IT management, middle management. They have no say in this. Okay, but what is their power? Their power is too great. In fact, what we have in companies today is probably a reversal that has literally led to a kind of coup d' etat by middle management. They are too important in relation to their involvement in the company. And at that point, of course, they are most often the source of toxicity. I have seen managers use divide and conquer in a company. I have seen managers bring people up because they are friends of theirs or because they sleep with them or whatever. So what is the result? What is the result? Well, the result is that it costs money. I mean, it costs the company money. Of course, when you have middle management that uses criteria other than performance criteria in their day to day management, well, it's bound to impact the company's results. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that are in the red that could turn into the green just by assigning things. Toxicity costs money. It costs the company revenue, but it also costs the state. It literally costs a good portion of the gdp. A good portion of the development of many countries has literally gone down the drain in the form of toxicity.

That's all.

So the problem is that the frustrations of everyone, and in particular of this layer of management are turning into a crisis and an economic catastrophe in reality. Okay, I will give you details, more specific anecdotes that I have experienced or that were told to me on the phone that I am g giving. But I will do that next time. The microphone is still holding, but I am afraid that it will give out at any minute. Thank you my friends, for following along so far and I will see you in the next one.