The Creative Economy In France: Givenchy & Vinci Show The Way

“The customer is our boss,” says Michèle Armiel, Executive Vice President of Givenchy. She was speaking on July 11 at the Paris launch of the Sixth Global Peter Drucker Forum, which will take place in Vienna Austria on November 13-14, 2014, and whose theme is “the Great Transformation” of management.  “At Givenchy, we have no choice but to be creative,” she said. “Our challenge is to keep a balance between creativity and profitability.” “Decentralization and empowerment,” said Xavier Huillard, Chairman and Chief Executive officer of Vinci, “constitute the royal road to liberating energy and innovation.” Vinci is a French company with 191,000 employees and turnover of €40 billion in construction and the provision of public services. Although Vinci operates in a business sector that is very different from Givenchy, its management practices have many similarities. Huillard said that the company is divided into 2,400 separate autonomous business units to ensure speed of execution and to mobilize talent. He sees the role of a CEO as one of mobilizing the energies of its employees within the culture and the values of the firm. “Organizations are first of all adventures for the men and women who do the work.” he said.  “To say that our enterprises belong to our shareholders is totally idiotic.” The great restaurants of France, to which the Michelin guide awards two or three stars, were also cited as outstanding examples of innovation in management. In those restaurants, everyone is devoted to delighting the customer. They should be examined as “laboratories of advanced management.” These examples of managemeent liberating energy and innovation were in sharp contrast to many French organizations in both the private sector and the public sector which, as Yves Doz Professor Emeritus at INSEAD pointed out, are still governed by practices of hierarchical bureaucracy: financial goals, conformism, control and fear. In these organizations, the culture is inbred and the customer is almost totally absent. The bloated slow-moving public sector in France received particularly severe criticism from many speakers.