Chaumont Armelle

Executive MCC Thesis

January 2014

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WE NEED A NEW STORY, A NEW DNA OF BUSINESS:

WHERE ARE THE LEADERS OF TOMORROW IN FRANCE?

Investigation, meetings, and interpretation

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INTRODUCTION

Holderlin: “Where danger thrives also thrives that which saves.”

Tuli Kupferberg: “When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.”

Manfred Kets De Vries: “The challenge for twenty-first-century leadership is to create healthy

organizations.”

Globalization is redrawing the world map

I decided to focus this short thesis on France not only because it is my country of origin but

also because it seems to me that Europe, which lay in ruins after World War II, was unable, for

a variety of reasons, to anticipate the painful awakening that placed it in a new and perhaps

definitive position of vulnerability in the world at the beginning of the 21st century. From one

day to the next, the emerging future left both France and Europe behind.

For the first time in history, our world appeared as a whole, a single planet. Although we may

throw around terms like tsunami of globalization, this reshuffling of the deck is not as harsh as

it seems and has not affected all countries equally.

For some, this shakeup could mean the opportunity to break free from the isolation or willful

ignorance that left them with gnawing difficulties: the problems of Africa and the Third World

have been brought to light and call out not only to NGOs and various philanthropic outfits, but

to the economic, political, and social sense of responsibility of the entire world.

The geopolitical situation has shifted and remains unstable. The new USSR is undergoing a

gradual democratization; the eastern countries may be able to breathe fresh air into an aging

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and dramatically ethnocentric Europe. The United States is no longer steering the ship; China,

India, and Brazil are expanding effectively. Like it or not, the past is gone for good: after a

period of crisis and adjustment, we will need to absorb this emerging global consciousness as

soon as possible in order to take full advantage of it.

This metamorphosis entails a lucid critical reading of the structures of the past and the rise of

new ideas, new ways of thinking, working, and imagining our lives and their many cultural

facets: in short, a re-envisaging of the role of people on earth.

The past glory of our civilizations long concealed a real intellectual decadence. This

obliteration had two main effects: preventing us from seeing and from thinking. Caught up in

a race forward, we have let the world change without ourselves changing at the same time.

Change is now inevitable, urgent, and challenging, because there is not much time.

Why are Europe and the United States in danger ? All sorts of organic explanations could be

offered up: civilizations are born, grow, and decline. All that is true, but in this case, things

have sped up. When I was a child my parents were discovering with amazement the

refrigerator and the television; my mother brought me back from her travels a collection of

dolls from all over the country – Alsace, Nice, Brittany, Martinique – which I kept carefully in

their celluloid cases. France seemed so vast and exotic to me then! My grandmother, born in

the north of France, has never seen the Mediterranean, while I have already been around the

world several times and tasted dishes from every country.

How have we constructed our western society in such a way that everything is spiraling out of

control like this? It is probably the result of an unfortunate interpretation of Cartesian and

Newtonian theories: we’ve allowed technical science, algebra, and money to dominate society.

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Very early on in France, intellectuals such as Simone Weil (the philosopher, who died in 1942)

understood the vicious circle: the mind, she writes, “succumbs; it no longer has any criterion

other than efficiency. Where the mind ceases to be a principle, it also ceases to be the end”

(Œuvres completes, Gallimard. Vol. 4 p. 100). The homo economicus model tends to slow down

ethical progress.

Auschwitz and the twin towers: the rupture between ancient wisdom and modernity

At the end of the 19th century, Europe and the United States were united by a common ethos:

that of progress, free enterprise and human rights; ancient humanism passed down through

the Renaissance and the Enlightenment placed the human being at the center of the universe

as a responsible conscience, generating social, material, and moral values for the good of all.

These are the terms of Rousseau’s social contract.

The growth of the economy and of industrialization took precedence over those values, and

human beings were considered in the same category as machines, as a means of production.

Modernity has been tarnished by the tragic decline of values, the secularization of society, the

banishment of intellectual, philosophical, and theological reflection. Consumer society made

these values obsolete because they were not needed for production or consumption.

Efficiency reigned: referring to algebra and to his pencil, the famous French mathematician

Poincaré said, “Isn’t it wonderful: it knows more than I do!”

The Enlightenment: the lights went out at Auschwitz, where all the voices of the European

intelligentsia were silenced for a long time. There, Goethe’s “marvelous garden,” juxtaposed

with the camp at Buchenwald, gave modernity the metallic song of materialism perceived as

an adequate doctrine: neorealism. That dualism dear to Platonists, the separation of essence

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from existence, was consumed, and with it our ancient sense of belonging to a whole, of

nature and the world. The levels of transcendence were taken away for a long time in the

West, and, as Heidegger put it so well, our time became “narrow.” The barbarity of the

holocaust in the country of Goethe, Nietzsche, Rilke, Beethoven, Mozart, Hegel, and Kant,

among others, killed European philosophical thinking. The Holocaust will never be like any

other genocide; the 9-11 attacks will never be like other attacks, because both point to

ontological causes.

They are black holes that leave behind a no man’s land of thought. Throughout his writing,

Georges Steiner denounces the irreparable rupture that the highest civilizations have inflicted

on contemporary thought by giving birth to the most bestial violence.

In the 1980s when I was studying philosophy at Sorbonne, it was all Sartre, Merleau-Ponty,

and Piaget; the literary types were swimming in deconstructionism, and writers such as

Jacques Maritain, Kierkegaard, and Simone Weil rarely made it onto university curricula. In

the late 1950s, George Steiner wrote, there was a break “between word and world, between

semantic markers and stable sense which became the thesis of deconstruction and post-

modernism. It foretold the ‘end of the great stories’” (Georges Steiner, Errata).

At that time, when European thought tended toward phenomenology and structuralism, it

was well received in the United States: it correlated with fragmented, atomistic thinking,

operational effectiveness, the rational, the mechanistic world view, the technology-driven

world. Interestingly, Sartre wrote Les Mots but climbed on chairs at the Café de Flore to

announce one shouldn’t “désespérer Billancourt,” which is to say he felt it was appropriate to

lie about communism to the workers in Parisian faubourgs.

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“Industrialism created a limitless appetite for resource exploitation, and modern science

provided the ethical and cognitive licence to make such exploitation possible, acceptable –

desirable.” Vandana Shiva

Unlike many members of younger generations, I do not believe American imperialism really

existed in France: our allies had saved us, and the shame and the guilt Europe felt after the

war left the door wide open for cultural renewal.

The Twin Towers

Historically, this event was also a first: the United States attacked on its own territory by

invisible enemies. This event, which toured the global airwaves, will remain forever imprinted

not only the collective memory but also in the individual memories of all. People everywhere

can say where they were and what they were doing at that precise moment: the entire planet

was invited to the show. I do not wish to shock with these words: few historians, sociologists,

philosophers or western intellectuals have dared, faced with such barbarity, to parse the

symbolic meaning of this odious massacre. Once again, the great historical narrative is silent:

paralysis. Thinking takes a step backward: we take refuge in a primitive fears that are

immediately taken out on a scapegoat (the French philosopher René Girard showed in a

variety of contexts the logic of the cathartic outlet). A primal and atavistic anger was promptly

unleashed on the world’s Muslims, and quirky interpretations of the Koran began appearing

everywhere. Once again the intelligentsia remained silent, because, as with Auschwitz, the

symbol opened onto a universal, ontological dimension. Those images that made their way

around the world seemed like a reply to Hiroshima and, politically correct or not, symbolically

knocked out the citadel of greed, the survival of the western capitalist system that threatens

to destroy the social, geopolitical, and even the bio-natural balance of the planet. One day we

may be able to talk about these images that call into question the burial of the spiritual in the

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modern world. The images reveal a kind of climactic hubris, recalling certain Old Testament

prophecies or Jesus angrily chasing the merchants from the temple. In the depths of our

collective unconscious, the almost unreal violence of those images gave rise to a possible

contemporary eschatology that could not yet be spoken.

“When we truly suspend taken-for-granted ways of seeing the world, what we start to see can

be disorienting and disturbing, and strong emotions like fear and anger arise, which are hard

to separate from what we see. To the extent we’re trying to avoid these emotions, we’ll avoid

suspending. To the extent we can’t talk about any of this, it limits all of us” (Peter Senge).

Why have speech and the spirit that comes through it been erased?

And what if those towers were, in the guilty western conscience, like temples erected to

Mammon by our own hands and according to our free will: would it be so shameful to think

so, to say so?

Instead, there were smokescreens, a war and then another, theories about American Zionist

plots: all of this was misdirection, the denial machine, a complete distortion of the real.

Zygmunt Bauman speaks of a “liquid” modernity as opposed to a rootedness in the past, and

indeed the media resemble fish swimming in water, stirring up confused, diffuse,

inassimilable fears born of uncertainty and faceless insecurity.

“What has been lacking in the 20th century is a central cultural thought that would unify all

these things: economy, technology, society, matter, mind, and spirituality. There are no great

philosophers or great thinkers who’ve been able to develop the thinking that unifies all these

questions” (Master Nan).

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Change did not arrive on the world stage at a specific moment: through a perfect

synchronicity, everything happens at once: that which was underground emerges and all at

once the economic myth crumbles before our astonished eyes. “Synchronicity is about being

open to what wants to happen ”(David Marsing). And it seems to bind opposites together:

intentionality and fortuity, action and luck, causality and causality.

Globalization is irreversible: we live in a world of interconnection and interdependence at the

planetary level. No sovereign territory, however vast, populous, or rich it may be, can protect

alone its own living conditions, safety, or long-term prosperity, its social structure or the

existence of its inhabitants. The world has changed and it requires us to do the same.

As human beings, we are caught up in the organic operation of the whole and paradoxically

we notice quickly that neither governments nor private enterprises will suffice on their own:

business still remains the fastest and most powerful means of effecting change.

“Because though much has changed in the last 25 years, one thing hasn’t: business is still the

only force ( …) with the reach and resources to do what needs to be done as quickly and

efficiently as possible (…) That leaves business as the only force in today’s world that’s got it

all: a universal presence, an ability to get things done quickly (…) and the economic clout

required to engineer widespread systemic change with remarkable speed. Business is our

best and indeed last hope, and it’s time to put that hope to the test. ” Jeffrey Hollander.

I have been able to assess the need for and the quality of the program we have followed for 18

months at INSEAD, focusing specifically on change in terms of leadership. Interestingly (or

perhaps through synchronicity again), with my background in philosophy, I had been waiting

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a long time for a serious consideration of the world of work and the urgent need for a stronger

leadership to regain the confidence, the passion, the hope, and indeed the enthusiasm of

people who spend a significant portion of their lives working for companies that give them

nothing in return.

“We’re describing the life of most of us working in most organizations: when we’re used as an

instrument to serve something other than life, we lose our feelings and our capacities to

sense” (Peter Senge).

Reconnecting with the idea of collective responsibility allows us to renew genuine

communication between individuals, to rebuild social networks around communal values and

for ourselves, take our own lives in hand, “to give them meaning, a meaning that also comes

out in work: the real work.” (Abraham Zaleznik).

It is important to rebuild the links for a new social contract, links that have long been broken:

for almost seven years, this project has been on the agenda of the Davos committee. I have

followed with interest the fertile and innovative initiatives of social entrepreneurs, and when

people have once again taken charge of their lives, of their time, and of the meaning of their

work, then we can hope for change. “There’s an emerging future that depends upon us” (Otto

Scharmer). It depends on us for the future of our children and of the earth. Everything

changes but we need to hang onto the harmony that exists in the M. C. Escher drawings I like

so much. They illustrate a perfect and controlled change: one figure inverts itself, resting on

another, becoming entirely different and just as beautiful. This metamorphosis takes place

before our astonished eyes with the magic of an eternal renewal.

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“Business is a renaissance concept, where the human spirit comes into play. It does not have

to be drudgery; it does not have to be the science of making money. It can be something that

people genuinely feel good about, but only if it remains a human enterprise” (Anita Roddick).

From now on we need to work toward a future we never imagined, to work against the

unsustainable structures of the past that made the future so fragile. Leadership-change-

future, the key triad: almost all the management literature seems to have its eye, and its

hopes, set on young people and women.

“There is a leadership crisis in the world. (…) We no longer prepared to just sit back and

watch the world go to ruin. The old power forces are resisting the new. And the new is

showing up in young people and in women” (Wendy Luhabe).

What about the young leaders of tomorrow in France ?

Let us begin with the principle already emphasized by Mayo (1933–1946), Maslow (1954),

McGregor (1960), Herzberb (1959-1976) and Argurys (1957), which is that we must move

away from a mechanistic, goal-focused and entirely scientific kind of management. They have

all stressed the importance of a meaningful job where values and ethics are increasingly

viewed as important corporate concerns. What do we believe in? What principles should

guide our behavior? What do owe one another and the people we deal with (employees,

customers, investors, communities, etc.)?

I was struck by this way of seeing things: it’s as if the younger generation were in charge,

ready to reframe our mistakes or to clean up the ugly side of capitalism. Is this a pious vow, a

general transference: young people will always do better than us? Another larval form of the

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myth of progress? An intuition, a wish, or the starting point for studies already undertaken in

some countries or certain communities with these young people, or these women, who

suddenly, like Athena, might come to the rescue?

The idea for this thesis came from that line of thought. Do we have in France this new breed of

pragmatic, innovative, visionary, and humanistic future leaders? Does the younger generation

consider itself a responsible agent of change?

Following the advice of Elizabeth Florent-Tracey, I chose a sample of about twenty male and

female students. Most of them were between 23 and 26 years old; all were nearing the end of

their studies at the Grandes Écoles of Paris: I chose HEC (Hautes études commerciales de

Paris) for its business focus and and L’École Polytechnique so as to include an institution of

similar rigor but with an orientation toward the sciences. Theoretically, these two schools are

producing the elites of tomorrow.

I conducted a qualitative study using two tools: first, a questionnaire that was emailed and

that included about fifteen open questions; then, a little later, a short interview about any

answers that stood out or that seemed not very explicit. These were one-on-one interviews,

conducted by skype or over a coffee.

Why these two methods and how are they not redundant?

I was sure the questionnaire would put the left brain of these keen, engaged students straight

to work, and I used the interviews to shake up their rhetoric, their underlying assumptions, in

order to access the right brain. It was a good idea. Less successful was the choice of schools:

two sovereign institutions. Very quickly (well, not really: after a month) I realized that I was

receiving similar responses and that the profiles were much too homogeneous. I could have

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followed the original plan and produced conclusions but I felt I was missing something

important about the generation of change, the facebook generation. After another discussion

with Elizabeth, I began my inquiries again, with a brand new school offering a four-year

degree program in IT, with an MBA after five years: Epitech Paris.

Before going any further, I have to say how much happiness and fun this work has brought

me. I began without any idea of what I would discover. Each time a completed questionnaire

arrived, each time I met a student, new horizons of thought and uncertainty opened up for me.

Because I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I feel I can say that no personal ideology

has influenced this experience.

A sketch took shape through the course of these meetings and I have been careful to

reproduce it as faithfully as possible.

French youth and the (hi)story that surrounds them

“Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life .”

Victor Frankel

“If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be disappointed by what you

are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep

walking, keep advancing.” St. Augustine

With the help of my survey and interviews, I immersed myself for a month in the world of

these young people who were willing to give me a little of their time and, sometimes, a lot of

themselves. I could just as easily have read widely the works, surveys, and articles on these

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young adults who are beginning their active lives, but I wanted to avoid two problems:

intellectualization and idealization. “One group can become a generative microcosm when it

connects deeply with its real purpose” (Otto Scharmer). Even though this is a partial study, I

wanted to remain inside reality, close to the actual, and above all to hear the students’ own

words and the world they reveal. I chose to transcribe the responses without making any

changes or trying to make them fit my project, even if they are at times not particularly

academic. Then I used clinical applications to analyze the answers, often trying to bring to

light that which was beneath the surface, to reveal the unsaid and to identify areas of strength,

weakness, or unconscious resistance. From now on, though, their words belong to you as

much as to me, and can be understood in a variety of ways.

First, a note to stress that for the last century, successive generations of French people have

endured tough historical moments. Two world wars crossed, in some cases twice, the lives of

individuals; that of 1914-1918 devastated almost an entire generation of men, pushing

women into work to meet the needs of family and country. The shift to a European economic

zone and then, of course, the global economic and political crises that have succeeded one

another since 2006 have also contributed to the changes in the lives of French people that

have been taking place at fairly regular intervals for over a century, requiring each generation,

as it were, to cross a bridge to the next. We have a revolutionary past and a solid heritage of

critical thought; we are not champions of inertia: this is the backdrop to our collective

unconscious, which reflects the totality of our emotions and therefore our way of being of the

world. “The contrast between the new terrain and the familiar landscape of the past is

frequently the catalyst that forces us to redraw our mental maps” ( J. Stewart Black, Allen J.

Morrison, Hal B. Gregersen).

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The young adults I surveyed were between 20 and 25 years old. Born between 1980 and

2000, they are considered part of Generation Y, whereas most of their parents belong to

Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980. I will summarize in a concise table the

differences between these two groups as they have been described by American

researchers (Reisenwitz & Lyer 2009, Borges, Manuel, Elam & Jones 2010, Durkin 2008, Hira

2007), since I have not found a French equivalent of their work.

GEN X (1965-1980) GEN Y (1980-2000)

Technologically adept

Strong preference for web applications

and e-mail based communications

Need for power, control

Need to be in charge

Less optimistic, less idealistic

Less bound to traditional values

Monetary compensation is not

the key driving force

Even more comfortable with technology

Cell phones, laptops, multi-media, instant

messaging, social networking

Need for affiliation & achievement

Value collaboration & team work

Attached to value, more confident & more

positive outlook on life

Aim to earn very high salaries

(Pekala 2008)

I will base the analysis of my sample on these valuable studies. But even now, we can imagine

that in this generational curve there may be a point of rupture for those born around 1990,

precisely those who have responded to my questions. It is during these last fifteen years that

the global economic and geopolitical situation has swung suddenly, and Generation Y will

never be as homogeneous as Generation X. Those now entering the workplace have received a

giant wake-up call: this generation, more than any other, will need to rely on the foundations

and traditions of the previous one and to use its legacy, its lived experience, to literally invent

the future toward which the situation has channeled them; for this younger generation, it is an

urgent requirement. What led me to my study is this specific point; it is part of the name of

our program: change. Whether it is conscious or not will be determined by observation. These

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young people form the first battalion, the first leaders of a world that has changed completely;

unique because of their age and the time in which they live, they will have to be leaders in a

world that has seen the disintegration of the myth of triumphant capitalism.

“As it unfolded, the subprime banking crisis revealed a Shakespearian catalog of moral

turpitude. It was a perfect storm of human delinquency. Deceit, hubris, myopia, greed and

denial were all luridly displayed” (Gary Hamel).

They are the ones who, before they act on the world, will have seen the crumbling of the Twin

Towers, those who, gathered in silence in front of the big screens of the cities, will have seen

Al Gore’s important film An Inconvenient Truth, those who will have seen the tsunamis in

Thailand and Japan, and the Fukushima reactor that has still not been stabilized: these leave

powerful impressions on the retina that are at once global and very close at hand.

Just as I wanted to recap briefly some key points of French history, I wanted before I met

these young people to ask questions of their parents (who belong to the same generation as I

do), to gain a sense of their roots, to understand how they were educated and to get to know

the familial refrains that forged them. The famous Generation X . Of course, I asked people I

knew, not the parents of my research subjects, but I was careful to stay within the same socio-

professional group. What do you want, what do you see, for the future of your children?

For Generation X, the anthropological baggage, if I might call it that, was really the end of the

Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc, the fall of the Berlin wall, the rise of Asia and the

beginnings of globalization: but we were 30 years old and already belonged to another

history! Overall I discovered results consistent with the indicators in the table above –

extremely pessimistic, anxious parents who became very tense when they were asked about

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their children’s future: “We gave them everything so that they could succeed: everything!”

These are young people who emerge from a childhood of overindulgence; as they begin

university, they feel substantial parental pressure. Considerable means have been expended

to support their education: pressure starting in primary school to gain admittance to the best

lycées, significant support through private tutoring and enrichment in all areas: the arts,

sports, Eastern languages, music, etc. The principals of major lycées expressed through the

media their concern about the pedagogical relentlessness that created three paths within the

education system: the good lycées, the bad ones, and tutoring for children doing extra lessons

in the evenings after the longest schooldays in Europe. Private institutions offering review

sessions or advanced programs over the holidays, especially those operating outside the

country (killing two birds with one stone) made a fortune in fifteen years. These children

were overburdened by the number of choices on offer, the increasing competition, and the

intensity of a lifestyle that would damage some of them emotionally. All the parents I spoke to

felt that they were doing the right thing, being super-coaches for their children – children who

will not have had time. Time to be bored, to imagine, to be a child. Of the parents who

responded, very few said: it doesn’t matter what career he has, as long as he chose it and it

makes him happy. Most pushed their children into university, and 18 of the 23 students in my

research sample confirmed this scenario. In France, as far as parents are concerned, there are

three paths for children who have received a good education: the Grandes Écoles of business,

the Grandes Écoles of engineering, or law. Once, medicine and pharmacy belonged to this

category; as for the position of university professor, it is no longer taken seriously as an

option. If I ask, “But why not something else? Something closer to what she likes, or to her

skill set?” then the reply is: “Because once you’ve made it to a Grande École, you can do what

you like afterwards.” All they want is business: once that word is out, the parents are satisfied.

It is a catch-all term that seems to bring with it vague notions of happiness and security. For

Generation X, that is sufficient: it is understood that it is a good thing, and no questions are

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asked: everyone wants to be part of a vague notion, and that is all there is to it. The parents’

concern stems from their own experience, or that of their peers: crises leading to

unemployment, or serious professional and financial setbacks. One respondent confessed to

me that his father had committed suicide after the closure of a large factory: he had taken a

job that lacked status and could not face the social stigma; he was earning a living, but money,

status, and power are three very different things. Generation X experienced shocks unknown

to the previous generation, for whom careers lasted a lifetime, often within a single company.

I understand the uncertainty of those parents who articulated what is for some the heart of

the problem: they feel that, for the first time since the war, the next generation, with

equivalent qualifications and effort, will not be more successful, or even as successful as their

predecessors. They feel the social elevator is stuck, the dynamic broken. Thus, even before

meeting them, I had a mental image of these young adults: a golden childhood with a black

cloud that lurks just outside the frame of the pretty photo, casting its shadow.

French youth and the story they tell

“It is impossible to think of oneself as detached from others.” Amartya Sen

“Only a crisis – actual or perceived –produces real change.” Milton Friedman

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Gandhi

Here I am among them! My topic interests them; they want to read the final product in return

for the inconvenience I have given them. All my questions (you will discover them as we go)

are open: students could express themselves freely more or less as they wished and I

observed the topics on which they were more reactive or recalcitrant. Are they citizens of the

world? Absolutely! My question about experiences outside the county never went

unanswered. They have all travelled extensively with their parents, schools, and friends, and

seem generally at ease in a blend of cultures. Some have done humanitarian work in Africa

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with their schools. Many language immersion trips have been set up by the parents, the

suggestion being that this will position students advantageously for a career abroad. I was

impressed by the number and the eclectic mix of countries they visited; these demonstrate a

taste for travel and a real curiosity that leave one to think socio-cultural divides may be

lessened. I never heard them say anything nationalist or xenophobic, even though students at

the Polytechnique are still very much influenced by the school’s military background and by

values that traditionally belong to the political right. If they occasionally (two of them)

expressed criticism of rights that have been won (abortion and gay marriage), none of them

claimed any particular political affiliation. Not once did I hear from the mouth of a single

member of this sample group anything that had the slightest racist connotation. So yes, they

are cosmopolitan, and the Web has fostered that characteristic: they are the facebook

generation!

The next question: what leaders, in any field, do you admire? The word “leader,” rather than

“figure,” was a deliberate choice; they were unanimous in discarding the term immediately.

The major players of the CAC 40 have no place in the Pantheon of French youth: “Oh no,

Madame: you can admire great men, not CEOs!” I quote Denis, who summed up the position

all of them: “I do not feel any admiration for leaders, even if I respect their respective careers

and their success.” So, apart from the students in the pilot program at Epitech, who are

passionate about computer science and who of course identified (but as creators and

visionaries) the start-up geniuses (Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Gabe Newell, Linus

Tornvalds, etc.), not one mentioned a business owner, either in France or abroad. It is

impossible to categorize the data I have received; it is disparate and almost entirely without

commonality. Students at the Polytechnique chose French officers, Napoleon, Talleyrand, the

Pope, and the Marquis de Sade. The other students offered a heterogeneous outburst of

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names: Ibn Khaldun, Queen Elizabeth II, Victor Hugo, Leonardo da Vinci, Mandela, Gandhi.

Only one philosopher: Locke. Two respondents, a boy and a girl, identified their fathers.

From all these accounts, no dominant figure emerges. It was clear from the written responses

that this question did not interest them at all and that it seemed to serve as a personal

“vignette.” I became convinced of this in their oral interviews, where I must admit I was

genuinely surprised at the narrow scope of their cultural knowledge. Even when they were

speaking about a person they identified and had therefore chosen, they had little to say and

were very uncomfortable about it. In conclusion: a relative absence of intellectual or spiritual

points of reference. A narrow and superficial understanding of literature and philosophy: “I

don’t have time to read” (Louis); “We didn’t cover all that in our courses” (Margot). Indeed,

one student had no answer whatsoever and wrote with commendable candor: “You could say

that lots of people are admirable. But I don’t pretend to know about people I haven’t come in

contact with. Maybe I’ve seen biographies, interviews, TV shows, but I prefer to be in direct

contact with people” (Charlotte).

No one reads anymore: farewell to the Gutenberg galaxy! The world has grown but it has also

shrunk, as if the flow of available information cut short our curiosity as well as our own

personal research and culture. No more idols, no more masters of thought, of poetry; no

philosophy at all, no more great enthusiasm for great ideas, even if they belonged to the past…

Existential doubt? Spiritual laziness? Educational weakness? It is so easy to exist in the

immediacy of the virtual: we respect conceptual models that are less elevated and closer to

home. Our discussions about these matters were so slight that if this small sample represents

the norm (and I would point to their exceptional level of study), there has been in France a

vast, a profound cultural loss.

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For that matter, the question of the value that is transmitted through language also causes

problems. Admiration: this word made them very uncomfortable. Is it a suspect word, a blunt

word? Too strong, or dated, emptied of the fullness of its meaning? In my sample group, they

“like” something new every day: the rest is insignificant. In defense of these young people, I

must point out that previous generations lived through the fall of ideology and an intensive

secularization of the country, and that they themselves seem affected by the “disenchantment

of the world” invoked by Marcel Gauchet (Le désenchantement du monde) I searched in vain

for the passion, the vibration that we Generation Xs felt at their age. Maybe it is a good thing –

we know where all the -isms led us – but passion is a powerful force in the world, and a

culture that swallows up a civilization. This ambient relativism where everything seems

equivalent to everything else could be a freedom of spirit, a hesitation that looks like waiting,

an interlude during which this generation might create new ways of thinking, the expression

of a cultural transition in progress.

Let’s look farther ahead with the next question.

“To learn the lessons of experience, therefore, you need to understand your identity – the

people who shaped you, your education (…) Where you come from historically and where you

spend your life (and with whom) are the two big influences on the way you look at reality and

act in the world.” Gianpiero Petriglieri

I asked: “Do you feel that you belong to a generation that’s very different from your parents’?

A few words on notions of continuity and difference.” The gut reaction is no. “Fundamentally,

no” (Théo); “We have the same way of looking at things: we’re alike” (Louis); “ We are very

close in everything” (Axel); “I think I was born in a world that is fundamentally similar to my

parents’; the paradigm is the same: personal enrichment” (Adrien). In the interviews, they all

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confirmed good relations and a real generational fluidity. They sense in their parents a

reassuring, companionable structure: these parents are pals, people with whom they share a

lot. I would say that parents have forgotten to grow old and children to grow up: the cult of

youth on one hand and immaturity on the other (that is also what I observe, as a mother of

three grown sons). It’s a bit like a Benetton ad: they have the same clothes, the same leisure

activities, and young people remain for much longer in the home of their parent-chums who

themselves open the door to the baby-couples. Segolène explains: “I feel as if I’m in a kind of

bubble and yes, it is reassuring, I need it to move forward.”

Actually, discontinuity does exist, but external to the generational structure: it comes from the

outside world. All the students identified technological advance as the foremost engine of all

the major changes of their time. Victor summarized it well when he spoke about the world of

his parents: “Their world was analog, ours is digital.” For some, this progress is double-edged:

“Now everything has to be done immediately; you have to adapt, to be more reactive”(Paul).

Or: “With the Internet, anyone can find out about any subject, and everyone thinks they’re an

expert: you have to take that into account in order to get the upper hand” (Edouard). Whereas

my Epitech students are excited about their future in this area, others find technological

advances alarming: “The world is a village, but cultures and values are losing their specificity:

everything is becoming uniform” (Come). There’s everything on the Internet, the best and the

worst: we need very strict rules” (Julien).

For some respondents, this tool that opened conversations up to the world has had pernicious

effects on society. They express themselves in reactionary terms out of fear of losing their

identity: “Plurality and the blending of genres have been taken to extremes under the guise of

a notion of equity, resulting in a loss of points of reference, just as the notion of moral

responsibility is being supplanted by legal responsibility” (Alice).

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There is social discontinuity as well: these young people feel that they live in a tougher world,

and they express the stress they feel in the face of, for example, increased competition (here

they also reveal the projected worries of their parents for them). They are reacting to what

strikes them as rising individualism: “We live in a world that is more selfish than before: the

mentality is everyone for himself”(Stéphanie). “We’re losing out when it comes to social

cohesion, family values, and moral values: in our parents’ time, everything seemed simpler”

(Claire). This feeling of being submerged –or even under attack – by contemporary society is

marked when it comes to their future professional life; some responses communicate a fear of

the future. “We have more and more degrees and we have a harder time finding work. Wages

have dropped lower and lower in France” (Alice). “Tougher employment standards make

hiring more difficult. Even with an advanced degree it’s sometimes an uphill battle” (Alix).

“My older sister spent two years after her MBA finding a product manager job that wasn’t

great; my parents had got her a coach!” (Antoine). And finally: “My generation is different

from my parents’ because I feel I have to fight all the time and I feel very afraid about my

future. I feel as if in their time, the professional world was less stressful” (Ségolène).

They all fear that the economic decline in France might not be just another stage but an

indicator of a much more serious situation for Europe. No one wrote about it (perhaps out of

superstition), but they all spoke of it, mostly at the end of our discussion, when I stopped

taking notes. The choice of words, the non-choice of words, the moment chosen to speak them

or to write them: all that told me as much as anything, along with their silences, their looks,

their laughs, their moments of tension. Silence often speaks louder than words. As for the

students from Epitech, they did not seem afraid, startled into adopting a reactionary mode or

relying on defense mechanisms; they feel quite at home in the world of tomorrow, thanks to a

collegial, horizontal pedagogy built around real projects that are directly connected to the

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work world, which they visit often. Their observations about the position of France on the

world stage are not emotionally charged. “It’s the end of the powerful states and time for new

forms of capitalism: it’ll be interesting!” (Denis). “Multipolarity: the end of the US as

superpower and of Western domination. The emergence of new forces: our generation will be

able to watch it” (Théo). The youngest of them (just 19 but very mature) wrote this reflection,

which caught my full attention: “We are not cut off from the generation of our parents because

many things have stayed the same. I’m thinking in particular of the educational system, which

has not changed fundamentally: our studies are the same as those of our parents” (Victor).

Early in the interview he concluded of his own accord that this was definitely a problem. “The

Grandes Écoles have had the same program for a long time. I wanted something more

innovative and stimulating. There are so many things they haven’t included in their course

contents; they’re resting on their laurels, convinced they’re creating an elite… that won’t have

any idea what’s going on! I’ll need to learn a lot in the field, probably for my whole life…Hey, I

see that’s what’s happening for you too!”

“Traditional types of teaching seen in some universities and high-school classrooms –

professors lecturing on theories that have little connection to the specific reality of students’

lives (…) Effective teaching for adults means active learning. ” (Quy Nguyen Huy)

I wanted to extend this perspective with the following question from my survey: What do you

consider the major changes in your world; what is their impact on your personal life, and how

will you respond to them?

I wanted to evaluate through this question their real level of awareness, their propensity for

engagement, for taking part in this change –or not – and how. I also wanted to assess their

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responsibility, in the proper sense of the term: responding to what is; adapting, innovating,

and finding a design for remanufacture.

Globalization means we have to become “more aware of how deeply we’re interconnected as

human beings across all of society. It also means that each of us is confronted with the

fundamental choice of participating in patterns of development and interaction that are either

life-destroying or life-enhancing.” (Nicanor Perlas)

This question forced the young adults into an almost schizophrenic split between on the one

hand evidence of a world in full metamorphosis and on the other evidence of a real inertia of

the structures surrounding them. They could not find in their daily lives a reflective space

large enough to create the slightest response. Most seemed out of their depth, helpless, but

seeking values that would help them understand and therefore act. “I haven’t had enough

experience yet to evaluate that” (Ségolène). Once again I realize that this generation also

seems closed in terms of speech: the culture they lack (I am referring here to a humanist

culture, of course) creates obstructions in the area of thought. “Humanism is a vague memory

from school. We basically have a culture of science and marketing” (Adrien). If they do not

have the words to say it, how can they articulate an active thought? They have taboo words:

admiration, philosopher, critique, words that are not spoken but that could be for them a way

to act for the future: words about commitment, responsibility, and hope.

“Perhaps words are missing because they are late. But the day will come when they are

missing because they are worn out. ” (Michel De Certeau)

You can feel that these young people are groping for something: they know a degree is no

longer enough to build a future on, and that they will have to make their own way. But one

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hears more about strategies for “getting by” via the social networks than about any real

engagement to serve the common interest. These young people form their convictions

schematically, superficially, like channel surfers, rather than in the melting pot of faded

ideologies. While technologies have made prodigious advances, mentalities lag. For some,

technology does not lead to progress: “These are everyday tools, but after all, we still haven’t

sent a man farther than the moon!” (Eric). So what is the great advantage of technology?

Quentin replies: “The technological adventure continues its journey; it keeps opening new

frontiers beyond the realm of what is possible. And above all it has made the world smaller

and brought people closer together.” For the students of Epitech it is as a result of this

instability that a new kind of person will appear and that research will uncover solutions to

many problems. Victor, youngest of the group, arrives at a genuine realization: “The

significant changes in the international economy (crises, debt, unemployment, the

environment) are due to political mistakes of the past; changes in consumption and

technology have given me the opportunity to rethink our society and to consider what we

might be able to do to stabilize the world and what it will become.”

Unfortunately, for many of the students, the myth of the eternal return persists.

“Humans tend to avoid, dismiss, and deny warnings that increase anxiety and fear by

practicing selective attention and various forms of information distortion: this is known as

‘defensive avoidance’ (Janis & Mann 1977).” (Q N Huy)

A brilliant student from the Polytechnique explained it to me this way: “Everything is cyclical!

The danger is always the same, and we always find solutions. There are no new data. All this

fuss, it’s just the media and the alternative globalization types scaring people! We’d be better

off working on the repopulation of the countryside” (Beaudoin).

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Another huge surprise for me: my survey demonstrated that none of the young people in my

group was a declared environmentalist. Either they reject the problem as a fabrication of the

media, on the grounds that the earth has gone through periods of climate change in the past,

or they reject it (unconsciously?) out of a fear of being manipulated politically. It is important

to understand that to these young French people, with the education they have had,

environmentalism is a thoroughly anti-capitalist, subversive movement. It is political. An

ethics of responsibility presupposes a radical critique of insidious forms of domination that

prevent them from coming together in united opposition and collective action. So they do not

know what to do, or how to do it. And once again it is in conversation, through the good old

tools of Socratic maieutics, that they come to recognize on their own that we have spoiled the

environment, that we have confused Nature with a private possession to be exploited at will,

that water is a serious issue, as is the availability of resources in general… and that yes, animal

rights are insufficiently robust and our food is not nutritious enough to be healthy, even if

they make fun of their mothers for buying organic because the groundwater is polluted and

they pay twice the price, and so on. They are at sea in the confusion of information and the

complexity of the topic. The admit the desire, the need to be enlightened, oriented, guided, in

order to be able to take action. Here is the gulf that urgently needs to be bridged for these

young people. To scare or to inspire: there are two options.

“If you attempt to scare people with the enormity of the problems, the tendency is simply to

give up. And so when you dispirit people, when you remove the spirit, you also remove the

capacity to change.” (Betty Sue Flowers)

“If you talk about environmental management systems and eco-efficiency, people just roll

their eyes. But if you talk about innovation and abundance, it’s inspirational. People get very,

very excited. ” (Sarah Severn)

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Once again everything comes together to create a new pedagogy: in order to change, we must

also change our way of changing! Responsibility is liberated by collaboration. These young

people feel real and sincere emotions that they are unable to put into action without any

leadership: they illustrate the concept I will if you will. The diversity of their thoughts

reminded me of the following extraordinary situation in a coffee shop in Sydney, Australia,

described by Wayne Wisser. A mere 1% of customers asked for fair trade coffee as a result of

the sign that read “We have Fair Trade coffee. No extra charge. Just ask!” If the server

suggested it, the number rose to 30%. If someone playing the role of a customer loudly

demanded a fair trade coffee, the number of ethical consumers skyrocketed to 70%. My

student sample loved this anecdote; most important for them was the transparent and

exemplary nature of the story, because the conscience that was silent at the time of my survey

expressed itself forcefully when I approached the question in terms of legacy.

Finally, I will address gender issues. Overall, I did not observe conspicuous disparities

between the answers of the male and female students, even though the girls responded more

quickly and much more fully. They recognized the progress toward equality in France and the

opportunity for women to choose, freely and without sexism, any career. But all –

unanimously – rejected feminist ideas. “It is utterly ridiculous and useless to want to think

that men and women are equal” (Alice). “Women’s liberation happened for economic reasons”

(Adèle). “In our community, the woman is the beam supporting the family structure” said

Ilham, a brilliant female Muslim student. “This business of liberation has taken more away

from us than it has given” (Agathe). This was without doubt the biggest surprise in my work.

Not one of these super-educated women will put her career before her family. Some are

reacting against their experience: “I didn’t know my mother; the house used to be empty

when I came home from school. It was hard” (Juliette). Some are following an example: “I have

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two older sisters; the one who works is stressed out and her children are a disaster. The other

one is totally radiant and her family is happier” (Margaux). I am forced to consider that all the

ideas and values of May 1968 have been rejected outright by this generation. I also feel that

such a rise in family values indicates a return to safe investments: the inner circle as a safe

place, a cocoon offering shelter from a world that is hostile or perceived as such; the will to re-

humanize one’s life, to nourish it affectively. These young women begin their adult life by

delaying childbearing until later than in previous generations (the average age of young

mothers in France is 27), but they all want large families and they do not want to delegate to

others the education of their children, which they see as the real meaning of their lives. Their

degrees please their parents, guarantee that they can meet their own needs if necessary, and

demonstrate a genuine openness of spirit: they are happy to participate in society in an

intelligent, considered way, but not at the cost of their children.

French youth and the (hi)story they will write

“People today sense what their authentic destiny will be but cannot obtain it for themselves.”

Bernard Bro

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert

Einstein

“What belongs to you? The use of your ideas.” Epictetus

With an increasingly sophisticated understanding of my group of students, I found them so

docile and moderate that I wanted to propel them into the future to see what they thought of

it. It was a tricky question: in the survey, I asked them to imagine their lives at the age of forty.

They looked so dismayed that I might have been talking about retirement. I therefore

reformulated my question so that they might look ahead less than ten years: “How do you

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picture your life when you are 30?” These young people have grown used to existing in a

strange kind of sidebar where the autonomy of their personal lives is not supported by

genuine independence (Singley 2004). They live in a present that is unconnected to the future.

This aspect of my research is shocking: these young people are completely myopic – in fact,

blind – to their future. Their pessimism, nourished by a profound crisis of faith in institutions

and society, prevents them from meeting one of the fundamental psychological needs for all

human beings, which is to see, imagine, project themselves into the near future.

They communicate not exactly resignation but a kind of wait-and-see attitude, a fatalism

sometimes disguised as suspicious humor, as if their destiny did not depend on them and they

might still be able to take charge of the direction of their lives. Vulnerability? Caution? No one

said the word “pessimism” and I felt something more subtle at work, an unsayable fear. It was

like those moments of complete silence and stillness before a big storm: we know what is

coming, and we know it will pass, but who knows what will be left of the garden.

Of all the responses, only one was coherent – so specific, in fact, that it did not ring true:

“Married, at least three children, in private equity funds” (Julien). For the others: “Too much

uncertainty; how can I see that far ahead!” (Come); “No visibility” (Antoine); “Sorry to be

vague” (Alex). Once again, when a task seems fuzzy or hard to define, they fall back on family

values as the ultimate protection. “Surrounded by those close to me” (Ségolène). “Having a

blind faith in my family and friends” (Adrien). I realized from the start that the concept of

family is understood as a value and a personal resource, rather than as a social model. I think

this comes close to the heart of the problem. Let us not beat around the bush: the young

people who graduate from the traditional Grandes Écoles do not feel in any way ready to

come face to face with the world they will be thrown into in a few months. The Epitech

students seem completely different. Dynamic and even – let’s not be afraid of words – happy.

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They are already perfectly comfortable with interconnectedness, self-realization, their

potential to move forward. The transition between their student lives and their professional

ones is well underway. And so they are making plans in all directions (with a strong tendency

toward Silicon Valley) and with a joyous passion: “The Web is our final frontier: an incredible

adventure!” (Denis). “You turn your passion into your job, you go to work in a T shirt, you call

your boss ‘tu’ and you’re happy to get up in the morning” (Louis). “You speak the languages of

IT (C, C++ , Java, Python, etc.) and you can get along anywhere in the whole world!” These

young people also move into entrepreneurship in large numbers: over 50% of Epitech

students start their own companies as soon as they leave school. I have not heard of anything

like this from the MBA graduates: it is as if they were already older, not in actual years but in

their conservative world view. By choosing for this study a sample of the elite from these

Grandes Écoles, I thought I would discover the generation that bears the future of France on

its shoulders and I now fear that for the most part they are far from being tomorrow’s leaders.

Perhaps the same observation inhibits them (consciously or not): how will they deal with the

disconnect between what they have learned (often through hard work and personal sacrifice)

and what is useful and necessary today? In the current climate, globalization and increasing

uncertainty about the future are forcing businesses to look for flexible candidates who adapt

well and quickly; action is weighted far more heavily than theory. How will young people with

elitist aspirations adapt to these economic variables?

It appears that the degrees awarded by the Grandes Écoles are no longer seen as an

investment in human capital ready for the job market, but as a title, like a designation of

nobility that opens the door to a social hierarchy.

In her book L’inflation scolaire: Les désillusions de la méritocratie (2006) Marie Duru-Bellat

explains clearly the hierarchical French conception of education; it is like a ladder where

position is more important than quality. What is the point of a ladder you can’t climb? How to

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convince the state and private organizations to conduct an urgent review of academic

curricula?

What is the point of classifying all those students and carefully choosing the strongest ones,

without offering them the best choices? How can young graduates of HEC say about their lives

at the age of 30: “It’s hard; we are carried along” (Claire) or “Scary question!” (Louis)? We

need to help these young people who are full of potential and noble ideals, and who are

floundering; that help must be appropriate and it come from the right source because their

need, their vulnerability, is great.

I offered them all the inevitable question: you have a magic wand, what do you do with it?

Their world is so disenchanted that unless the wand was brandished to provoke, or to make a

joke (the humor of a sad clown), it was ignored. “I do not find this question pertinent” (Paul);

“That would be much too easy” (Quentin). “I’d break it: simplicity is the sworn enemy of our

generation!” (Alexis); “I’d give it to my sister’s little girl for Christmas!”(Victor). These are not

neutral responses; they contain a certain violence. I sensed bitterness in them, as if my

question had been indecent; it was the same in the interviews, where they were so indelicate

and derisive that I was quite uncomfortable about having asked. In sum: “We need to be

serious: it’s a stupid question.” Those who used magic did so to fight the creature that was

already, to these 20-year-olds, an enemy: time. That which passed them by, stole their youth,

threatened them with the near future. “To stop time and start it again when I like!”

(Ségolène); “Stop time or slow it down a bit to do things better” (Julien); “Stop time, replace

the real world with another!” (Adrien).

These replies are at once surprising and painful, revealing as they do a massive weakness in

relation to the reality principle. A reality that cannot be seen straight on, that remains

unsayable and scarcely imaginable, is one that causes suffering in the body (illness,

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depression, addiction) and in the mind, both of which then run the risk of being swept up in

the tides of fundamentalism or primitivism for want of healing words that would allow the

return of the dream and of the soul.

A slippage, a displacement in the Freudian sense of the term (a transference) appeared rather

surprisingly when I tackled the question of legacy: “What values would you like to pass on to

your children?” The space of time carved out on the way to a distant future permitted the

liberation of speech and the reconstruction of a dynamic. It was distance that revealed the

greatest intimacy.

Then and only then I took down the words of the heart, the words of the human, of happiness,

joy, confidence, generosity, and hope. Their responses revealed a wide semantic field of

gentleness, protection, and love. It was the vocabulary of a happiness projected into the

future, accompanied by a sense of passion, of something worth fighting for, as well as an echo

of their own parents: “We will do everything for them: everything!” All the power, the

imagination and the passion of this generation needs to separate from the professional sphere

in order to express itself. They want to get ahead of, or to soften, the changes that will affect

children (something their own parents might not necessarily have thought of). “They’ll need

to be taught to get by on their own” (Edouard); “The arts are the jewels in the crown of

France, and they are disappearing: we need to revitalize those professions” (Théo); “Above all

give them other values, get rid of all this politics, conservatism, patriotism: open the world to

them” (Adrien); “They need to understand that kindness, respect and well-being are much

more important than money” (Layla).

The young people offer up all sorts of key words at once, words that had been absent from

their discourse, words this survey was waiting for because they are foundational:

combativeness, curiosity, will, altruism, work, empathy, innovation, passion, movement. In

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May 1968, they said “Let’s be realistic: let’s ask for the impossible!” Give it a little time: the

impossible is always 20 years old.

Surprised and happy at this sudden proliferation, I spent time in the interviews on this

question of legacy because they pulled into it all their dreams, their hopes, their vitality, the

way you cast a bottle on the ocean. What an abundance of interesting ideas, all of a sudden:

“We need to value our old manual labor positions that are disappearing into museums just

when countries that are becoming richer might want them.” So I asked: do you think we

undervalue those jobs? “Oh yes: my uncle is a plumber – it was shameful for the family! Today,

he’s the only one to have bought his own house, and houses for his three children, who are all

in higher education!” (Victor). Did they think they would raise their children according to the

same standards as their parents? Many said no: the main thing is no longer to have a

“situation,” which implies social status, but a balanced and happy life, even if it means less

money. Were your parents wrong? They all said no: they didn’t know the world was changing

this fast and they believed they were doing the right thing.

I heard, often enough for it to make an impression, that these same parents, when there were

three or four children, often eased up on the youngest, who was generally able to make the

most of it, finding happiness in projects that were more innovative and personal. “There are

two of us, the older ones, at Polytechnique, following in the footsteps of our father, and our

younger brother refused point blank to waste his teenage years in books. After years of

turmoil and war with our father, he works in the jewelry business in Anvers and it seems to

fascinate him” (David). “I finished HEC last year and I’m having a hard time: I can’t find the

work I wanted and I don’t know what to do,” said Camille “My younger sister did her BTS as a

pastry chef and opened a store in Japan that is doing very well: I’m thinking about joining her.

Our parents saw her as a failure at school!”

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Ideas also flow from the young women who are thinking about their future role as mothers:

telecommuting, changing their work rhythms and choosing their own schedules, developing

social entrepreneurship, taking time to reconnect with the earth and creating activities that

would allow them to leave the city and reinforce the social fabric of the countryside. Thus the

terms and the goals of real change and true resilience can become plans for the future as long

as they aren’t considered to lie on the wrong path (the “little” jobs). I would have liked to

spend more time on this part of my survey, which seemed to me the most fertile and touching,

and to imagine with the students possible tools, solutions, changes of direction. This research

should interest researchers, professors, and consultants in the years to come, since they have

the clients and the material available to them. And most of all I realized I was drawing a

hollow profile: not one of those acrylics of my own youth but something more delicate: a

fragile, subtle watercolor sketch.

Another way out for these young adults, apart from the hypothetical future of their children:

going abroad. 100% of my respondents (except one specialist in French civil law) declared a

desire to go abroad as soon as possible after graduation and to pursue a career

internationally. For the Epitech students, it’s clear: “Internationally, web markets are thriving,

and some regions still lack expert knowledge” (Louis); “In essence and by definition, the web

community is international” (Quentin). For others it’s a matter of escape and a rejection of the

French system: “the French economic system is a disaster” (Julien); “I wouldn’t hesitate for a

second: France is the country of fiscal suffocation” (Alice). But sometimes the new departure

(imaginary or imagined) is described as an El Dorado: “Our work is richer for the work of

others: we need to mingle, to work together” (Ilham); “find a place where the body is so

relaxed that the mind can take care of more important things!” (wise Adrien).

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I saved for the end of my survey the current questions, the concrete, unavoidable ones. “What

do you think are the qualities of a good leader? ” and “What skills are necessary to meet

tomorrow’s challenges?”

1. The qualities of a good leader. First of all, leaders are, it would appear, numerous and

awful. Not only, as we have noted earlier, do company directors attract little admiration, they

often conjure a negative image in the minds of young people coming up through the ranks.

The only objective of a director, they feel, is to turn a profit, including personal profit,

disguised as civic responsibility and patriotism. This applies also to matters such as defense,

or the environment: their motivation is self-interest. The public good is subordinated to the

financial target and here, for them, is the real oxymoron. Growing numbers of young people

feel our institutions are run for the benefit of the plutocrats, and if it continues, this loss of

confidence can only lead to a vicious circle. What then, is a good leader? 90% of respondents

put three qualities at the top.

- honesty (a leader acts with morality and integrity, and sets an example). The notion

of admiration, which has been under attack – a good leader should inspire it.

- attentiveness (a good leader listen to others, to everyone, is accessible and

understanding)

- valuing the team (leading the team, stimulating and having confidence in team

members, ensuring good ongoing training, communicating, maintaining an

appropriate atmosphere in the workplace)

Worth noting in this triumphant triad is the accent on integrity and human qualities, in

contrast with financial scandals (the crooked businessman) and psychological strains (stress,

depression, “I’m not listened to,” “I’m just a cog”). Some cited the courage of John Kenneth

Galbraith in denouncing an “economics of fraud.” These young people reject politics and

finance completely as the site of partisan maneuvering and personal calculation.

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Listening and paying attention shine a light on these young people’s desire to participate,

their desire for change in human relationships, for a new form of communication that will

express itself without the violence of a demand, but rather as concern for an improved way of

being in the workplace, to be and to do together. A place where no one acts or submits

unwittingly, where everyone is heard, even the weakest: “a level of humanity in the workplace

so that people, especially the most vulnerable psychologically, might also be effective

contributors in the duty to which they are called” (Ségolène).

Every player deserves a good score to work from, and I cannot resist the desire to reproduce

in its entirety this fine definition from Adrien: “A leader in today’s world evolves through

contact with people who have different roles, behaviors, and ideologies. He must work with

this heterogeneous human base, suggesting an idea or a project that transcends the group’s

differences and situates everyone in relation to a common objective. So he needs to know how

to imagine, communicate, unite, and then manage. Like the conductor of an orchestra who

ensures that no instrument drowns out another, he must coordinate the efforts and the egos

of each team member. He needs to show each individual that his or her work is valuable, that

it is necessary to the success of the project. On the other hand, he will need to be careful that

no one – especially himself – takes over anyone else’s work. He will have the qualities of a fair

man, he will need to be able to listen to others but also to communicate with them.”

Impressive.

Next come the qualities related to action: making good decisions, managing learning and

conflict. One single respondent mentioned innovation and not one, including the students

from HEC, mentioned marketing (opening new markets, client expectations, diversification,

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etc.) One respondent, young Victor, emphasized the need for a good leader to have the time

(and therefore to know how to delegate) to step back and pay attention to global changes.

The big picture suggests not a patriarchal figure but a sort of fraternal one, that of a

benevolent, exemplary older brother, the model of a leader who takes charge without being

domineering. A leader who is so much a part of the team that he blends into it. I quote Denis:

“I’m not necessarily for the presence of a leader. I think it’s an old-fashioned conception of

work that no longer suits the world we’re living in. I’m for a collegial work environment

where everyone can express themselves freely.”

2. “What skills are necessary to meet tomorrow’s challenges?” The second question

concerns skills and whether the new leaders are ready to take their positions. Here I

discovered to my great surprise the first eight key words, which look a lot like a very effective

solution: ethics, loyalty, openness, innovation, altruism, flexibility, mobility, change. Theo

commented, “There has been a reexamination of big global enterprise since the 2006 crisis

that should allow new social and economic models to grow.”

They have all had enough of ostentatious capitalist excess and its noisy peregrinations

through the media, the lack of respect for the disadvantaged. They call for a greater lucidity:

“People have to open their eyes” (Léa); “We need to keep questioning” (Édouard). It’s a

genuine reality-check: “We have to look at the world as it is now, with its new needs, not just

its old desires” (Stéphanie). Many argue that the human being must now be at the center, not

the periphery, of the company: “Balancing family life and professional life” (Ilham);

“Coordinating teams so that junior and senior members work together as much as possible”

(Alice); “It’s neither more expensive nor more difficult to be human, to be ethical; it’s just a

matter of choice” (Denis); “telecommuting could be a solution for women” (Claire). Having

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often felt they were floating in a kind of haze, I now find them facing these questions with

responsiveness and maturity: “facing reality,” “exploring the world,” “being ready,” “acquiring

a new degree of maturity,” “being able to keep learning.” These young people have found the

words with which to delineate clearly a profound and authentic change.

In order to create a readable study, I have drawn conclusions here by moving through the

questions one at a time. There is, though, one prediction I have not commented on in the

course of my work with these young people. For over ten years, we’ve been hearing

everywhere that the future lies in the hands of youth and women. Are two minorities scarcely

known to the ruling bodies all of a sudden supposed to save the world?! Pierre Bourdieu

describes youth in terms that can apply equally to women: “A category of people who are

difficult to categorize, a category the statistician doesn’t know what to do with, because

society doesn’t know what to do with them, doesn’t know what name to give them” (1994 as

quoted by Thierry Bloss). Unless I am mistaken, the only other time you might expect to hear

“women and children first” is when a ship is sinking. And I think that is precisely the case!

Young people have always represented the hope for progress and a stay against one’s own

mortality. In spite of themselves, they carry the commitment to accomplishment or

redemption of the generation that gave them life: it is classic transference. The world will be

saved not by young people or women, but perhaps by the qualities linked to these two groups

in the collective psyche. Here we are in a magnificent masculine counter-transference: we are

going to bleach our bad conscience (unconsciously, of course) through reference to values

that, in the collective imagination, are opposed to everything we reproach ourselves for

having done. Young people and children belong to the realm of purity, innocence, empathy,

altruism, nursing, caring, etc. Thus we are identifying not, strictly speaking, a group, so much

as the qualities arbitrarily attributed to that group. This analysis was done by John Gerzema

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and Michael d’Antonio in an unconvincing book, The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the

Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future.

Apart from being a somewhat regressive phenomenon that would have delighted Dr. Freud

and is no doubt some new sleight of hand, buying back innocence in the face of disasters

occurring on the planet hides something more profound. One could no doubt also point to the

emotional quotient that people wanted to smother at the same time as humanist thought. But

the real fear, the real shame, the real profanation, won’t be absolved by women.

But on the side of the mother. Matricidal world of the first mother: Nature. She is at the

international center of bad conscience, and she is the one who will have the final answer, the

response of Gaia…

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Conclusion: We Need a New Story

“Everything has changed except our way of thinking.”

“No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein

“Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the

gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and the beautiful. ” E. F. Schumacher

“Our culture’s dominant story is not something external, it’s part of us, and it’s certainly part

of me. The pressures to pull myself back into the cave or prison, to go back to my habitual

ways of living, can be overwhelming sometimes.” Peter Senge

Throughout my study I have observed these young people, these leaders of tomorrow, and

more generally the society that surrounds them, in the kind of prison Peter Senge talks about,

which could also be Plato’s cave. They know that things are not right in their here and now,

and that some part of their own humanity has escaped them. The primary image that comes to

mind is locked-in syndrome, in which we are all trapped: the cognitive and sensory functions

are intact but nothing can move, nothing can be said.

As human beings, we have been obscured behind a fragmented, mechanical, discursive and

efficient thinking that functions on its own, in the service of an economy that is often virtual,

in an inflationary bubble; the interests and well-being of most of the planet’s inhabitants are

ignore. Where thought does not dominate, it yields, and the entire world is regulated by one

thing: money. The human spirit is guide by a material thing and system. This invincible

system is gambling our lives and our earth away at the casino, and happiness is not in the

cards for anyone. These young people, whose company I had the privilege of keeping for a

month, no longer have the words to speak the things that are most important to human life:

love, passion, spirituality, happiness, sharing. Just as we need food in order to grow, every

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human being also needs spiritual nourishment in order to develop: we have a body but also a

spirit and a soul. If their needs are not met by education (family, school, society), they will be

open to despair or extremism. Young Muslims in France (there were some in my group) are

flocking to religion because it offers them a dimension everyone is seeking, one that gives

their lives meaning.

We need to stop locking up speech and the spiritual, to repair the ladders that lead toward

transcendence and metaphysics (science is already ahead of us there) and reposition

ourselves not as the center of the universe, but as a tiny fraction of what is worth preserving.

We need to reconnect with an essentialist, holistic world view. Beneath existence there is an

essence of the world, which the Greeks called harmony: the right interval, the just proportion

that governs all the laws of humans and nature. For Plato geometry, astronomy, poetry, and

nature are one selfsame thing and they merge with truth, beauty, and goodness. This harmony

must be restored to relationships among people and also between people and the world for

which they are responsible: it is a human and a political ecology. A genuine realization is

happening at the global level and it should be used like the lever of Archimedes, to lift up the

world with a small weight.

As Margaret Mead quite rightly said, “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens

can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

To consolidate the will to change and break out of locked-in syndrome, we must reconsider at

least three things: education, philosophy, and time. Education: freeing humanist speech, the

speech of intellectual sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, poets, and artists. Nothing

changes where there is no word through which to speak, nor thought through which to act.

Charles Handy: “We seem to be saying that life is essentially about economics, that money is

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the measure of most things… My hunch is that most of us don’t believe any of this, and that it

won’t work, but we are trapped in our own rhetoric and have as yet nothing else to offer, not

even a different way to talk about it.”

We’re not talking about imagining a revolution: judging from the results of my survey, we are

a long way off from that, and it would cause further harm. I am thinking more about another

type of evolution: a metamorphosis.

Humans are taking over evolution. This situation, in which the universe works backward

against itself, is utterly new. The logic of the current merchant fundamentalism is quantitative

and short-term; the logic of the evolution of the living and of natural rhythms is long-term.

These two logics are incompatible. We need the courage to “creat[e] a safer environment for

unlearning and new learning” (Schein), to start from very foundation of fragility and

vulnerability, so as to take the risk of change. Mathematician Cedric Villani: “To make

progress in a demonstration you have to make yourself vulnerable.” We need to side with the

voiceless and the vulnerable.

This is about replacing one history with another; if we do not start to imagine this new

history, it will write itself in the form of a requiem. The role of an intellectual is to contest

radically, unconventionally, heretically: it is always through words that people have created

momentum; otherwise the status quo imposes itself with an iron fist. Jonathan Porritt

confirms the observations of my study: “looking at people all over the world today, rich and

poor, they are not remotely close to a state of mind that would call for anything revolutionary.

There’s no vast upheaval of people across the world saying ‘This system is completely and

utterly flawed and must be overturned and we must move towards a different system. There

isn’t even that, let alone an identification of what the other system would look like”.

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Who if not the intellectuals will appeal to a compelling vision to be social architects, writers of

constitutions, entrepreneurs of meaning? The problem is that change has changed, and we

need to teach people to see the world with fresh eyes.

Porrit concludes: We have not collectively articulated what this better world looks like – the

areas in which it would offer such fantastic improvements in terms of people’s quality of life,

the opportunities they would have, a chance to live in totally different ways to the way we live

now. We haven’t done that. Collectively we’ve not made the alternative to this paradigm, this

paradigm in progress, work emotionally and physically, in terms of economic excitement.

We’ve just not done it.

Emotion, vision, imagination: these are the tools of language and of dialectical thinking that

will allow us to make progress in conscience. They enable us to name meaning and value.

Dialectical thinking belongs to the living, to the organic whole. It opens up our real human

understanding, which is divided, compartmentalized, dispersed. It does this because is it

dialogical (allowing the coexistence of two separate propositions), and recursive; it can be a

circle, a hologram (in a complex structure, the part is in the whole and the whole in every

part).

This notion, which is fundamentally philosophical, provides an escape from the vicious circle

because, while it grants the possibility of a loop, it is an ascending spiral. You come back to a

question asked at the beginning, as in Socratic dialogue, but having climbed several levels.

“Philosophy is the discipline that scrutinizes the validity of guidance principles and their

applications in different cultural contexts” (H.Spitzeck, M. Pirson, W. Amann & S. Khan, 2009).

Or, in the prophetic voice of Simone Weil (1942): “We are living in a period that has been

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denied a future. The wait for what is to come is no longer hope but anguish”; “The notion of

value is at the center of philosophy. One cannot consider the notion of value as uncertain

without seeing one’s own existence as uncertain, which is impossible.”

Back to the future: if we want a paradigm shift, we may need to turn back toward our past and

extract its true substance: the humanist values that modern man needs so greatly. We must

build a new civilization, one that is classical in inspiration, and renew for ourselves, beyond

social constructions, the original pact between the mind and the universe. This is a

monumental task of education that will require motivated teams of researchers and

professors. We need to counter power with wisdom so as to re-balance the world and weave a

new social contract.

The divorce between our world and spirituality is tragic; we must go to that inner place where

knowing comes to the surface. We need a urgent redirection to “an emerging future that

depends on us” (C. Otto Scharmer). For that we need to dig down below rational thought, to

rejoin the emotional – intuition in the manner of Einstein, who “never discovered anything

with my rational mind.”

What would it take to develop a science that enhanced life ? It would be a new spiritual path

that encompasses humanist values universal enough to serve both the individual and society,

a path beyond the boundaries of nation and culture.

Each time the world changes – when civilizations rises and fall, when new scientific theories

challenge our understanding of the universe, when technological innovation reinvents our

lifestyle, when political revolution breaks down the old structures of society, or when a global

crisis threatens to destroy our planet, humanity is forced to let go of some of its most

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cherished beliefs in order to create a new mythology to guide its collective psyche. (Betty Sue

Flowers)

If we return here to the convergence of science and thinking, which these days are located

very close together, we make possible the emergence of holistic experience, holistic thinking

that puts us in the same position as a bee, an oak tree, or a star in the overall pattern of living

things. I recall here the magic of Escher’s drawings, which I mentioned in the introduction,

and which evoke the concept biologists call “morphogenesis”: the coming into being of a form.

“Appreciating the universe as an emergent living phenomenon can be done only ‘from the

inside,’ through cultivating the capacity to understand the living world and ourselves as an

interconnected whole. This starts the journey toward a science, as Eleanor Rosch put it,

‘performed with the mind of wisdom.’” “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our

circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty”

(Albert Einstein).

Taking time

Between the cradle and the grave, human life is terribly short: that is why it leans on its past

and projects itself into the future. Through this movement appears the meaning of life. Human

beings have a basic need to give meaning to their existence, to consecrate it, and I sensed from

the psychological suspension of the young people in my group that this vital spark is what

merchant society has extinguished. No one can consider working in order to consume as an

ultimate life goal. The problem of society and of business, then, is to be able to take back all

the energy that has been lost as a result of noble motivations. The human individual is

rebelling against the fundamentals of capital. Political ecology consists of making the world

more human: “eco” is Greek for “house,” and “logos” means the ways of doing. “As we reach

deep down into the soil of our being, we tap into our radical core of inspiration.” As Viktor

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Frankl said, “Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.” “One

must remember that modern, industrial and post-modern company has been constituted –

and continues to be constituted – most often on the basis of violence and suffering (in both

the physical and symbolic sense)” (H.Spitzeck, M. Pirson, W. Amann & S. Khan, 2009).

Young people need leadership in the field of thinking – they are demanding it – but we have

seen how reluctant they are to place their trust without a sense of ethics. Gary Hamel has

demonstrated a lassitude in the workplace: 80% of employees around the world are less than

highly engaged in their work, they show up every day but leave their humanity at home. This

lassitude, he argues, is due to a moral deficit; not only can it be remedied, the remedy is also

an indicator for success.

At issue, then, is not naïve idealism but a pragmatism that originates in a lucid observation of

reality: “Remarkable contributions are typically spawned by a passionate commitment to

transcendent values such as beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and

honor” (Hamel). Why, Hamel wonders, are “words like ‘love,’ ‘devotion,’ and ‘honor’ so seldom

heard within the halls of corporate-dom? Why are the ideals that matter most to human

beings the ones that are most notably absent in managerial discourse?”

Researcher Manfred Kets de Vries also underlines the double necessity for individuals not to

mortgage their lives for the sake of material gain, and for business to grow wiser: “While I do

not believe in a magic formula for leadership stardom, I do believe that the stars who will

shine in today’s rapidly changing world share one distinguished quality – a familiarity with

ambiguity and uncertainty that helps them achieve a state of organizational Zen. I liken these

future managers and their behaviors to embodied Koans. They will be unlocking the

contradictions and the inconsistencies that characterize an environment of constant change.”

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The link between creation of value and creation of wealth is broken and tomorrow’s leaders

will need these values: “Leadership research needs to discover the proper role and the true

calling of leadership in promoting humanism in business (…) in weaving sustainable

relationships to serve the common good. The idea of servant leadership might prove to be

helped in this endeavor, being authentic in this endeavor is indispensible” (H. Spitzeck, M.

Pirson, W. Amann & S. Khan 2009).

The information revolution announces the disappearance of industrialism: we are coming out

of the energy era and entering that of information, of the non-material. Time is the key issue

when it comes to beginning all these changes and putting in place new strategies to focus on

creating a human-centered, value-oriented society.

The holistic dimension of existence, once it has been established, might allow us to go to the

end of our humanity, adding to it the primary dimension of intelligence, which is that of the

heart. “I do not consider empathy as an emotion, instead it should be regarded as an

emotional capacity and process” (Schein). While I was with those young people, the only

moments of “flow” took pace on the threshold of this opening of the heart that obliges us to

look and to understand (in its etymological sense, to take with one); this epiphany of the heart

cuts across the gender gap and transcends races. Each time you put strategy or material profit

before people, you fail: without even realizing it, you have ceased to act with humanity. To

lead an ethical life is a universal desire, a unique achievement in one’s life.

Acting with humanism means you’re not alone: “The world begins to mirror your purpose in a

magical way. It’s almost as if you suddenly find yourself on stage in a play that was written

expressly for you” (Betty Sue Flowers).

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Turning radically toward the world and toward the Other is doubtless the only way, as

Lévinas believed, to face the smallness and the terror of our existence. The small grain of

mustard seed in the Bible, the basis of all religions of the world – and, in the west, the long

thread from Socrates to Jesus to Marx – is nothing other than the power of love. It is the only

force that in our distress shows the trace of salvation.

I sometimes think this is what Nieztsche was thinking about when he discussed the

Superman. In any case, that is how I like to imagine it, and I believe that love as it is described

in Plato’s Banquet directly echoes the myth of the cave: Agape. I know from experience what

an incredible effect compassion, empathy, and love have on people and the world. When I left

the young people in my survey group, I wished this for them: that they would always take

time beyond their work to learn, to dream, to love, and above all to share these three things

liberally throughout their lives. Because carrying a passion for that which is other, loving, and

learning – these are one and the same.

If Love is a great thaumaturge and the best tool in the world, it will be my conclusion, whose

words I leave to Michel de Certeau: “He or she is a mystic who cannot stop walking and who,

with the certain knowledge of what is missing, is aware with each place and each object that

it’s not that, one can’t stay here, nor be content with that”.

Only an act inspired by the urgency and the lucidity of charity will render intelligible to us the

act that originally expressed itself, yesterday, or the day before, in languages other than our

own.

Bibliography:

1) Kets de Vries, M. (2008). Sex, Money, Happiness, And Death. INSEAD Business Press.

2) J. Stein, S., E. Book, H. (2011). The EQ Edge. Jossey-Bass.

3) Hamle, G. (2012). What Matters Now. Jossey-Bass.

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4) Senge, P., Scharmer, O., Jaworski, J., Flowers, BS. (2007). Presence. Nicolas Brealey

Publishing.

5) Kets de Vries, M. (2011). Reflections on Groups and Organizations. Jossey-Bass.

6) Visser, W. (2011). The Age of Responsibility. Wiley.

7) Spitzeck, H., Pirson, M., Amann, W., Khan, S. (2009). Humanism in business. Cambridge

University Press.

8) Gerzema, J., D’Antonio, M. (2013). The Athena Doctrine. Jossey-Bass.

9) Weil, S. (1939-1942). Oeuvres Complètes. Gallimard.

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Mosaic. M. C. Escher.