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    The Interview

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    Driving transformation by creating disequilibrium 

    6 August 2024 • by Michael R. Wade in The Interview

    Michael Wade interviews Hamilton Mann, a top executive at European defense group Thales....

    Creating objectives that take people out of their comfort zones and force them to collaborate is vital to drive transformation at scale, Hamilton Mann, a top executive at European defense group Thales tells Michael Wade.

    At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the US men’s 4x100m relay team was poised for victory in their qualifying heat. Darvis Patton blazed through the third leg, leading the pack, with Tyson Gay’s outstretched hand ready to receive the baton. But in a heart-stopping moment, the baton slipped through their fingers — a fumble that dashed their dreams and led to a shock elimination.

    Just as a team will only win the relay if they are able to pass the baton smoothly, the success of a transformation depends on breaking down silos and fostering collaboration across departments to truly reap the benefits of scale, says Hamilton Mann, VP Digital Marketing and Digital Transformation at French aerospace, defense, and cybersecurity company Thales.

    “You know that if you run a great race, but you don’t manage to pass the baton very well, you fail. Not in your own race — you may have a great time — but overall, the company is going to fail.”

    So, how do you create the conditions that break down the silos and enable your organization to capture the value of digital tools?

    Teamwork partnership succession challenge competition business context
    Giving responsibility and ownership to specific people across the organization for driving, maintaining, and updating the digital platform was a crucial part of its success.

    Contradictory and overlapping objectives

    Mann believes a key enabler is setting challenging objectives for departments. Crucially, it should not be possible to achieve these objectives alone; they must overlap with other departments or be contradictory enough in nature that teams must collaborate by sharing talent or resources to address the conflict.

    For example, many organizations want to grow their revenues while keeping a lid on costs. At first, this objective might seem contradictory since growing the topline often involves burning through resources. In this case, collaboration between departments isn’t just optional or beneficial; it becomes essential for achieving the overall goal, says Mann.

    Secondly, objectives should “overlap” with other departments. Simply put, they should encompass tasks that go beyond the definition of core activities. A third key ingredient, says Mann, is giving individual departments ownership of company-wide objectives to create “a common destiny.”

    How does this work in practice? Mann cites the example of Thales’ “digital seller” initiative, which aimed to examine the way the company interacted with customers and reimagine operational excellence. The result was its “ContentFlix” platform, which was established with the aim of creating a one-stop shop for the sales team for any material they might need from across the business for sales pitches and client meetings.

    Giving responsibility and ownership to specific people across the organization for driving, maintaining, and updating the digital platform was a crucial part of its success, says Mann, because it empowered them to make decisions on everything from design and maintenance to governance. “And this comes in addition to their day-to-day work. And this allows us to create one team, one Thales, as we call it.”

    At first, there was some reluctance. The sales department noted they didn’t usually create content, while the marketing department, used to working with agencies, was perplexed about what the sales team could contribute.

    Breaking the silo between marketing and sales

    Taking the example of marketing and sales, Mann recognized that the departments weren’t working together as effectively as they could. To break these silos, he gave them both the objective of working out which content they needed to produce to support sales.

    At first, there was some reluctance. The sales department noted they didn’t usually create content, while the marketing department, used to working with agencies, was perplexed about what the sales team could contribute. Yet, given that sales use the marketing material to engage with prospective customers, Mann noted they could provide feedback on which content helps with their pitches and presentations.

    “And so, we set that objective to the sales family, saying, “This is not implicit; this is not a nice-to-have. It has to be a must-have if you guys want to be in front of your prospect and customer and always be reassured that the content you have in your bag will be relevant,” says Mann.

    For the marketing team, the objective gave them an opportunity to identify proof points that would help them validate whether their content was setting the sales team up for success.

    Pushing these departments outside of their traditional comfort zones helped create “a form of disequilibrium,” enabling them to transform the organization in a way that they couldn’t if everyone was acting in an autonomous way, explains Mann. “So as a digital role, you’re stepping in between marketing and sales in a way and connecting them with digital technologies that can enable them both to do more things.”

    A lesson Thales has learned when it comes to deploying AI is that it is tempting to invest your resources in something that is technically feasible and brings the biggest potential benefits.

    Don’t overlook the human in the GenAI equation

    Turning to the topic of generative AI and the potential of new tools to revolutionize the way we work, Mann cautioned against being swept away by the hype. While AI might perform well on certain tasks, it is not capable of replicating the whole gamut of skills that humans bring to their roles, he says. These include “good humor, motivation, and a form of trust and understanding between people” that form the pillars of organizational success.

    “We all have experienced the situation working with someone, and then that person goes to another job, and we start to figure out that, ‘Wow, that person was so critical beyond what we were seeing so far,’ because they had that kind of a link with the people, having that form of ability to […] make the collaboration happen.”

    Furthermore, GenAI’s tendency to make mistakes means it still requires human experts to control and check its output. Companies need to understand the limits of these tools and carefully consider how GenAI can enhance what they already do without disrupting what they currently do well, says Mann.

    A lesson Thales has learned when it comes to deploying AI is that it is tempting to invest your resources in something that is technically feasible and brings the biggest potential benefits. But in doing so, you risk overlooking “the human in that equation” and whether your organization’s processes can adapt to deliver the result you want.

    As such, the adoption of GenAI is providing an opportunity for Thales to assess what they mean by operational excellence, work out where they perform well, and figure out the areas they should prioritize to further enhance performance, Mann says.

    After all, in the relay race of organizational transformation, you don’t want GenAI to become something that inadvertently trips up your teams. 

    Authors

    Michael Wade - IMD Professor

    Michael R. Wade

    TONOMUS Professor of Strategy and Digital

    Michael R Wade is TONOMUS Professor of Strategy and Digital at IMD and Director of the TONOMUS Global Center for Digital and AI Transformation. He directs a number of open programs such as Leading Digital and AI Transformation, Digital Transformation for Boards, Leading Digital Execution, and the Digital Transformation Sprint. He has written 10 books, hundreds of articles, and hosted popular management podcasts including Mike & Amit Talk Tech. In 2021, he was inducted into the Swiss Digital Shapers Hall of Fame.

    Expert

    Hamilton Mann

    Group Vice President of Digital Marketing and Digital Transformation at Thales

    Hamilton Mann is a globally recognized expert in Digital and AI for Good, a tech executive, keynote speaker, and the originator of the concept of artificial integrity. In 2024, he was named a Top 10 Thought Leader in Technology by Technology Magazine and recognized by Thinkers50 Radar as one of the top 30 rising business thinkers globally. As Group Vice President of Digital Marketing and Digital Transformation at Thales, Mann leads groundbreaking digital and AI initiatives. He is a senior lecturer at INSEAD and HEC Paris, an advisory board member of the Ethical AI Governance Group (EAIGG), and the host of The Hamilton Mann Conversation podcast.  

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