Business Case #2

CISS is an entity of 180 employees that is part of Orange Labs networks, the research and development division of the Orange group, which brings together engineers and researchers.
CISS is composed of two departments that merged at the end of 2018: operational delivery and engineering (research, anticipation and skill centers). The team culture and operating procedures of these two departments are historically very different.

Stéphane Demartis, Director of CISS, had experimented in 2017 adaptive governance in another division of the Orange Group and had worked with Spindle on this occasion.
Building on this experience and convinced that “this management mode frees the energies and allows everyone to be a responsible actor of his own activity at the service of a common purpose”, he wanted to start a transition for CISS.

When this journey began in April 2019, 4 priorities were identified:

• Clarify roles and accountabilities (who does what)
• Redistribute decision at the right level of the organization with confidence in those who carry the authority of roles as the organization had many challenges and objectives to deal with in parallel in order to fulfill their missions
• Develop the legitimacy and autonomy of those who carry out actions and projects to progress collectively
• Develop adaptive management to be able to better detect our talents and give them the opportunity to take responsibility

We start the implementation of adaptive governance with teams that work de facto together and who volunteer to test new modes of interaction and decision-making. We wanted them to be open for these new ways of working and to be able to quickly conduct their first experiments.
The main idea was to make a transformation in action and based on their reality without going through a traditional reorganization.

100 people were trained between April and December 2019 and the training course included:

• 1 kick-off seminar to clarify the need and strategic priorities of this transformation process with all stakeholders of the company
• Acculturation and experimentation sessions on adaptive governance in France, India and Romania
• Launching Ramps - Mentoring of each circle (team) including a design session of its governance and team coaching on the spot during 3 Synchronisation meetings and 2 Governance meetings
• Coaching and mentoring for the @Transformation role. The purpose of this role is to make agility sustainable within CISS. For 2020, we planned the transfer of know-how from Spinldle to the Transformation role in order to continue the more in-depth deployment of Adaptive Governance within the organization.
• Highly experiential training seminars for key roles (Facilitators, Leaders)

• Deployed at 40%, 100 people trained in 3 countries, 8 active circles to date
• Free up time for managers to really work on key topics often sidelined due to lack of time: transformation and vision.
• Clarification of the roles and accountabilities
• Reinforced cross-functional collaboration between different business lines

« This kind of management frees up energy and allows everyone to be a responsible actor of his own activity at the service of a common purpose.»
Stephane Demartis, CISS Director

« Agile governance allows us to quickly understand how we must work together around a common goal, and move in the same direction. Any impediment to achieving this goal is more easily resolved through the method, and everyone bears his share of responsibility. So there is more fluidity, more engagement, and much less escalations. »
Fabrice Arnaudo, Director IOP CISS