Pyramid to Circles

ICA is the Sweden #1 supermarket chain, with over 23 000 employees, 1300 stores across the country,  generating 100  Billion Euros of revenue. ICA has undertaken a very large agile transformation that has become a benchmark and a true inspiration for many companies in Sweden and all over Europe. The secret sauce of their success : make the transformation of matters of culture first, before any methods. Marvin Lilegren is the  “Head of User Experience & Design” at ICA and has been instrumental at the core of this story. In this episode, he lays out the step by step approach and key success factors of the ICA’s agile transformation journey. The principles he explains apply for any industry. Follow-us on https://www.linkedin.com/company/pyramid-to-circles/

Polytechnicien, ayant travaillé 20 ans dans l'Internet dans la Silicon Valley, en Europe  et en Chine, Sébastien a vécu un burn out qui l’a conduit à s’intéresser au rôle de l'ego et à l’importance de l’écoute  dans les entreprises. Il a développé l’Écoute Progressive, une technique basée sur des principes d'humilité, de bienveillance et de confiance en l'humain, qu'il dévoile dans cet épisode

Pernilla Wikman is the VP, Head of Global Business at Telia, the leading Swedish Telco company. Based on her long personal exploration in the field of learning organizations, she has initiated in her division a deep culture transformation promoting self-managed and autonomous teams. In this episode she shares her experience, the results obtained, as well as very concrete insights on how to lead the change. In particular, she introduces the 5 transformational areas that volunteer teams are invited to explore : Why, Me, We, Focus and Self-Organization.

I have been truly  inspired by this conversation, and by how Pernilla  is driven by a desire to continuously learn.

In this episode, I share some of the key learnings I had throughout the 1st season of Pyramid to circles, in particular what the term ‘Living Organization’ means for me, as well as the key leadership skills necessary for managers who lead a transformation towards empowerment, including Intelligence of the Self, Emotional Intelligence (a lot in there to say), and Polarities Management.

Patrick Fransen is a Partner at Pebble Wave, a new type of consultancy whose goal is to incubate and invest in for-purpose start-ups. In this episode, Patrick explains why and how becoming a purpose-centric organization is a growth accelerator. He also introduces Pebble Wave’s 7-steps method to apply purpose centricity in all the company dimensions, including Culture, Ways of working, Business model, Strategy, Sales, Finance and People skills.

Very often, sustainability is addressed in the realm of  “doing”: Indeed, individuals and organizations must react  to the alarming data indicating the destruction of our living systems. But as we react, we are not yet in a creation mode, one that is truly innovative and inspired. For that, we need to experience that sustainability is also about “being”. It is about a shift of mindset inside yourself. Building a culture of sustainability in organizations means growing a new level of consciousness in which we belong to a greater system. Our guest Claire Carre ([email protected]) brought to France the Work That Reconnects, founded in the 1960s by Joanna Macy. This immense piece of practice and knowledge is truly transformative but  has not been brought to conventional organizations YET. I invited Claire to P2C because I believe that her work will inspire leaders who want to innovate and include sustainability in their culture and transform their business. Please share with me your ideas and reactions at [email protected].

Jef Cumps is the author of Sociocracy 3.0, the Novel, and the founder of ILean, a Belgian consultancy specialised in Agile and Sociocracy. In this episode, Jef shares about his experiences with companies and how he supports them finding the right balance between “maintaining the structure” and “empowering people”, two polarities often difficult to reconcile, by working both on the organisational as well as the individual levels of transformation. 

Andy Sontag works for the KAOSPILOT, the progressive business, design & leadership school in Denmark, where he has the role of Program Director for the Professional Experience Design program, that teaches how  to design experiences that grow people and relationships.

In this episode, he explains how to create the conditions of meaningful - or generative - experiences. Successful companies offer coherent employee, brand and customer experiences that address not only the mind but also one’s feelings. Here is the link to his model (5E).

Above all, Andy is a Master of human transformation. In our conversation he shares profound and highly inspirational insight about leadership, design and facilitation.

Bruno Thévenin a été jusqu’en 2020 le CEO de Pepsico France, où il a créé les conditions d’un cercle vertueux alliant performance économique - une croissance exponentielle puisque l’entreprise est passé de 30 M€ à 1 milliards d’€, à la performance sociale (N°1 Great Place to Work, N°1 Top Employeur France). En parallèle de ce parcours de dirigeant, Bruno s’est formé au Coaching et à l’Intelligence de Soi.