Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Why the spirit of making a difference is all about contribution !

Definitely one of my favorite Ted Talks video ! While 15 minutes can seem like much time to spend in our wild and wooly lives..... these will be some of the best minutes you might spend. Make sure you get to the end. Wonderful message.

The spirit of contribution is  not about trying to impress people. It's not about winning (or losing) as in contribution world there is no "BETTER" ! It is about sharing ideas or doing something that matters for the others in a world of possibilitie
“This is the moment — this is the most important moment right now. Which is: We are about contribution. That’s what our job is. It’s not about impressing people. It’s not about getting the next job. It’s about contributing something.”      
                                                           Benjamin Zander



It is also not only allowing ourselves to make mistakes and but aloso granting them as fascinating gifts !

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Sunday, October 4, 2015

Never let the Circumstances of a Moment Superseded your Dream

Here the nice sketchnotes we did, I and Raphael Walter , from the Bill McDermott's book Winners Dream . This sketching, whose name is "Never Let the Circumstances of a Moment Superseded your Dream", represent the main 30 lessons we took  away from Bill life. The idea of taking notes from this book using visual notes comes from the blog of Sacha Chua who had already done a lot of sketched books and indeed, her blog gives nice trips and examples to do that






From my side, my favorite tips are the 5th "Underdog Can Win" and the 24th "Believe in the Purposes of Imperfect Period" !
And you, what is your favorite lesson from Bill Book ? Do not hesitate to share....

Monday, August 24, 2015

Why devil is not in the details - Warum der Teufel steckt im Detail nicht. ?

Yes, I don't (always) agree with the saying " Devil is in the details "  which has been first pronounced by the  the great german philosopher Nietzsche  . By the way, when Nietzche came up with this idea he dit it in a a provocative manner at that time  in order to contradict  the other well known and popular saying  "Details are in God" (Gott steckt im Detail )
I have to admit that sometimes we have to focus on details in order to accomplish big things .... and that sometimes a tiny detail can screw up totally a big project and prevent it from success.
However, most of the time this expression happens to be totally toxic because it prevent us to move forward and to make important decision. Indeed when it comes to make a decision, to choose for instance a software solution or to decide to start a complex project it is not possible to embrace at the beginning all the details and all the complexity that is likely to  happen at the project level !!! And if you try to check all of them before starting, you are likely not to start anything !!


Sunday, June 21, 2015

Bend it like Bill ! The guy who acts as he couldn't fail

I have just read Winners Dream book by Bill McDermott  :  It is great  and unexpected stuff as I expected to read again one more additional advices book about career success and how to achieve it


Instead ,  Bill story is not about career but about inspirational  dreams and about  how to achieve strong achievements both as an human being and as a professional . I also aprreciated his conversational tone and the way he is able to share and build relationship with others whoever they are and wherever they come from...
 
One memorable thing  I got from this book is that I realized that Bill  is the guy who acts as he couldn't fail : that's  why, when he worked at Xerox in the  nineties,  he accepted to lead the Xerox's worst performing district, that's why morever  he accepted in 2002 to lead SAP Noth America that was  at this age under SAP average standard expectations . Each time Bill not only accepted the challenge but committed on hight purposes and share them  to the teams : for Xerox distric team, the aim was to  to become the first Xerox  districk in the world   (los  mejores) and for SAP America the goal was to be a three-billion-dollar business by 2005 (Milagro) .
Each time he was told he was crazy but he was not : he was aspirational for his team and he acted as he could not failed so he didn't (may be his guardian angel is a very efficiant one)

Here a nice video of  Bill explaining how to pursue his dream. Yep, definitely that's the guy who daily acts as he can't never screw up  !


And what's about you guys ? could you share the last time you acted and moved forward  as you could'nt fail ? Please tell and share your stories when you bend it like bill ."

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Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Economics and Emotions by Emmanuel Petit


Emotions play a major role in lives of everyday role that the social sciences, such as philosophy, psychology or sociology, have identified a long time ago.
For economists, however, the introduction of emotions has a lot to do with innovation agenda
as all the current  standard model of the economy  are mostly based on the 2 main pilars : rationality and egoism . As if we were all minded as Mister SPOCK and behave only for rational and selfish purpose.
However are emotions able to change the game in economics theories ? would it be possible to encourage people to adopt beneficial behaviors for the community?

The answer definitly sounds YES to my mind and  as a matter of fact, Emmanuel Petit in this must read book shows and explains very well the power of sentiments and how they can motivate actions and purposes in a good way.

How for instance you can reduce people electricity consumption only with simpe tools like emoticons ?  How you can achieve goals of economic policy by influencing others in a simple and smart way ?

This book offers, in an educational and non-technical form, complete and concise overview of how economists integrate affective processes - emotions, moods or feelings - in the economic analysis.

I would definitely recommend this book , feel free to order it within this link http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-_conomie_des_emotions-9782707183200.html

above an extract of my sketching notes of this book (in french)

Monday, January 26, 2015

Krauthammer Sales training : all about Kiss, Fun and Silence

Good start for 2015 (by the way still time anyway to wish to all of you a nice and succesfull year) because I had the opportunity to attend a great sales training done by our coach Benjamin Bouat  from company Krauthammer. It is an insiped training about sales and about how to manage the sales cycle achieving your goals and  helping your customer to be succesful . Benjamin is a true leader and a charismatic guy : you are going to learn a lot with him and some usefull and strange tips like how to sell a plastic paperclip 10 times more expensive that the market price, how to behave like a doctor. You will learn the perfect way to KISS , the power of silence , and you will discover your inner soul color ( eh I look like a a yellow guy but I am not ....)
Below a photo with the team, with from left to right : Benjamin, Xavier, Pierre Alain, Carline, Frank , Laurent  and in background the nice Scribing I did from my training sketching notes.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Design Thinking at school (not business related but personal testimony about DT)

I have got a good news and a bad one !

The good news is that , a few week ago I did the best presentation I have ever done and the bad one is that this presentation was not for business purposes !

Indeed, a few years ago my company made a partnership with charity group 100 000 entrepreneurs that is dedicated to leverage the entrepreneurship mindset to the young generation

This charity focus on Entrepreneur mindset whose definition is larger than the current one in the sense that you do not have to create your company to be an entrepreneur , you can be an entrepreneur by doing something interesting with your  life, by becoming the real actor of your daily work and life , and it is something that anybody can succeed in not only as a business man but also as a teacher, or as an artist or as an employee company  

That the reason why, in order to promote this entrepreneur mindset, I was invited by 100 000 entrepreneurs  to share my career experience with young students at school in a suburban city

I was indeed exited by  the opportunity to help teenager to  make something with their life but on another side I don't like to discuss about my career and  I don't feel like a real entrepreneur

So I decided to use Design Thinking (Design thinking is  creative process and methods to help you design meaningful solution in many area whatever business or in your community) tools to help teenagers understand more the entrepreneurship concept and  therefore , before the meeting I prepared Design thinking tools like  the context map of the entrepreneur (what is the definition of undertake , give examples ....) and I prepared too the entrepreneur journey map

The result turned to be very interactive as the teenagers take over the meeting by themselves and put the post-it by their own on the paper . Unlike the other cession I have done in the past where a few polite teenager listened to me and asked few polite questions, all the students this time participated  ! with big enthusiasm ! It was amazing !

Have a look to first result of entrepreneur context map

 is that not good ? do you remark the rose they have added ? to be honest these students werefar better than my current customers ! With this entrepreneur context map they ended with their own entrepreneur definition and generated too a lot of ideas

Then we moved forward to the second step that is the entrepreneur journey map that represent the steps that an entrepreneur has to do  in order to pursue his project , the people he has to interact and the feeling he get at each action or interaction



it was very interesting ! during this cession I encouraged the students to get idea in the way "how might you " or "how can you make it" Often they get the idea like "to get a palace with swimming pool" and i answered them "ok but how you could make it ? "

At the end my students was very proud of them ! Oh I can prove it ! have a look to the following photos


Do you guess who is the accounting teacher ?


You are right this guy in the middle !


The next photo is a guy I remember very well as he came to me "eh man your session is great !!!

The lesson learnt : Design Thinking  is working, it helps you to create great meeting whatever the area by generating interaction and innovative idea with people

Thanks

















Thursday, January 3, 2013

Prototyping with sketching and design thinking approach

Below a nice document that explain how we help customers to choose and  experience our value solution by sketching and prototyping with the design thinking approach   inspired by the author Tim Brown  that you can follow a conference (from design to design thinking) under this link in youTube


With this solving problem approach, we make prototype for our customer that help them to make sure that the solution will work and to understand too the necessary steps they will have to do in order to make the things done. As a check out, the prototypes we do are rapid, quick and dirty in the sense we do not go deep into the system and the customizing in order to make a proof or testing some specific features or making a long and boring Proof of Concept (POC) Instead we just check that we have all the values, materials and technologies within our solution platform to achieve our customer goals and visions. So we use every material at our disposal to create convincing prototype in a few days :  pictures, telling story,  references, speed demo and sketching and post it techniques  ...    
So that our customers make the real interactive experience of our solution during the prototype presentation .

Saturday, September 22, 2012


My contribution to the telling story that we did for the 25th years anniversary of my company in France


is it not too nice ! 

Friday, February 24, 2012

Amaury Group Case or How to invite the emotional reasons at the sales cycle ?


We had last year in Q4 a very difficult sales cycles with our customer AMAURY Group (that contains Newspaper Le Parisien and Sport Newspapers L'Equipe as well as ASO,  a sport event company that organize for instance big event like Le Tour de France)
All along the cycle, we did our job which means : showing to the customer the value of our finance solution and our unique integration with the Business Intelligence platform in real time that would allow Amaury Group reducing the errors number and  taking the right decisions  (demo, references, value propositions...)
Howerver, early in the pre sales cycle we understood that the value and objective  reasons why to choose SAP would not be enough to win this deal  against our main competitor Qualiac .
The project team from AMAURY group had unfortunatly a big preference for Qualiac : less expensive and business driven solution, good media business speeches and messages... and we were told they did amazing demonstrations both in finance and BI/reporting topics !
So we came up with this idea to  focus on emotional  and personal reasons why they should choose SAP, the reasons why basically SAP is NOT ONLY  BETTER FOR THEIR COMPANY but also BETTER FOR THEMSELVES as human being ... and we found out a creative way to communicate about it :
Let's me explain : our customer Amaury ran  a  poster campaign one year ago  with the theme "The 50 reasons Why  to buy L'EQUIPE ? " and among these reasons there was a mix between objective and rational reason, funny reasons and emotional reason why to buy L'EQUIPE (the poster above)

So we decided to do the same as a kind of parody and we created a document called in french "Why to buy SAP ?" in which we put objectives reasons : because of the functional coverage, because of  integrated stuff...  and also funny and absurd reasons : because our sales account read L'EQUIPE, because our manager's wife is a press retailer...    and last but not least personal and emotional reasons : in order to improve my skills, in order to put SAP on my CV, to be able to say to my pretty roomate "oh I am very busy I am  involved now  in an SAP Project. !!!

So we distributed this poster (above) at the lunch break of our SAP  demonstration day and  we presented  this document as a nice parody of their very well known campaign "L'EQUIPE"

It was a clever and creative way to invite the emotional and personal reason at the sales cycle. Was it not ?
Tell me about that ...





  

Monday, February 20, 2012

My Personal Presentation "Meet_Xavier_Petit"

here my personal presentation  : the list of things i am good (because of hardworking) but i don't like and the list of things i am good (because passion) and I am crazy about....

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Friday, August 5, 2011

Tellling Story selling the value of our company solutions

With colleagues, we created this funny comics in order to share the value of the services that our company propose to our customer in order to run their business better. Each of the 6 episodes has been posted on the wall of our company offices, including in the toilets. The all story deals with the kidnapping of our sales account by the customer "Les Lunettes du Poitou" (involved in toilet seat business) . The Chief information officer (CIO) won't release our poor sales account as long as the value of SAP has not been demonstrated ! So read how we will prove our value and how this story will turn into an happy end.
PS : you will recognise me as the CIO, probably the most important character in all my career...

Thursday, June 30, 2011

What is the SAP tagline ?

Some nice ideas about the sap tagline on the SAP Innovative days !

Monday, May 30, 2011

Funny Cartoons to deliver messages

Here the first episode I created to illustrate a service that my company can offer to our customersEpisode 3 collaborative_roadmap

And above the seconf episode (with more effort from myself about the drawings)

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Bruno story for rights managements

Last week i did a nice demo to TF1 right management people  with also the story of bruno,  a paranoid author who doesn't trust them for his rights calculation. It was just funny and I hope memorable too. For this story I used the material from the US film Chaos Theory with the actor  Ryan Reynolds 

Let's tell you the Bruno Story Pitch :
Bruno is the author of the movie Chaos  for which all the rights have been adquired  by TF1 TV

Unfortunatly Bruno is a paranoid author and he doesn't believe that TF1 royalty team would be able to calculate his rights properly ! let's see how our right management solution will allow Bruno to get more confident

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Story Telling and Values for our electronic toll solution

We did a very nice demo for our customer Vinci Autoroute in which we combined a mix of stories and values :
Story 1 : Just as an introduction with Charles Dupont that show how the toll business is valuable for drivers allowing them to gain time on their work daily travel

Story 2 : Jessica works at Vinci Autoroute and she is in charge of offer management at the Vinci IT department but unfortunatly she doesn't like coding ! Let's see how our ETC solution can help her to manage the offer pricing rules without coding

Story 3 : a few slides to prevent the audience not to be alarmed by the next features : it s just batch billing program that are not designed for the users

Values Conclusion : I added a few slides with images that show the value propositions of our solutions

Please, do not hesitate to comment these slides






Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A template for software process demo

Last week I did a new template for demo based on process and which respects some basic rules for demo :
  1. Describing the Process inside the overall scenario
  2. Focusing on the process  on what is going to to be shown TELL
  3. Demo Scene SHOW
  4. Summarizing with a slide telling what has been made with the business benefits list TELL
For the template agenda, i was inspired a lot by the example that Garr Raynols gives in his book "The naked presenter" that I strongly recommend

Here this template and don't hesitate to tell me about it (and do not take into account the picture at the endn they are just as business example of a particular customer)

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Happy new year 2011 with female qualities spreading the world

Happy new year 2011 with more meaning, better personal and professional relationship,  more clarity, more transparency and higher authenticity .
Above a nice Ted Talks conference that focus on female qualities (and also on female difficulties through the workforce) that I hope, will make a difference in 2011.