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Brice Delamare is a student on the NEOMA Master in Management. In November, he took part in the City of Success at the Sorbonne. This event brings together students from the French ‘Grandes Écoles’ to discuss essential issues, along with 200 key figures in economics, politics and the intellectual world. It gave him the opportunity to get up on stage and ask questions, one of which in particular made a great impression on him: the importance of indicators in our society. Here he recounts what he learned from that experience.

‘Counting on trust’ was one of the discussions I attended, it was about talking about trust in general, trust in who, in what, having horizontal trust, transversal trust, etc. So, there were plenty of ideas but they were not necessarily very practical. I wanted something tangible, something more. I felt like asking a question such as: “In today’s world, we use calculations more and more, we measure everything, there are indicators. Does it not show mistrust of human beings to measure everything, to check everything to the nth degree, to put a figure on our every activity? How should we use indicators?”

Aren’t indicators a sign of mistrust?

The idea came to me because we have lots of classes on figures. We have lots of classes on data and data analysis. And even in business, I realise that we use figures a lot to know if an aim has been achieved, if it has been viewed a certain number of times on social media. And we say to ourselves, “Well done, congratulations, you’ve achieved such and such a figure.” We sometimes forget the human factor, we forget that people are very clever, very intelligent, but they can’t necessarily be evaluated in figures. There is something greater behind the figures. That’s the idea I wanted to talk about in this discussion.

Data is the key to progress

Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, President of the French Financial Markets Authority, replied first. She began with the objective of KPIs, they make it possible to analyse and help society make better progress, especially in finance. In her field, the financial markets, figures are very important to create trust in institutions and businesses. You have to collect data to be able to make progress, to have objectives, otherwise it doesn’t work.

We must always remember the importance of human relationships

Jean-Dominique Sénard, President of the Board of Directors of the Renault Group, and former President of the Michelin Group, talked about the business world and the regulatory world. He asked himself, “Do we really trust our teams?” He replied for his group, and said that it is good to have figures, you need them in order to manage a business. It’s essential to know where you’re going. But business results are not only a matter of figures or of employee performance. What matters to him is excellence, the excellence of work that cannot be quantified or measured in a business. In his opinion, that is what we must never forget, we must always remember the importance of human relationships. So, yes, we must measure things but we must exercise caution and not make the mistake of looking at figures instead of at human beings. You have to combine both to manage a business really well, especially a group like Renault.

What I liked about the City of Success was that it enabled me to discover subjects I was not familiar with. I learned about artificial intelligence, I learned to react, ask questions and have confidence in myself. It was very challenging and very impressive.

La cité de la réussite vue par un étudiant de NEOMA
Préparation des débats entre étudiants et intervenants à la Cité de la Réussite 2024
La cité de la réussite vue par un étudiant de NEOMA
Débats à la Cité de la Réussite à la Sorbonne