Reflets Magazine #146 | Batoul Hassoun (E07), CEO of The Salmon Consulting and Co-President of Club 21e Siècle

Reflets Magazine #146 devotes its cover feature to Batoul Hassoun (E07), CEO of The Salmon Consulting (Havas Group) and Co-President of Club 21^e Siècle. She tells us about her actions for inclusion, diversity and equal opportunities in business and society as a whole. Here is a free online translation of an excerpt of the article… Subscribe to get the next issues (in French)!

Reflets Magazine: What path led you to ESSEC?

Batoul Hassoun: I followed a relatively standard path because I lived in Versailles and went to Hoche secondary school, from middle school through to the higher education preparatory course, before joining ESSEC. The slightly less standard aspect is my Syrian background. My parents are Syrian, and my father, who was a particularly brilliant student, won a State scholarship to do an MBA and his PhD at...HEC. In fact, I was born and raised on the HEC campus up to the age of 5.

RM: And once you graduated?

B. Hassoun: When I left ESSEC, I thought a lot about what I wanted to do. My career can be summed up in two words, “intrapreneur” and “engaged”. “Intrapreneur” because I’ve always loved creating either entities, structures or offers, but without taking risks because I always set things up within established companies and not as an entrepreneur. I started with the New Business department in the Ogilvy group, so in advertising. My role was to persuade new customers to call on us for their communication strategy. I then created the French branch of the marketing consultancy Figtree (since acquired by Prophet). In late 2011, I moved to SNCF to participate in the creation of Ouibus, the long-distance coach network, which was subsequently bought by BlaBlaCar. A year later, I returned to Ogilvy to set up their strategy and innovation branch, Ogilvy Consulting, in Paris, which would become the network’s second biggest office worldwide. Lastly, my most recent experience was the creation, in May 2021, of The Salmon Consulting within the Havas group. That’s for the professional side.

RM: What about your engagement?

B. Hassoun: Engagement is practically second nature for me, because I was lucky enough to get a good education and benefit from the French meritocratic system, and I want as many people as possible to have this opportunity. My wish has always been to give something back by helping people who are less fortunate, which is why I was actively engaged during my time at ESSEC in the PQPM (A Graduate School for Me? Why not?) programme. I was a tutor and then coordinator of tutors; I then chaired the non-profit organisation Partage (Share), which brings together all the France-based tutors of the “Cordées de la Réussite” opportunity programmes. When I finally left ESSEC, I looked for ways to pursue this engagement. My engagement takes many different forms right now, in particular with Club 21 Siècle (Club 21st Century) and the Young Leaders programme by the French-American Foundation, always with the same aim of creating links, shifting paradigms and building a better world for the future. This engagement is not a sideline to my professional activities, it is an inherent part of my job. When I advise my customers, I incorporate this engaged aspect by trying to guide them towards positive transformations; that is the heart of my role at The Salmon Consulting.

RM: How did this project, which sets you apart from other consultancies, come about?

B. Hassoun: The starting point of this adventure was the shared realisation that the world is moving faster and faster. With this realisation, however, we often forget to point out that we face contradictory imperatives, i.e., we are asked to do everything and its opposite. We’re told to continue satisfying the shareholders, while considering staff and the company, in addition to preserving the planet. We’re asked to think in the short and long term. When faced with all these contradictions and in a world that is changing rapidly, our reflex, as humans, is to adopt what I call “Fordisation”. In other words, it is much more comfortable for us to take refuge in what we know. So we benchmark or copy and paste the models that have worked in the past; hence the reference to the Ford factories which produced a single model. That’s exactly what all consultancies do. Benchmarking is useful, but it’s only a basis; what we really need is to raise questions and invent the world of the future. We approach consulting from a counter-current, like salmon swimming up the river, which explains our name. We have to challenge the status quo and certainties, ask the right questions, look for new models, understand the changing world, forecast, think critically and measure relevance to be certain we are providing the right answers.

RM: What tools do you use?

B. Hassoun: You must never hesitate to look for new ways of doing things, emerging models and new sciences. In addition to finance and the economy, we also draw on ethnology, sociology and anthropology, because it is the sum of all this knowledge that will help us. For a long time, economists saw human beings as a rational homo economicus. Behavioural science, however, has revealed the emotional, irrational and biased side of humans. These studies were twice awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics: for Daniel Kahneman in 2002 and Richard Thaler in 2017. I have incorporated this knowledge into my consultancy methods, by including existing mechanisms and biases to understand how it is possible to change the culture or forms of behaviour within a company. This is not always an easy stance to take in terms of business, because company leaders often tend to call on what I call reassuring, “comforter” consultants. We are more like “itching powder” consultants; always trying to challenge things while seeking a form of balance as guides and instructors. Basically, our 3 key offers are Structure, Future and Culture. Structure means helping the company to reinvent itself by defining its strategic or market strategy plan, right down to its brand or positioning, if need be. Future is the forecasting that is essential to understanding what is to come, which will ensure the company’s relevance in terms of new trends and societal or environmental changes. Culture, lastly, is guidance in change through the company’s culture, based more specifically on anthropological studies or behavioural science. It means knowing how to share values, rituals, myths and symbols to foster community and thus change cultures and guide strategies.

RM: What should the role of managers be in today’s companies?

B. Hassoun: That is the big question all companies are asking. In any case, present-day managers have a much more significant role than in the past, a key role with an enormous amount of pressure, given that a recent study shows that 60% of people who leave a company do so because of its management. In addition to this, the expectations of younger employees have changed drastically. They have less patience; we’ve moved from the effort-recognition duo, which is a long-term approach, to the immediate contribution-reward duo. This paradigm shift complicates the manager’s duty to be both inspired and inspiring, to have a vision, be present to support and enable teams to grow, and show recognition. This is a whole set of factors which requires new skills. Even more so given that we are seeing a turnaround in employees’ priorities, which intensified with the health crisis. The vast majority of employees no longer want to work more to earn more, quite the opposite; they want more free time even if it means earning less. The second major change is what I call the liquefaction of work; the disappearance of the workplace unit, due in particular to the growth in remote working, of the time unit for the same reasons, and the task unit, because we are now expected to perform several different jobs. All of this has taken a knock, which is not necessarily negative.

RM: Would you say that there is a form of defiance towards the world of companies and work?

B. Hassoun: I don’t think so. In fact, most young people place more trust in companies than in politicians when it comes to finding solutions to the world’s problems. I believe there is a desire to work differently, with a quest for meaningfulness which is stronger in companies that are more engaged in an alternative organisation model. I see this in the business world, but also at ESSEC, with the launch of the ESSEC Transition Alumni, which advocates the values of a new societal model. At The Salmon Consulting, we’ve tried to formalise the talent equation, a mathematical equation which integrates all the key criteria that make a company attractive. We’ve realised that these are more or less the same criteria as a few years ago: reward in terms of salary but also training or personal branding, social recognition, self-fulfilment and job security all form the top of the equation. Inversely, the denominator is management rigidity added to the question of employees’ personal balance. These criteria have thus remained practically identical; the real issue is the weight given to each one and the overall balance. Companies must understand that there is a set of requirements and it is not enough to just move to a four-day week. So there is no defiance, but a genuine desire to change model and meaning, to feel personally useful, and see the company change.

RM: Let’s come back to your engagements. You have been co-presiding Club 21^e Siècle for a year; what is the aim of this organisation?

B. Hassoun: [full article in Reflets Magazine #146]

Interview by François de Guillebon, Chief Editor at Reflets Magazine, and Michel Zerr, Reporter for Reflets Magazine 

Translation of an excerpt of an article published in Reflets Magazine #146. Click here to read a preview of the issue (in French). Subscribe to get the next issues (in French).

Image : © E.Legouhy