Yves Morieux

Yves Morieux

Author, TED Speaker & Senior Partner at The Boston Consulting Group

The corporate transformation expert who helps organisations enhance output without adding organisational complexity

Biography

Yves Morieux is a senior partner and managing director. He is an expert in corporate transformation and leads the firm’s development of approaches to help corporations create the structural and behavioral groundwork for competitive advantage. He is a BCG Fellow and director of the BCG Institute for Organization in the global People & Organization practice area.

Yves has been a BCG Fellow since 2008. His research topic is new business complexities and their organizational implications, and he has given a TED talk on the “Smart Rules” for simplifying organizations as part of a series of talks curated by TED and BCG. The global economy is going through a new economic revolution, and every economic revolution entails an organizational revolution. Organizational forms that fail to adapt are eliminated by the market. Morieux’s fellowship research is on the new selection criteria—what strategy calls competitive advantage—and their implications for work and the way it is performed, organized, and managed.

This research is based on an analysis of productivity and engagement trends and their drivers, and it leverages state-of-the-art thinking in social sciences, notably organizational sociology and behavioral economics. Results show that, given the new business environment, certain organizational choices lead to simultaneous increases in employee performance and satisfaction. And these increases are larger than those that result from approaches such as restructuring efforts on the one hand and “people initiatives” on the other.

Yves has helped pioneer new ways of organizational thinking through the development of “smart simplicity,” an approach designed in cooperation with BCG clients in different regions and industries.

The basis of smart simplicity is creating an environment in which employees can work with one another to develop creative solutions to complex challenges. This concept includes six “smart rules” to help managers enhance output without adding organizational complexity or complicatedness.

Before joining BCG, Yves was a director in a private research and consulting practice that specialized in applying state-of-the-art findings in the social sciences to organizations and markets.

Yves lectures in the advanced sociology program and is a professor in the master of public affairs program at Sciences Po. He is on the advisory board of the Journal of Customer Behaviour and on the managerial advisory board of the Journal of Social Business. Morieux was a social science expert for the French National Research Agency (ANR) and is frequently featured in business articles on organizational evolution in such publications as the Economistthe Wall Street JournalFast Company, and Le Monde.

Yves holds a PhD in business administration (industrial marketing) from the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom, a DEA in organization sociology from the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris (Science Po), a postgraduate certificate in research and quantitative skills from the University of Glasgow, and a master’s degree from the Center for Education and Research Applied to Management (SKEMA, Sophia Antipolis). He is a Salzburg Seminar alumnus.

Topics

Future of Work, Leveraging Lessons from the Pandemics and Related Lockdowns

By exploiting data and observations gathered during the COVID-19 lockdowns – a global live experiment in human behaviour and performance – we derive implications for productivity improvements, the future of work and ways to leverage digital technologies. Many so-called benefits of co-presence in a shared workplace – the container – are just weak substitutes to compensate for deficiencies in the real and productive content of work: in connectedness (as opposed to just proximity), in cooperation (as opposed to just co-location) The temporary elimination of the office led to illumination of largely ignored and untapped potential that can be captured by any organisation to achieve major improvements in performance and satisfaction at work.

This potential hinges on what we call “relational productivity”. It has nothing to do with co-location, proximity, and its often elusive benefits. Rather, it is about connectedness and three complementarities that multiply the productivity of human efforts. The lessons go far beyond the pros and cons of physical, hybrid, and remote work settings. They are relevant to any organisation, irrespective of where work takes place.

  • Smart Simplicity
  • Mobilization and motivation throughout large-scale change programs
  • Corporate strategy
  • Post-merger integration and organization design
  • Integrated talent systems
  • Management of human capital and enhancing organizational capabilities

Masterclasses

You may want to go deeper with your audience. Masterclasses can be tailored and developed to suit your audience needs, be it a 90-minute Masterclass, a half-day or full-day workshop or a full online or face-to-face programme. Please contact one of our expert team to discuss.

Smart Simplicity
As an expert in corporate transformation and developer of the ‘Smart Simplicity’ approach, Yves Morieux helps organizations to create the structural and behavioral groundwork for competitive change, and crucially, without making it unnecessarily complicated.

In this masterclass aimed at senior executives, he examines how companies can embrace the new business complexity to thrive in today’s marketplace.

Videos

Testimonials

“Let me extend my sincere appreciation for a superb job! Your energetic presentation and interactive workshop were very well received by everyone in the audience and the EMT is committed to further analyze / drive focused internal and external collaboration efforts as an essential element to our future success.” Patrick Dedoyard, Vice-President, General Manager Amcor Specialty Cartons

    About You

    About Your Event