#4 - Edouard Pick: the Montessori company
automatically translated from French
In this episode, Edouard Pick tells how the precepts of Maria Montessori and Pierre Rabhi have transformed Clinitex's organization. " At Clinitex, the customer is not king, the employee is king" explains Edouard. Clinitex places the well-being of its employees at the heart of its strategy. This results in a management that is human, transparent and committed to the environment: "We don't want to be the best company in the world, but the best company for the world".
The guest of the Corporate Culture podcast
In kindergarten and elementary school, Edouard Pick was in a Montessori school: classes where three levels are mixed and where the older ones teach the younger ones.
Later, he studied at IESEG, created a company in the leisure and events sector, and worked as a consultant.
He then joined Clinitex, a company founded by his father, where for ten years he held various positions, until 2019, when his father retired and he bought the company. Today Edouard, CEO of the company, works with his brother Charles, CSR Director.
Before talking about Clinitex, Edouard Pick improvised himself as a tour guide. Downstairs, the training rooms and the kitchen, upstairs, the open space, in between, the stairs. As in a family home, the wall is covered with photos. First, there is this large photo of the logo, embodied by 200 employees of the company. Then there are portraits of the maintenance workers. And next to it, proudly displayed in their wooden frame, Maria Montessori and Pierre Rabhi.
The Montessori method and the precepts of Pierre Rabhi have strongly influenced Edouard Pick's education. When he joined the company, he and his father realigned the organization of Clinitex around the principles defended by these two thinkers: frugality, autonomy, responsibility... Principles of liberated and transparent management, where capitalism is moderate and the employee is at the center of the development strategy.
Clinitex is a big family, where the employees are at the center of the company's strategy. This family spirit also comes from its head: Edouard Pick is the son of the founder. He bought the company in 2019, became its CEO and his younger brother the CSR director. However, there was never any question that he would inherit: "My parents told us: none of you will ever work in the company, when we retire, we will sell and spend everything. In the end it was a great gift they gave us, because we were free."
Convinced that he had to earn his place, Edouard Pick worked for ten years in the company and held several positions: managing cleaning agents, developing new customers, branch manager, operations manager... " says Edouard.With a founding father, I had no other choice than to tiptoe in and establish my own legitimacy"says Edouard.
A mindset that comes from Maria Montessori: "one of the essential principles is help me to learn by myself". Edouard Pick applied it to himself before implementing it throughout the company. At Clinitex, it is not a question of "inspector" as the collective agreement of this sector requires, but of "manager": "The role of the manager is not to control the services or to spy on the agents, it is rather to reveal them, to accompany them, to be a coach of the cleaning service" explains Edouard.
At Clinitex there are no badge readers, webcams or any other sensors. The company trusts its employees and leaves them free "in the frame".
The confidence which reigns within Clinitex is explained by another concept: the managerial naturism. For Edouard, "to be naked, depassionne the imaginary ones". Then the nominative wages are accessible to all. He wanted to push the model further by letting the employees choose their remuneration. "It was a fiasco. There were coherent things but also incoherent, like this magazinier who added 1000 euros per month.".
Edouard then understands the need for a hierarchy, as it is the responsibility of managers and directors to set compensation: "If some are paid more, it's because they have to make difficult decisions.". But rather than having a business plan, Clinitex has developed a human plan "that brings out the careers, talents and strengths of employees".
Today, Clinitex's results speak for themselves: growth performance above the market for 35 years and "98% of employees happy or very happy". "Maria Montessori said that the success of a pedagogical model is measured not by the success of the children but by their level of happiness. If we draw a parallel with the business world, it echoes our average well-being survey" concludes Edouard.
