How would you define your corporate culture?
Paul Sauveplane: We have five values: fearless ambition, and this is a reminder of the multiple times we were told our ambition lacked realism. Then there is shared responsibility, without managers. This is what we believe is key to getting highly competent employees to work together: if we don’t want them all to be managers, we have to give them the agency to take charge and make decisions for themselves. In the engineering and insurance teams, those working with us would be team leaders anywhere else. So how do you keep that calibre? We give these people the agency to make an impact on the company. The third is individual & collective growth: we grow individually and collectively together. Then, with radical transparency, everyone has access to information because we believe in giving ourselves maximum context for making decisions. Finally, is the ‘members come first’ value: we make decisions based on their impact on the members (Ed. note: Alan customers). They may be counter-intuitive or not the most profitable, but they follow the direction we want to travel.
What brought you both round to this particular type of work organisation?
Fabrice Staad: When we were just eight individuals in an apartment, at the very inception of Alan, we were already discussing the values that bring us together, the company culture, the working methods… A key decision, right from the beginning, was to put a complete stop to meetings, and to communicate only in writing on a platform, because we wanted the people joining us further down the line to understand the meaning of the decisions that were taken.
