What if Decathlon became a centenary company?

Sports retailer Decathlon and I have several things in common. One of the quirkier points is that we could both make it to 100 at the same time. On 8th June 2076, I could reach the century mark. And one month later, in July 2076, Decathlon could also celebrate the same milestone. Becoming a centenarian is not particularly one of my goals, I would prefer to live happily for as long as possible in good health. But as Vision Leader at Decathlon, getting the company to its century is one of my main preoccupations. 

There are plenty of ‘100 Club’ companies/brands that we share our lives with today: Tesco, Carhatt, Danone, Ford, John Deere, Colgate, Guinness, Citroen, Schott, Tabasco… but when it comes to retail, the list isn’t as long as it once was. One of my childhood favourites, John Lewis, after 157 years of existence, posted its first ever loss in 2020 (although I’m sure they can bounce back). I think it’s fair to say, and it’s just my opinion, that the odds of hitting the 100 year mark for a 45 year old European retailer are not necessarily in our favour right now. 

So if we are going to get there, we are going to have to prepare for it. And this is where Decathlon Perspectives comes in.

Launched in the Spring of 2021, Decathlon Perspectives is a forward-thinking prospective trends entity. It’s purpose is to open up new horizons for Decathlon, and why not to others. It’s the continuity of a prospective, intrapreneurial initiative called ALIVE. Launched in 2015, ALIVE brought people together, using its co-working space to ignite serendipity, colliding ideas and exploring possible futures. Perspectives is a reorientation of the Alive project, more aligned with the requirements and challenges of today. And of course, it’s insights and findings are accessible and ‘open to all’.

Before we talk about Decathlon Perspectives’ three main objectives, let’s talk about the ‘for who’. Our main target audience is Decathlon’s leaders. Within our rather decentralised organisation, we have many projects. Aligned with the company mission, purpose and vision, each project leader co-writes their project with their team. Part of that step involves looking at current and future trends. But there is so much information out there, just where do you start? Time is the most rare of our resources, so in a way Perspectives will act as an aggregation site, attempting to make life easier for our leaders, helping them with their decision-making. And although the focus is on Decathlon’s leaders, aligned with the 5th target of our recent Vision exercise ‘Inclusivity’, we make the content ‘open to all’, as we believe that the success of our journey to get to 2076 will depend upon our capacity to open up to others.

Decathlon Perspectives aims to serve 3 main objectives :

1. To understand the present and co-create possible futures

The best way to explain this objective is to take one of our first releases — The Digest 2021, hugely inspired by the 2020 Trends Book by French magazine L’ADN. As Audrey Hespel, one of the team’s explorers who co-wrote the Digest, explains, “A Digest is basically a summary, it’s something that takes a big study and cuts it up into bite-size ‘digestible’ pieces of information. This first offering takes 6 chapters, which are Culture, Technology, the Body, Habitat and Living, the Earth and Services. Within each topic you have different subjects, and for each subject you’ll find a figure, a context, some real examples and a series of ‘What if’ questions.”

To launch Perspectives, the team gave a series of open to all kick-off webinars, guided by Audrey, to dive into each topic, where participants could actively work on their own ‘What Ifs’. It’s all in French, but you can check out the videos on our YouTube Channel.

On each occasion, we were quite amazed at how quickly a relative novice can come up with an ambitious list of ‘What ifs’, making the first steps to their alternative possible future.

2. Shifting Decathlon into permanent ‘Vision’ mode

In 2020 we delivered the latest Decathlon Vision V21.1. Traditionally we have often looked at our Vision exercise on a ten year basis, and the process itself could take several months to a year. In this day and age, that’s a process that takes far too long, by the time you’ve finished, it’s time to start again! So we intend to speed it up, and make our Vision process ‘permanent’, an on-going exercise that creates and illustrates gateways to new realities through the co-writing of prospective scenarios. And of course, we’ll provide the keys of going ‘from Vision to Action’, what we currently call our ‘Co-Evolve’ methodology.

3. Accelerating the transformation of mindsets

The third part of the team project is probably the most important, and yet the most tricky. Quite often, people really understand what is going on. People get that the world is changing around us in real time. People get what it means to work in the VUCA period, but it’s sometimes hard to make that step.

So, for those who need or want to do things differently, we’ll bring into play some supports that aim to help the decision making process in times of uncertainty. This could involve :

• Strengthening your mindset shift stance and managing your mental models.
• Learning to listen to systems, our head, our heart and our gut feelings. Calling on collective intelligence.
• Identifying what makes sense for me and acting with full awareness of this.
• Developing empathy and a caring attitude (acceptance of others), coming together in debates while retaining our identity.

The Perspectives team of Laurane, Vianney, Stephanie, Axelle, Audrey and Charlie, may be small today, but our ambition to work in community mode is strong. When considering what could be the potential structure of this community, we wrote our own ‘What if…’

“WHAT IF we created a humanist — and transhumanist — group of people passionate about the future, about questioning, about change? A lively, open community of observers listening to their senses and to world developments, operating by role/mission; all activists for desirable futures”

Today, the world we live in is both global and local, where all cultural viewpoints and expert opinions are truly expressed. Our aim is to build a network of mindful players grouped into observation and intelligence hubs on 3 continents, where each will be called on to share their trends as well as multiple forecasts of possible future scenarios: one in Europe (in Lille), and two others, with a focus on the US and Asia. Others to follow no doubt.

As I have repeated a little too often in this article, ‘open to all’ is one of our mottos. I guess we can add to that ‘business as unusual’. Over the next few months we shall be adding an article to Medium/Linked In with more insights into various topics. The goal of this one has been to introduce the initiative.

Often I get asked, ‘how will you be able to measure if this will be a success?’

Well to answer that one, how about we all meet up in July 2076 to play sports on a healthy and more equitable planet? — You can choose the planet ;)

See you there.

Charlie & ze Perspectives Team