I spent two years looking for a word. A simple, clear word that would name the displacement companies must operate in their commercial, managerial and recruitment practices. A word that would fit in the narrow space between progressive change, too slow, and brutal disruption, too violent.
I found that word. It is the Shift. This is the Shift explained: why the term imposed itself on me, what it designates exactly, and how it describes better than any other the transformation I watch playing out in organisations. The Shift is a change of posture rather than one more method.
| The word | What it measures | The posture |
|---|---|---|
| A displacement, no ruptureThe Shift explained holds in one image. It is the displacement an organisation must operate to get moving, between change that arrives too slowly and disruption that arrives too violently. | A world acceleratingThe average lifespan of the world’s largest listed companies has collapsed within two generations, and every serious projection sees it shrinking further through the decade. Standing still has become the riskiest strategy available. | Three movements, one postureBenjamin Chaminade defines the Shift as a posture of transformation rather than a method. It deploys in three movements: focus, permanent revolution and social expansion. |
How I arrived at the Shift
Every concept has a history, and the Shift’s begins with a dissatisfaction. I was trying to name something I saw everywhere without finding the right term.
From Wanagement to the Shift
The story starts with a book. In 2009, I had co-signed with Pierre-Yves Poulain, former director general of ANDRH, the French national association of HR directors, and Armand Mennechet a book called Wanagement. The initial English title was meant to be Un-management, and the argument called out the beliefs installed around management.
The book, eventually translated and published by Dunod, already posed the question of the displacement to operate. But the word Wanagement remained a language game that travelled poorly. I needed a term any executive could grasp in one second and appropriate without a user manual.
A term already in the air
I owe honesty about the origin of the word. The term Shift had been floating in digital culture since the Did You Know presentation, created by American teacher Karl Fisch in 2007, then turned into a viral video under the title Shift Happens. That video marked minds by the vertigo it induced in the face of a world accelerating.
My contribution therefore concerns what I made of the word rather than the word itself. I took this floating term and turned it into a structured posture of managerial transformation, with its stages and its logic. The Shift as an approach is mine; the word Shift belongs to a cultural inheritance I gladly own.
Why the Shift rather than disruption
At the time I settled my choice, the word disruption still belonged to the world of technology and startups. It spoke of breakage, of the violent replacement of one model by another. That was never what I wanted to describe.
The Shift says something else. It says the mastered movement, the voluntary displacement of point of view, where disruption endures or imposes. I also wanted a less loaded word, capable of speaking about management, human resources and marketing without pointing straight back to Silicon Valley.
What the word Shift really means
The richness of the word lies precisely in its polysemy. Before being a transformation concept, Shift is an everyday term whose every sense illuminates my proposition. Understanding these senses helps grasp why I chose it.
From bit shifting to a change of perspective
In everyday English, shift means displacement or change. The word travels from one domain to another while keeping that idea of movement. A few examples show the amplitude of the term:
- In computing, the bit shift in a register, left or right, moves information without destroying it.
- In economics, a shift designates a movement of the supply or demand curve, a change in the structure of the market.
- In psychology, a shift is a change of frame of reference, the same situation seen from a fresh angle.
That last sense speaks to me most. The Shift I defend is above all a change of perspective, a displacement of the gaze before being a displacement of structures.
A word to replace the paradigm
Consultants of my generation long leaned on the word paradigm to say the change of point of view. The term has aged, and today it sounds like dated jargon. The Shift says the same thing more directly and more currently.
Where the paradigm describes an abstract frame, the Shift describes a gesture. Nobody changes a paradigm; you operate a shift. This active dimension of the word is exactly what I was looking for to speak to executives who want to act.
The Shift as a posture of transformation
Beyond the word, the Shift has become the heart of my approach. It describes a posture in the face of a world that no longer waits for you to be ready. This posture deploys in three movements that reinforce one another.
See before, move differently, carry the others
The Shift I defend has nothing to do with transforming for the sake of transforming, or innovating to signal innovation. It consists of seeing before the others, moving differently from the others, and making that movement collective. Three movements compose this posture:
- Focus, which consists of choosing where to place your attention before urgency does it for you.
- Permanent revolution, which installs change as a durable state rather than as a one-off crisis.
- Social expansion, which turns an individual movement into a dynamic shared by the whole collective.
Taken separately, each of these stages produces effects. Taken together, they create a lead that is hard to catch. That combination is what I name the Shift, and it founds what I today call futureproofing.
See how the three movements fit together
Want to understand how these three movements articulate in your organisation? Explore my detailed approach in the Shift philosophy, where I develop each stage step by step.
One movement often hides another
A Shift rarely arrives alone. When an organisation operates a displacement in its model, that first movement often reveals others, in cascade. The change of perspective on one subject opens the eyes to neighbouring blind spots.
This is why I speak of permanent revolution rather than one-off transformation. Once the gaze has moved, putting it back in its old frame becomes difficult. The Shift has no beginning and no end. It is a way of staying in motion.
Why the Shift has become vital today
This concept owes nothing to intellectual comfort. It answers a measurable acceleration of the economic world. The figures give the measure of what is at stake.
Companies live shorter and shorter lives
The most telling data point concerns corporate life expectancy. The average tenure of a company on the S&P 500 index has fallen from 33 years in 1965 to around 20 years, and the growth strategy firm Innosight, which tracks this churn, projects the figure to keep shrinking through the decade, towards an average nearer 12 years by its end.
In other words, a company that never displaces its point of view condemns itself to an ever faster obsolescence. What the founders held as an acquired position becomes a provisional situation. The Shift has stopped being a growth option and become a condition of survival.
Field note
The moment a room shifts
The clearest illustration of the Shift I know happens in my own keynotes. I open on the acceleration of the world, including the shrinking lifespan of listed companies, in front of leadership teams who mostly arrived convinced that transformation was a subject for other industries.
The same sequence plays out almost every time. For the first stretch the room resists, arms crossed, hunting for the reasons their sector is different. Then one figure or one example lands close to home, and the questions change nature. People stop asking whether they need to move and start asking where to look first. Resistance turns into curiosity, in real time.
That switch is the Shift in miniature: a displacement of the gaze before any displacement of structures. A transformation starts at the exact moment leaders stop defending their frame, and everything I build in workshops afterwards rests on reproducing that moment deliberately.
Navigating a VUCA world
This acceleration carries a name in the management literature, the VUCA world, an acronym describing an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. In such a context, waiting to be ready before moving amounts to never moving.
The Shift brings an answer to that paralysis. Instead of seeking certainty before acting, it invites you to displace your gaze continuously to stay lucid. Seeing before the revolution finds you, that is what this posture makes possible in the face of uncertainty.
How I can help you operate your Shift
Understanding the Shift explained is one thing; setting it in motion in your organisation is another. That is precisely what I work on with executives and their teams.
Keynotes to trigger the displacement
On stage, I make the acceleration of the world visible and the necessity of the Shift tangible. The objective is to provoke that first collective displacement of the gaze, the one that moves a room from resistance to curiosity. It is often the starting point of a deeper journey.
This format creates the moment when transformation stops being a threat and becomes a perspective. My keynotes on managerial transformation are designed for exactly that.
Workshops to anchor the permanent revolution
In workshops, we move from concept to practice. Together we build the rituals that install the Shift over time, stage by stage, from focus to social expansion. The point is to leave with a tenable posture, and with one slogan fewer rather than one more.
Every organisation operates its own Shift, at its own pace and in its own context. My role is to give you the reference points so this movement becomes yours instead of a method plated on from the outside.
Conclusion
It took me two years to find this word, and far longer to make it an approach. The Shift explained holds in one simple idea all the same. It is the voluntary displacement of point of view that lets an organisation stay in motion in a world that accelerates.
The Shift sits apart from both endured change and violent disruption. It is a posture, made of focus, permanent revolution and social expansion. The day you stop waiting to be ready before displacing your gaze, you have already begun your Shift.
Frequently asked questions about the Shift
What is the difference between a shift and a disruption?
Disruption designates a brutal rupture that replaces one model with another, often endured. The Shift designates instead a voluntary, mastered displacement of point of view. Where disruption breaks, the Shift moves the gaze to stay in motion.
Who invented the concept of the Shift?
The word Shift has circulated in digital culture since Karl Fisch’s Did You Know presentation in 2007, popularised under the title Shift Happens. I took that existing term and turned it into a posture of managerial transformation structured in three movements, which constitutes my own contribution.
What are the three stages of the Shift?
The Shift deploys in three movements that reinforce one another. Focus consists of choosing where to place your attention, permanent revolution installs change as a durable state, and social expansion makes the movement collective. Together, these stages create a lead that is hard to catch.
Why does the Shift matter for companies?
Because corporate life expectancy is collapsing: the average tenure of an S&P 500 company has fallen from 33 years in 1965 to around 20 today, with Innosight projecting further decline this decade. In that context, an organisation that never displaces its point of view exposes itself to rapid obsolescence, which makes the Shift a condition of survival as much as a growth lever.
