This is worth thinking about: do managers solve problems or do they provoke them? The question may divide managers into different categories. There are managers who bravely face problems every day and work hard to solve them, independently if it regards concluding a contract, handling a difficult collaborator, identifying technical solutions or define development strategies, these managers have the common aim to work in a constructive way for the good of everybody. Their philosophy is that to contribute to improving the company, both as regards results and the working environment, which does not mean that they do not spend their energy. Then there is the other category, that of managers who face problems but with the main aim of “not exposing themselves”, which means that they provoke problems: decisions that are not made, vague responsibilities, unclear competences, contrasting messages leading to frustration.
Avoiding to be exposed is one of the crucial nodes in contemporary management: a completely legitimate behaviour that is considered to be right, facilitated and hidden behind the inevitable value of the superior entity "The Company". And if the personality of the company who has undergone psychological tests did not appear to be entirely schizophrenic (as in the documentary “The Corporation”) we would all be happy and at ease.
Thence this is an issue of responsibility, or rather, lack of responsibility. Connected issues may be endless: from the theme of company ethic, which has been an object for conversation for ages, to the irresponsible exploitation of resources (natural, economic) to the waste of human capital, to urban waste: "there are many responsibilities but it is uncertain whose they are!”
However, responsibility should not evoke tiresomeness and morality: we only wish to take up “responsibility intended as the capacity of responding in a free and creative way … with the soul, not with an egocentric and narcissistic superficial identity” according to the beautiful definition made by the philosopher Roberto Mancini (“Etica e Impresa: binomio impossibile?” “Ethic and Companies: an impossible combination?”, a convention that took place in Rimini on 13 March 2008).
To require this freedom is the key. It is not easy, but the journey towards this goal must be nice. There are no rules or manuals, but first of all a wish to take an active part in the process and operate without the certainty to obtain results, with the sole awareness of being faithful to oneself.
This is not a comfortable way and it is certainly not easy; it may be funnier, but it is much more risky. It has numerous collateral effects that are not written anywhere in course rooms, not even with the smallest font used in insurance clauses. “Come on, dare, fly high! You will solve all your problems; you will obtain success and be happy!” It would be more correct to say “Com on, dare, fly high […] and prepare to accept and overcome the errors you will make with faith, humility and perseverance, to rise again and start anew each time a little more torn and a little stronger…”
Being sincere is important but it is not easy to add oneself, one´s own ideas, emotions and own face… this is not easy at all. It requires so much energy. It is doubtlessly quicker to “treat” everybody in the same way, without creating relations to people: in certain cases it may even be more efficient. To listen requires a voluntary act, an opening, time which we often do not have. Decisions may be unpopular and we may end up very lonely.
All this is good to know, since fairy tales are fine for children and although we live in a world of Peter Pans in their forties, there is still reality among delusions and illusions.
The theme is not that of abstract goodness: the ever smiling leader with the team that follows him efficiently, with motivation and with the same smile on their faces. We are talking about bad tempers to handle, continuous compromises, second thoughts, victories to celebrate all together and failures to digest alone. So what changes then? What is it that makes this course better or even special? Maybe our presence, for better or for worse, as a necessary and sufficient condition for responsibility. A detail that is as simple as it is rare.
How to be present is often difficult to express. Yet again there are no regulations, rules and instructions. Hence the usage of metaphors arouses emotions and stimulates imagery.
Apart from being an engineer and CEO of a company with more than a thousand employees, Beppe Carrella is also a great lover of music and cinema. Lyrics from songs and pieces of film have become the company language and are the means through which people can express their mood, provoke reactions and inspire ideas, dreams and actions.
The result is a “vital” company, an organization in which the “lives” of the people substitute human resources. A place where company values are not abstract concepts collected in an ethic code, but real values, people, relations, environment, society and products. Other practical examples are people who work in the company and their family members, creative talents stimulated at work and in parties, cultural events and musicals, relations built up inside and outside the company, bottled red tomatoes prepared together in the countryside (earth), the added value of technological projects they realize. These are true values.
A company that courageously manages to interpret the models for emerging with its own unique style, substituting traditional communication, which is a direct communication from the top downwards, trying to entice people to express a shared company culture. This inversion of the propulsive thrust that from above moves laterally and stimulates, provokes, creates an appropriate habitat so that the person who is involved may find the space necessary to grow and develop. This approach is difficult to use. It may cause greater risks connected to the need to control people and processes. And not only for this reason.
Innovation inspires managers to search for new models, but they are always preset models; boxes of different forms, structures and alternative codes to redesign the company machine according to new tendencies, working in offices and according to the chosen functions. There is a natural need for safety, the need to make use of a theory set up by experts, to choose the most convincing definition and therefore delegate somebody to implement the new map (somebody responsible for quality, ethic issues, creative aspects?) suitable and forced on existing realities. The results are often a new dress, new codes for the same aim and no real change.
On the other hand, any actions made in the absence of coded and tested models create discomfort and insecurity. To build a proper and unique tailored company model and do so together with colleagues requires a completely different kind of energy. And one returns to direct involvement, to questioning oneself and to be the object of discussions (style of leadership, relation dynamics, decisive processes etc.), to be generous with oneself, to assume responsibilities in the activated process and its possible consequences and failures. This requires a good self-esteem and faith in people; it requires an open attitude and a desire to share. It requires especially the conviction to have values, projects and meanings that are interesting to share and the capacity of accepting and promoting other people´s ideas.
The doubt that should rise is: can all companies really allow themselves to do this? Or rather, do all companies have dreams, challenges and projects to believe in and to share? No, this is not true for all of them. In any case, all companies can build them up (even in a team, in a division). The circle is virtuous and the course is traced.
True innovation or the capacity of giving a meaning and a soul to new projects and new products arises from talents that are shared on a fertile field. And the fertile field requires the capacity of building and sharing visions and passion and to feed and cultivate talents.
The latter implies the former; the former implies the latter and both require a new way of approaching the company: a continuous revision, a route to correct every day on the basis of new events, a wider and comprehensive outlook and a rapid and decisive convergence.
An approach that regards the capacity of remaining in a “dynamic balance at the edge of chaos in a creative disorganization” to use the words expressed by Professor De Toni (“Prede o ragni. Uomini e organizzazioni nella ragnatela della complessità” “Preys or spiders. Men and organizations in the spiderweb of complexity”). A step backwards, the “involution” a step too many “destructive disorder”. In the middle we have “development”.
Carrella´s managerial provocations evoke the spirit of a balancing manager who is aware that he may fall and has no vocation towards martyrdom.A journey among metaphors, known or less known, that are fascinating and surprising since they are written as a direct testimonial of companies, not with the theoretical reality which is depicted as an ideal scenery by philosophers and researchers.
This is even more surprising for the sector, the context and the dimension of the organization. To prove that technology and soul are not distant and opposite languages and that the creative epidemic can spread in a hurry and at depth in the forced discomfort which clumsily tries to close, control and flatten the most beautiful thing we own: our humanity.
Federica Ghetti Managerzen, President