Archive
China’s Difficult Phase 2
For Beijing, announcing the date of the only annual meeting of the National People’s Congress means affirming that the epidemic is under control. So when the date was officially set for May 22, after a delay of two and a half months, for many it was confirmation of a return to normalcy. People have in fact resumed taking public transportation and moving around the country, provided that the health code of the potential travellers - assigned by a complex algorithm that combines the medical history, travel, and contacts of each single citizen - is green. This system functions with at least a hundred ...
Paolo Grassi: A Cultural Manager Ahead of his Time
In 2020, being a cultural manager is a fashionable profession. Actually, cultural activity in general is appreciated more for its trendiness than its expansion. Paolo Grassi was a cultural manager ahead of his time. He began his activity around the middle of the 1900s, a period when the combination of culture and economics did not yet exist. He broke down the structure of how theaters were organized in his time, which were the children of closed attitudes linked to Fascism, and he built new ones, aimed not only at artistic growth, but economic growth as well. The idea that took hold during his ...
Action plans and uncertainty
These days, we are all looking for ways to cope with a future that looks increasingly uncertain. Uncertainty creates fear. Fear blocks energy, proactivity, and rational thinking; it is capable of completely taking over our mind and derailing our thoughts. Many of us respond to fear and uncertainty with optimism. Optimism is an integral part of our nature: research has shown that neuromodulator dopamine enhances people’s ability to think positively about their future. We are more inclined to change our beliefs when presented with positive pieces of information about the future than to review ...
Please, Let's Not Call It “Smart Working”
It's already clear. What we are experiencing is not "smart working," as promoted by its supporters and then designed by lawmakers in the law of 2017.[1] We are adopting an "extreme" mode of work (not voluntary, from home, without any spatial-temporal flexibility) that has led to the emergence, and amplification, of the possible risks related to its adoption. First: isolation - we must remember - is not the same for everyone, since some categories of workers suffer more than others ("Isolation [is] a dimension that has a very different impact on different people: I'm thinking of my colleagues with ...
Why It's Necessary to Reflect on Identity, Especially Now
In this and the next blog posts, we will discuss some comments that were left by the participants in our streaming event last April 1, "Smart Working: Are We Really Working Smartly?" Taking our cues from those comments, we will address some important social and managerial themes. Today we will talk about transformation of identity. We will then deal with living conditions, the impact of smart working, and "possible new leadership models." "The backgrounds behind the colleagues (or the speakers) during smart working are phenomenal, and we could even create links between colleagues that were previously ...
Covid-19 and the Prison of Categories
A broad debate is developing in Italian media on the so-called "phase 2" of the coronavirus emergency. This period will involve the gradual opening of non-essential activities (remember that essential ones are already open) and the reduction of the restrictions on mobility for citizens. In this debate, various categories are used to distinguish between businesses and workers. For businesses, the first major distinction is that between those that operate in essential sectors and non-essential sectors. This division into categories can be problematic, because while on the one hand it is possible ...
The Cardinal Points of Phase 2
In recent weeks, the debate has focused exclusively on the need for reopening the economy and the beginning of what is called "phase 2." Many businesses and commercial activities are demanding this, along with their institutional representatives as well. In various cases this is an unjustified request, because for many sectors there is a crisis of demand that will last for months, until people feel safe. For example, if the entire tourism sector were to open up again in two weeks, there would not be sufficient customers to sustain it. Yet there are other sectors (especially intermediate and capital ...
The Cardinal Points of Phase 2
In recent weeks, the debate has focused exclusively on the need for reopening the economy and the beginning of what is called "phase 2." Many businesses and commercial activities are demanding this, along with their institutional representatives as well. In various cases this is an unjustified request, because for many sectors there is a crisis of demand that will last for months, until people feel safe. For example, if the entire tourism sector were to open up again in two weeks, there would not be sufficient customers to sustain it. Yet there are other sectors (especially intermediate and capital ...
In Search of Lost Profitability
The lead articles in the Financial Times from last February 25 and 26[1] show that European banks are having increasing difficulty finding top managers, since such figures are strongly attracted by the lavish salaries received by their counterparts in the United States. Such managers have become rare on the market in Europe, and almost non-existent within individual banks, that are said not to have adequately prepared for the substitution of those human resources. It is difficult to say if the problem exists for Italian banks as well, but the fact that when a choice must be made they always end ...
Great Evils and Great Errors
To improve, it is necessary to recognize one's mistakes. This is a basic, simple principle that we all learn when we are children, for example while at school: when you make a spelling mistake in a dictation, the teacher highlights it in red. Here you made a mistake, don't do it again. And it doesn't matter if out of a hundred words, seventy were right. You must concentrate on the thirty that you got wrong. We have all been there, yet it seems that many forget this simple principle. The events of recent weeks have tragically highlighted the fact that many errors have been made. We see this in ...