How to transform companies with technology: the recipe for good management

If 'good management' has a lot in common with the ability to do technological innovation, can someone who does not have digital skills not be a good manager?

It depends. The answer can be yes or it can be no. Certainly the manager who does not have them has a hard time, but this does not mean that he or she has to be an engineer or a mathematician: it is necessary to know and organise the company to recognise the impact of technology, to understand its potential, its value and its impact. Choosing one's collaborators well can be a first step, moving the control of It from the financial area to that of the CEO is a further possibility. In general, since the pandemic we have realised that we can turn to technology to deal with the emergency, but we probably haven't learnt the right way: we can't follow fashions but have to look at the content, at the application of technologies and not only at their ethical and social impact. The media hype about artificial intelligence is the obvious example of this approach.

Is there a recipe for not losing your way on the journey towards this goal?

Information technology is a 'stack' of systems that have to be interconnected and interrelated, and in order to manage this task in the best possible way, one encounters a number of critical issues, which often manifest themselves even in successful companies in certain strong sectors of industry. The risk to be avoided is to fall into a superficial and distorted view of doing 'good management' through technology, because not seizing opportunities is a mistake that undermines competitiveness in the medium term. Good ideas or good intentions are not enough, nor are creative, ingenious and highly innovative strategies, which must be based on managerial and execution skills and abilities that know how to translate those good ideas and intentions into reality, into real economic, cultural and social development.

Where do Italian companies stand?

We have a structural and dimensional problem and a problem of knowledge and awareness. And it is an issue that tests the maturity of companies and managers.

Who should lead this virtuous path? .

He is the CEO, the managing director. It is he who guides the fortunes of the company, and it is he who gives the first line directions. Infamily businesses, the worst situation often arises, because the ownership entrusts a manager with the direction of the company without granting him the necessary operational autonomy. It is a cultural issue, and we need to start from the basics, not from technology. There are, however, lynchpins of good management, and they are the concrete dynamics such as the management of employees or the definition of business strategies or even the retraining of skills.

Where and how should one intervene in the existing organisational model?

In the book I talk about the concept of feedback. Is it more important to create value in the long term or to achieve the results set in the quarterly budget? There is a need to break vicious circles and increase the maturity of the market as a whole, through the search for greater balance in the way one interacts with customers. There is an arduous and difficult task to be accomplished.

Of the 52 'pills' to take to transform companies, are there any that you just can't give up?

Certainly the first, the never-ending game: running a company is a game that must never end and not a sequence of quarterly reports, balance sheets and results to be optimised in the short term. Instead, we need to think and create a resilient structure. I would also add the true meaning of strategy, which is often confused with strategic objectives. And there is a big difference between the two concepts. Finally, the concept that runs from the symptom of a problem to the solution to solve it: a doctor cannot only treat the symptoms but must address the disease as a whole. Proposing a solution cannot mean having solved the problem if this situation recurs in the company on a daily basis and at all levels of management, especially with regard to the adoption and use of new technologies.

Why, in short, do we need 'good management'?

Because it is increasingly necessary for organisations as a whole, and managers and shareholders specifically, to be aware of the responsibilities they have towards all those involved in the life of the company and society in general. The company must be economically and financially sound, but it cannot limit itself to being efficient and profitable: it must have a raison d'être that sees the economic return as a necessary means, but not the only end.