Doing Well By Doing Good. Elena Grinta in conversation with Giuseppe Morici.

  What follows is the first part of the interview  with Giuseppe Morici, Chief Executive Officer at Bolton Food, Author of Fare i manager rimanendo brave persone Istruzioni per evitare la fine del mondo (e delle aziende) Elena Grinta You published a second book after the huge success of the first one “Doing Marketing and still remaining a good person”. Why is it so important to underline that doing marketing and management is not the opposite of doing good? Giuseppe Morici Brands and companies have understood that people of this generation, or one/two generations before this one, they want to look through the glass box brands. I am personally passionate about some of these brands such as, for example, Patagonia, which is becoming almost a political party against the environmental exploitation of the nature and on its web site you can subscribe against the exploitation of certain areas for touristic reasons. So if I am Riomare, just talking about myself, or if I am Isabel – which is another brand we have in Spain, in Latin America, in Ecuador, in Colombia – I am interested in understanding how you see my life as a person in terms of my relationship between me, my food, my kids, but first of all I am interested in how you behave in the supply chain, which goes from the seas where you fish to the factories where we transform. If you are a company and not just a brand I want to know how you orient all your activity system around your purpose.

Read also: How To Become A Brand Activist. Follow The Example Of Tony’s Chocolonley.

Elena Grinta when you say “I” are you saying “Giuseppe Morici” or “the CEO of Bolton Group”? Because this is the point, isn’t it? Are you acting as a human being when you work for a company, when you are actually driving a company for the next three or five years? The question is not so easy to answer because you have goals, you have a budget so, it is tough and it is challenging, isn’t it? How nowadays managers can answer in the “right way” to this question? Giuseppe Morici It is possible to remain a human being as you make your steps forward in your career. You have to make trade-offs and sometimes you have to give up some opportunities, of course. Maybe sometimes you had better grow 3% instead of 4% in order to remain within the fair limits of a balanced growth, but I want to clarify that it is a false myth that you cannot do it because the system doesn’t allow you to do it. First of all you can refuse some jobs. [laughs] Yes well, once I was in a similar situation and somebody was saying “I chose not to do that job because I didn’t think it was ethical…” and I commented it “You were lucky to have the luck of choosing” To refuse a job is a gift. Some people can’t choose. Obviously we are not talking about blue collars in Indonesia, we are talking about managers, and when you are a manager very luckily you can choose. First of all you can choose to refuse some jobs, second you can choose to accept a certain job with having the opportunity to act differently in that job. If you have a leadership position, what you do and what you say change very significantly what the people around you do, say and think.

Read also: 8 Out 10 Of Consumers Expect That CEOs Share Their Own Vision

If you have a shareholder who is not perfectly in line with you and with this kind of direction you can influence your shareholder, or at least you can try to do this. It is not impossible, you just have to be willing to do it, which is not always the case. Elena Grinta Okay, now I can bet that your next book will be about the recipe on how you can influence your shareholder. By the way, when I read your book I found many human examples of entrepreneurs, but not so many managers. Could you give an example of a manager who is inspiring you or inspired you? Because being an entrepreneur is totally different from being a manager. Giuseppe Morici let me answer this question in another way. In the book, which is about managers, I talk very often about entrepreneurs. Why? Because I think that, especially founders – which are a specific species of entrepreneurs – founders have that humanity that helps them remain human beings. People among people. The real founder is somebody whose obsession on the first day in the famous garage was about a “somebody” and a “something”. He had in mind somebody – very often this somebody is himself, his daughter or his wife or his husband – who had a problem, and something – the invention, the product – which can solve or improve that problem. What is the best part of being a manager, then? The best part of being a manager, compared to a founder, is that the company, in order to grow, needs someone who is able to manage it. Very often, and unfortunately this is inevitable, managers do that via processes, establishing processes. So, you cannot go to the product development team when you woke up with an idea and say “do this”. You have to follow the process. Otherwise a big organisation cannot work. Then it can happen that the processes become more important than the human beings who are inside the processes, and when the KPIS by which you manage the processes become the aim and not the means. The magic that I inspire for managers-to-be is the magic of somebody who has developed the fundamentals, like in biking. When you have developed the basic fundamentals, you never forget them. You never forget how to bike. Then you behave like an entrepreneur. If there is an opportunity you catch it. You find a way for the opportunity to be brought in the process, without becoming the victim of the process. credits: the transcription was made by trascrizionicopy Read also: Not Uniquely For Profit. Elena Grinta In Conversation With Giuseppe Morici.

---