INSIGHT ISSUE 02 | 2020

13 INSIGHT | Focus On “THE OLDWORLD IS DYING, AND THE NEWWORLD STRUGGLES TO BE BORN. NOW IS THE TIME OF MONSTERS” Is it not perhaps very stressful for sellers (oops, accounts) when their sales targets increase each year? More and more each year, each year more and more promises. Productivity has to be increased as much as possible. COVID has had the same effect as hiding in a bomb shelter during an air raid in a war. Once the sirens stopped sounding, people went back outside to see the ruins left by the bombs. What ruins has COVID left for us? What do we want to build on these ruins? What is the meaning of a revolution if everything is handled on the spur of the moment? We have confused, and continue to confuse, resilience with the concept of fault tolerance. Antonio Gramsci wrote: "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters". True revolution is achieved with resilience; a revolt is merely fault tolerance. True resilience is creativity, not stubbornness and imitation, and has to do with people; fault tolerance is just an annoying breakdown that needs to be repaired and has to do with machines. The machines are formatting us. This is what we are destined to witness in the coming years, and the first step will be when the hashtag “The customer comes first” finally gives way to “The supplier comes first”. Or, to be more accurate, when the inseparable customer-supplier binomial is no longer the rule. What resources will be used to stage this pseudo- revolution? Once again, it bears recalling that the Italian word for “resources” (“risorse”) is the third person singular of the remote past tense of the Italian verb “risorgere” (“to rise again”). In Italian, the remote past is used for actions that took place in the distant past and that no longer have any bearing on the present, physically or emotionally. This is precisely what is happening: we think we can colonize the future with resources linked to the past. We are adapting our behaviour to machines, and not vice versa. After all, the revolution will lead us to wellbeing and success, but how is it measured? In the end, what do you have to complain about? It is simple: try entering the term “rich people” into any search engine and look at the images (almost all white-skinned), then try “poor people” and again look at the images (almost all dark-skinned). Is this the revolution? No, this is the revolt of the satisfied. “Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they think they have will be taken from them”. Luke 8:18. In the end, one need simply ask: who wins on the motorway? As fast as you may go, there will always be someone ahead of you and you can never pass everyone. You can win for a bit, but then you have to understand when to slow down. Simple! BEPPE CARRELLA ICT Disruptive Consultant, partner BCLAB