Cesare Ceraso

Chief Operating Officer
ISA SpA

"In recent decades we have witnessed the spread of fierce individualism and a culture that has taken competition to extremes. I was fortunate to work in companies where the application of the Lean culture was authentically interpreted and this represented a barrier to the axiom that being the best, even at the expense of others, is a just cause. But after the 2008 crisis it has become a little more difficult everywhere to maintain the spirit behind the methodology born in Toyota and Lean has become a betrayed revolution, leaving room for a corporate culture, based exclusively on the result at any cost, creating in the world of work a progressive and unstoppable dissatisfaction. Gradually, work returned to being mainly a response to primary needs and, at the same time, the satisfaction of more evolved needs such as belonging, esteem by others and the realization of a life that had a higher purpose, was sought in the social context outside work. But now the first global pandemic has significantly reduced or completely eliminated sociality. So how will the absence of emotional compensation outside the workplace impact people's already precarious motivation? The only possible solution will be to promote a leadership model that is immune to the "I" God and that sets the goal of the well-being of the organization, because what will do good to people will do even better to the business of tomorrow. I believe from direct experience that the Lean Lifestyle approach can be a powerful vaccine to achieve this immunity."