This is the English-translated transcript of the Italian-language podcast that you can find on Spotify by clicking here.
Listening time: 10 min 5 sec.
Speaker (Lia Piano): Welcome to the PRIMATE podcast. In each episode we share transformative projects and evolutionary paths that people and companies have taken with us. In today’s episode, Marianna Bianchetta, Coordinator Operations Securities Services and Financial Markets at Credem Group, talks about FOUNDATION, the project that aims to evolve corporate culture, which featured top management and all corporate employees and collaborators, customers and suppliers. Enjoy the listening!
Tiziano Capelli: Good morning, everyone, I am Tiziano Capelli co-founder of PRIMATE Benefit and BCorp company and it is a great pleasure for me to be here with Marianna Bianchetta to talk about the “Foundation” project, a project that we have developed together and that is still ongoing. Marianna was, until recently, training manager at Credito Emiliano and now she is Coordinator Operations Securities Services and Financial Markets. First of all, hello Marianna, welcome and thank you for being here with us to share the goals and objectives of this valuable initiative!
Marianna Bianchetta: Hi Tiziano and thanks to you and PRIMATE for the opportunity and also a greeting to everyone who is listening to us!
Tiziano Capelli: So, I would get right into it by saying that the project you coordinated came out of a challenge that the CEO had given you, which was to evolve the corporate culture. What can you tell us about this initiative that you called “Foundation”?
Marianna Bianchetta: I will say right away that it is a beautiful journey, still in progress, because the cultural evolution of the company and the people, of course, is constantly in the making, and we work very carefully on these aspects because we know very well what benefits it can bring to the people and the business. Yes, the challenge that our CEO has given us is ambitious and I would say stimulating; designing the evolution of a corporate culture is not at all easy and you need to work on it very carefully. We liked your working proposal and so we made it our own, first of all we found ourselves in the definition you give to corporate culture, that is, “the culture and the way we think, feel or act together,” as you say, so I would say it is something very concrete that guides our daily behavior; and then I have to say we liked the working method you proposed, very very participatory, which is different from what we have used in the past on the same issues.
Tiziano Capelli: Wanting to get into the substance of the project, can you tell us how you structured it?
Marianna Bianchetta: We started with a critical reflection on the basic elements of the corporate culture present in the company today: mission and values, aimed at understanding whether we still consider them current or if they need to evolve, since in some way they should show us the course, describe the purpose, the goal of the company and how it is to be achieved. We consider them extremely important because they give identity to the corporate reality, create a sense of belonging in all stakeholders and facilitate the unity of purpose, guide everyone’s behavior… that’s why we set ourselves the goal to identify the distinctive elements of the Credem group that would best represent us and, above all, show us the course to look to the future. How did we find the answer to this question? Well, we did it through an important listening activity, which involved the entire corporate population but not only, also customers, suppliers, agents, all those who collaborate in a broad sense with us, because they also have direct experience of our corporate culture and therefore can give us important feedback. Here, the construction of the questionnaire involving the entire corporate population was entrusted to a small group of people from HR, marketing, and communications who, with your supervision, defined it through various listening focus groups involving over 100 people representative of the entire corporate population. Already this was an element that I would say was innovative, compared to our previous way of working: the questions, in fact, were not created by the focus group, but directly by the people who participated in the focus groups; therefore, not only the answers are everyone’s, but also the questions. So, once the structure and questions were defined, the questionnaire was then validated by top management and the survey was addressed to all employees and promoters of the group, so over 6,000 people; moreover, it had a very high participation for this kind of survey, in the order of 70 percent. Here, this listening activity, combined with listening to customers through dedicated focus groups, brought out what kind of bank employees and customers would like, and there were many interesting and new insights such as, for example, the focus on well-being – which has become the pay-off of our brand – “Wellbanking People”, rather than on the environment and sustainability.
Tiziano Capelli: Here, but, after all these listening activities, how did you synthesize all the feedback you received?
Marianna Bianchetta: This is one more step in the project, actually two steps, which involved top management first, about 40 people, and then central management. In very simple terms, we organized working sessions, in which we gave top management all the feedback that emerged, asking them to analyze it but also to project it into the future in relation to the company’s strategic plans. It was not easy, but it was extremely interesting to see a shared vision slowly emerge of the elements that should characterize our corporate culture. The next step then involved our top management, with the even more arduous task of defining the basic elements of our corporate culture, seeking maximum coherence between what was expressed by colleagues in the extended listening phase and by all the stakeholders interviewed: what top management produced, what we express with our brand promise and our non-financial statement, and what is already defined in our strategic plan.
Tiziano Capelli: It is clear from your account how complex and articulated this project was… I wanted to ask you, was there a moment that you considered decisive for its success?
Marianna Bianchetta: Absolutely yes, a preparatory work that we conducted together with you PRIMATE on top management was decisive. We knew that for the synthesis that the managers would have to do for the Foundation, it would be crucial to think outside of their own silos, as we call it, of their own area of expertise from a team perspective; very briefly, what was it all about? well operationally we did a very simple thing, that is, we identified with the management some top strategic issues in our group and proposed them to them. Each top manager independently decided on which theme to work on, so spontaneous teams were born that, over a period of several months and with methodological advisory support, studied the themes and came up with a strategic and applicative reflection that was then presented in a wonderful day of work to our general manager. In this way, we strengthened top management’s ability to work as a team, and, I must say, they responded great, in the sense that it is on the one hand they felt enormously involved and empowered, and on the other hand they developed very valuable initiatives. I would say that this experience allowed top management to experience themselves as a team, to make teams and then to work on the Foundation, on a common goal and managing to make a synthesis that took into account the needs of all areas of the group; then, I have to say, the decisive moments – as you called them – are not over, because – as I said at the beginning – this project is still ongoing, because we are now dialoguing with our Board of Directors and, maybe, in a next interview I will tell you how it went
Tiziano Capelli: Thank you Marianna for your testimony on such a sensitive and topical issue as the evolution of corporate culture. We will gladly get back to you to share the developments of the project! Because, we can anticipate to those who are listening to us, there will be many other related initiatives both of a communicative nature, as well as training, but also of updating and revising certain business tools such as, for example, the leadership model, rather than the selection criteria and so on…
Marianna Bianchetta: Very gladly! Thank you!
Speaker (Lia Piano): Thank you for following this episode of the PRIMATE podcast and if you would like to learn more about this topic, please contact us at info@primate.consulting, we will be very happy to answer you!