witnesses
stronger than darkness

“I Risked Everything
on One Solid Point”
Stefano left a fixed job in order to start a firm. What guarantees did he have? “A truth that happened to me”

by Paola Bergamini

On the Stockholm-Milan flight, Stefano was looking out of the window and made his decision: “I’ve had enough. Working like this is stifling. When I came back, I asked my friends if they wanted to strike out on a new adventure.” And yet, during the managerial meeting of the Swedish multinational for which he has been working for 15 years (in an unusual sector: accident recovery), his work was much applauded: “You are one of the best.”  Then they had rejected his new product because, “In the short term, it would not give a return adequate to the aims.” This was in 2007, the economic crisis was soon to take off, and “short term” was a synonym for fear, already a maxim. Says Stefano, “I thought: is it possible not to have the aim of creating a long term value?” So it was that in discussions with his bosses he decided to do something that in business terms is called a spin-off: detach some staff to make a new firm. But why leave a fixed job and good salary in such a difficult moment to launch a new venture? What is certain for what is uncertain? “This is the point. I had this certainty in my heart: the place where I am working must be a place where you see that life is interesting. That’s what I need.” But there was a risk. “In a risk, a reasonable person has reasonable certainty of succeeding. And certainty is rooted in what you really want from life, your cornerstone. Work is an expression of yourself, of your desire. Of course, the firm must run well; it has to make money. But one thing is to have in mind a villa in Sardinia, and another for your life to be full and interesting. This is where the adventure began.”

The added value. It started on a grand scale with forty employees and some error in evaluating one’s own abilities, and above all gauging the extent of the crisis that by now was revealing itself as structural. When reality seems to be moving against you, the temptation comes of asking: Why should it happen to us who had such a great idea? “Certainly, or asking what is the added value we can contribute to reality with this firm? And therefore we had to deeply reconsider the way people were working.” In 2009, the only way of going on seemed to be to fire people or put them on temporary lay-off. “But this meant throwing away the professionalism we had built up, losing good people.” What could be done? They looked at the root of the crisis. Stefano and the partners decided to go without their salary for a year, and to cut that of the employees by 20%. “We called everyone to a meeting, read out the balance sheet and the annual turnover, and made a proposal. We said it was a way not only of not sending people home, but above all of accepting the challenge that the crisis was offering. In other words, it was the opportunity of doing something great. My businessmen friends had put me on guard, saying it would prove impossible, as everyone would try to hang on to his own post.” But 39 out of 40 employees accepted the challenge.
What does it mean to look at the root of the crisis? Not give in to fear? “It means trying to look with different eyes at the clients, the needs, and what the market has to offer. It is not only a question of finding a niche, but a chance for good, for building. I asked myself first, and then my collaborators, exactly this. This gave rise to new commitment, new collaboration and dedication. Work is no longer an appendix, the salary at the end of the month, but expression of yourself–concretely, of the unity of the ‘I.’”

A superabundance.  At the height of the crisis, five more linked societies were set up, and the number of employees grew from 40 to 100. How is it that you have an outlook on reality that makes you certain that reality is good? “I would not be able to do my work, to do it well, if I were not to have before my eyes the example of a gratuitousness and a truth that happened to me. In the end, I run my firm, I work, so that it may be seen that the encounter with the Christian experience makes life humanly interesting. It’s for the same reason that I and some friends of mine set up the Information Technology Bank, a voluntary group that collects second-hand computers, printers, and biomedical instruments, so as to redistribute them to non-profit organizations in Italy and abroad. For me, that act of charity is a sign of a superabundance, of a gratuitousness that fills every aspect of my life, even work, and makes it productive.”