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Published on 2025-01-07 18:50:00 | words: 2116
Today a short article, but with few sections that apparently are unrelated.
The title will be explained in the last section.
So, what are the sections?
_ introduction: the cultural elements of any business plan
_ where is the knowledge, where is the power, where is the action
_ the Monnet approach applied to industrial policy and why it fails.
Introduction: the cultural elements of any business plan
If you saw my CV and sample customers list by industry since 1986, you saw that I worked across multiple industries, with a dual focus on change and (managerial) data.
I know that some consider my articles arrogant- but, frankly, I had the benefit of interacting with people double my age or anyway with managerial experience since the early 1980s, when I was first a late teenager (17 on), and then in the Army, and then in my first official job in 1986 (albeit I had already worked in sales and technology).
What I learned from them was the "short fuse": their time was relevant, I was just in support (e.g. in the late 1980s to design models to support decision-making, in the 1990s presenting data or changing the way of working, from the late 1990s mainly to "recover" and complete activities).
So, waste their time wisely.
Before meeting them, get informed- those who try to bring the discourse on a specific item where they know everything (or assume to, usually after reading just a book or following a course), generally I steer away from.
Whenever I met, in the past, somebody with that profile, before I scouted for information.
In my first official employer, was easy: they had literally thousands of people in the HQ in the USA nearby Chicago collecting and digesting information from all the activities worldwide.
And, despite being junior (official title: first junior programmer then programmer- or something like that, also if I designed not just models, also training curricula and train-the-trainer as well as coaching other consultants), I was eventually granted access to the project library, as partners were entitled to, and not just to my project via a manager.
Why? Because those above, as worked across multiple industries, recognized that my approach, based on my political and Army experience, was to cross-feed information, and only free "roving agent" access allowed that.
I shared in the past how via two managers who asked me in Rome if I could pay their dinner on the company account discovered that I had received another perk that was for partners: no expense ceiling (because they had seen how much billable generated, and that regularly went over budget in restaurants but reported only the allowed standard)
If you deal with "short fuse" people, you better get informed not just on the ABC of their activities, as they will say it just once, and repeating is already a waste of time.
But also to start "connecting the (potential) dots" before meeting them- while keeping enough discipline not to convert this into a "confirmation bias", i.e. seeking and selling (if you are good at conveying messages) something without first doing a reality check as provided by them.
When building a business plan, I also focused on the associated marketing plan.
I think that change and organizational development without a communication plan tailored to the audiences, and a schedule to associated communication with business development steps (and constant monitoring and re-tuning as needed), is just a bean counting exercise.
Now, why the title about industrial policy, and this first section on business (and marketing) plans?
Bear with me, yet another section (the next one) apparently out-of-scope.
Where is the knowledge, where is the power, where is the action
When I was in the Army, I saw that the real operational knowledge often was with those that we call "marescialli" (quartermaster- resources, albeit sometimes my fellow Italian translate literally with "Marshal", generating confusion abroad, as my former military non-Italian colleagues reminded me).
They knew the resources and constraints, and I remember also a level called MMA "Maresciallo Maggiore Aiutante"- really the operational/resources alter-ego of the leading officers on the battlefield.
My old habit, whenever in a new territory, is, as I did for political activities, in the Army, and then for decision support systems, to look for that "walking organizational memory" to extract information from before a mission.
Sometimes this takes on funny sides- as when, while living in Brussels, for "testing" reasons (to see how I would react, and to test if my CV was real) I was routinely sent first around Belgium, then BeNeLux, then also UK and Switzerland for interviews that at best could be considered fake- and all... at my own expenses.
So, I usually arrived on location much earlier (if feasible), and went around to see the environment, then looking for a café or somewhere else to spend time and arrive at the scheduled time with my usual 15mins or so in advance.
If I get enough potential feed-back from a location where I never worked, if feasible and I think that could be interesting, do as I did in the 1990s: visit and "test drive".
Anyway, my colleagues, in Italy and abroad, eventually got used to this side: and, before making choices, asked me to do a check if I could.
I shared in the past how, when I was going to visit somebody in Madrid and Barcelona for business, one of my partners told me that they were offered to buy the Barcelona branch of an Italian company.
So, while in Barcelona (it was a quarter of century ago) went to the Ajuntament and looked for the economic development office.
I met with a kind employee, who proudly said that they had just put online the 600 most important documents to open a business there- in Catalan.
Now, language notwithstanding, 600 seemed a large number, even coming from Italy, where at the time was a nightmare to open or close anything (now in many cases you can do it online using a free application and filing electronically).
When I had a meeting with an Englishman who had his own business there, as planned for other reasons, I asked him: how do you cope with that?
He said: find a local lawyer who has the right connections to navigate through the maze.
So, I said to my partner: turn down the tremendous opportunity- if they created it and cannot generate value and want to sell it to another Italian and not a local...
Often, and we are getting closer to the title, there is a distance between those who have
_ knowledge
_ power
_ action.
If you worked in change or recovering ongoing activities long enough, probably you saw how sometimes those who have the knowledge get sidelined, and actually retract from action, leaving those in power to appoint somebody else who is willing to do what is being asked.
Obviously, I think that those three elements (knowledge, power, action) should be considered in any plan for new initiative (be a legislation or a business) and associated communication/marketing plan.
And now, for the finale.
The Monnet approach applied to industrial policy and why it fails
If you read my past articles about the automotive industry since say 2018, you know what I think about "transitions".
Automotive was said to be the "industry of industries", and it took decades (and two wars) to entrench it within the fabric of the economy.
From gas stations to repair shops to spare parts, to all the associated paraphernalia and components and raw materials and infrastructure (e.g. logistics, but also energy and steel), pulling the plug should require what also in ordinary business is often forgotten: phasing out.
On a different level, an industry that has centuries (some would say, in some cases, millennia) of tradition, and where I worked as much as in automotive but for more players, banking, had another issue: as I saw since the 1980s, whenever there is a technological change, the industry gets on board.
Anyway, under a changing façade, the "user interface", the underlying processes frankly in many cases are still reminding old processes that were done before computing technology was introduced.
E.g. consider the "check truncation": same name as was long, long ago, but what used to be a physical activity is now a concept (see here), and maybe AI will move it to another layer (e.g. provisioning on potential using the history as a guideline, and using the result also to warn about potential issues).
I think that the Basel and Frankfurt entities are doing a knowledge-based collaborative work to bring industry in line with times while ensuring continuity.
Instead, the "industry of industries" has been repeatedly both a victim of its own greed and lack of knowledge in those having regulatory power.
Greed: say what you want, but destroying de facto the used car market with all the different "Euro n" level generated a continuous need for small and medium companies to re-invest on vehicles while they had vehicles that mechanically were working, simply because there was no mandate to design "upgradeable" vehicles.
Lack of knowledge: I already between 2012 and 2018 criticized the Italian approach to "Industry 4.0", with a mismatch between what an investment lifecycle (and components) would be, and what tax credits would help- you cannot push a new technology, and then forget that the new technology requires training and system integration to produce the expected benefits.
Ditto for the "green deal" consequences: already a decade ago models and plans for the future of cars, the Mitchell "follow-up" to Womack, showed a completely different relationship between infrastructure and vehicles and urban environments, and also a completely different structure of the whole supply chain and required components.
What, if had been managed as Basel (BIS) or Frankfurt (ECB), should have been done? Plan a transition and replacement, as well as a phase-out (of the old) and phase-in (of the new).
Instead, we had strict mandates and piling up of initiatives, but with no comprehensive (I would dare to utter "Weltanschauung"-level) strategy design.
You know that I do not like the confirmation of the European Commission for a second mandate under the same leadership, for reasons that I described in previous articles (e.g. look just at the EP2024 series).
Anyway, the flip-flopping on the political coalition that brought about the confirmation of the composition of the new European Commission could be tempting to just do a reverse of what the "green deal" had done under a different coalition.
As I did in companies when it was a matter of cultural and organizational change blended with activities recovery, I think that this is an opportunity to switch on two levels:
_ build knowledge within the institution to be able to guide an industrial policy design, and not just tinker according to political pressure
_ create a collaborative model that could replicated also for other industries, akin to the approach that, just to stay within the EU, the ECB is doing for the introduction of the digital Euro.
It might take two to tango, but it take a wider consensus to actually shift the dancing floor across...
... otherwise, we will keep designing industrial policy at the European Union level by crash landing, seeing what is the resistance, and wasting few years at each round before finding a realistic consensus.
If we were to switch the approach, we would avoid wasting time- time that, considering already ongoing climate and resources issues, should not have been wasted by having some declare objectives to appease flash mobs, without actually doing anything to make them feasible (e.g. supporting transition and phase-out or reskilling).
Stay tuned!