Any change process is a long, complex journey: it doesn’t happen in a day, nor in a week. It spans for months, it involves all of ourselves, it challenges our ideas and perceptions. But when it is over, you know: nothing is going to be the same.
When Paola was appointed CEO of SPII, and this company from Saronno became the Center of Competence of the international Schaltbau Group, she had very clear that this kind of change was needed.
It was not just a new signature on official documents and a new logo on the website: the small SPII was now a global centre of expertise, whose products would be shipped all across the World and used to move billions of people…it was an extraordinary opportunity, but also a tremendous challenge.
Within the company, the mood was various: everyone was excited for the news, but some were worried, doubtful: “how will it be? What can we expect? Will this change overwhelm us?“.
It was clearly time for a huge mindset shift: a pathway to a different view of what change is, and how to welcome it with confidence and the willingness to be positively surprised.
It is more than preparing for change, it is inciting proactivity: make others picture the New World ahead, even if they cannot see it. It’s already there, it just depends on us how to reach it.
SPII needed to embark on a journey to cross a challenging sea and reach an unknown port, with its new captain at the wheel. They just needed help tracing the best route.
SPIIevo: a journey towards evolution
When Paola contacted Fabio Tognetti, she only knew the destination she had in mind. The route was all to find.
The time was right, the chance to really touch and move people was inspiring, the goal was ambitious: it was the beginning of 2016 and they decided to set sail.
The name of the vessel? SPII EVOLUTION.
For friends, SPIIevo!
A true journey for change through months of activities, processes, challenges and games…because only if you play and have fun you can really achieve growth.
The goals were clear:
- change the mindset of everyone within the company
- develop responsibility and proactivity
- reinforce a sense of belonging
- provide useful skills like negotiation, selling, team work
- ultimately, turn SPII into an agile company, one that not only doesn’t fear change, but welcomes it.
All of this can’t just be “taught”: it has to be experienced, in a context that is motivating and brings out the best in people.
So, together with Fabio and his team, SPII developed a complete program that would last six months and would challenge everything they thought they knew.
It began with a keynote: not the classic staged speech, but an immersive experience with twists and turns, mental restructuring, challenges and exercises.
The message is loud and clear: change happens, whether we want it to or not; it’s all in how we approach it.
Resisting, accepting or surfing it out are the only three possible responses, that have three very different effects.
During this event, people were presented with the program ahead: the whole company would be divided into smaller groups, and they all would have few months of preparation to come up with a game-changing idea.
Something that was needed, something that would make life/work better, something that could actually be implemented by the company.
At the end of the journey, the different teams would present all their ideas in front of the whole company.
A great, festive event, with the tension that comes with every challenge and the release of energy that emerges when change, finally, explodes.
The winning projects would become reality – the management was listening, change was REALLY possible. It depended on them to make it happen.
The DNA of change
Why are people resistant to change?
There are 3 main reasons for it:
- because they don’t know how to do it
- because they don’t want to
- because they can’t
These reasons may be real or they may be all in our heads, but as long as we believe in them, change is impossible.
We need to dismantle every single one of them, one by one. Once they all have fallen, we can see the truth: it depends on us.
SPIIevo wanted to create a playful environment where people could actively dismantle all of the above excuses: they would find within themselves the willingness to change things they didn’t like; they would learn how to pitch their ideas so that they are interesting, engaging and doable; and finally, they would have the concrete chance to make those changes reality.
This is why you need a metaphorical journey to achieve it: real change is not something that happens overnight, you need the time to explore it and the tools to craft it.
And most importantly, you need to learn that you CAN do it, that it is possible even if you thought it wasn’t, if you thought you were already giving all you got. You need to learn there is always space for more.
It’s like when Fabio asked the audience how many one-legged hops they could perform in one minute: people were guessing 30, maybe 60?
But when a whole theater, filled with hundreds of people, started to jump on one foot, they were shocked to discover at first hand how badly they underestimated themselves. How much we all do.
How many jumps can you do? How many changes can you face?
Maybe it’s time to find out.
See you next time,
Ilaria Cazziol
