The reasons for the Foundation
Governance and the Foundation’s relationship with the company
The staff and external collaboration
Management of the Foundation
G.P.: My next question regards staff training, which is quite complicated in this type of cultural institution. Usually, in cultural institutions established by a corporation, the staff comes from the company itself. What about the Dalmine Foundation?
S.M.: In our case, the company did not take part in choosing the staff, only in appointing Carolina. Then you chose your own staff, right, Carolina?
C.L.: Yes, I chose people from various environments. During the first years of the Foundation, I looked for people whose background was external to the company. Now, at this stage of consolidation, we are doing the opposite and building the company’s role in staff selection and research.. At the beginning, when we wanted to find an intern rather than a temporary collaborator for a specific project, this was an unknown process for the company. Now the Foundation uses some corporate functions to select its personnel.
S.M.: With freedom of choice, however. The company can express its opinion but the final decision is Carolina’s. Of course, there are suggestions from some business areas; someone might send us the resume of a valuable person who had worked on a specific project in the past, but that’s all. At Dalmine, we hire engineers 90% of the time and economists for the other 10%. However, it happens that we meet talented young people through the internships, but if we can’t place them in the company, we recommend them to the Foundation.
C.L.: I would add a further consideration; we look for people with specialized knowledge – researchers, archivists, historians – yet on the other hand, as the Foundation starts to broaden its structure, we also need people who know about the daily running of a business. In the latter case, the company is an important point of reference for managerial practices that the specialized academic staff of a cultural institution might be less familiar with. Intellectual imagination and even a bit of anarchy are important, but we rely on the company as a fundamental resource for managerial skills as well as practical instruments and procedures.
S.M.: Carolina Lussana has always managed to handle all aspects at once, and this has allowed the Foundation to grow. Independence is the result of self-reliance—not by picking up the phone every two minutes to ask somebody else to do this or that. Carolina has shown real management ability. She does everything she can from within the Foundation and uses the company’s resources only when it is really necessary. It has worked for our organization, but it is not very common in the intellectual world to find people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get into the dreariest aspects of budget. ,Of course, if there is a problem, the company can help but we feel confident that the management in the Foundation is intelligent and thorough.
G.P.: It seems to be an unfortunate Italian tradition, unlike in the Anglo-Saxon world that has trouble finding valuable cultural organizers with strong practical skills.
S.M.: I’m afraid so and I’ve seen it in other contexts. When you start talking about budget, people look at you and say “Surely, you wouldn’t subordinate culture to something as vulgar as a budget”. Well, somebody has to do it, or else the future will, because when you have no money, the game is over. If I give you some money, you ‘d better use it shrewdly and make it last for the whole year and not just six months; otherwise you will fail to achieve your cultural objective. In Italy there is a lot of confusion about organizing cultural structures and intellectual freedom: culture depends on economic resources just like everything else. Freedom to think creatively is essential, of course, but when it is time to put your thoughts into effect, you inevitably deal with a budget. In the past, the Italian State paid for everything and the need for accountability was less perceived.
G.P.: I think this is one of the reasons why culture tends to glorify itself, or better yet, this is how it is seen. In the academic world, the organizational management of culture is considered to be something less than the activity of teaching.
S.M.: That’s true and sometimes this perception is also found in Economics faculties. The Foundation tries to work with a budget, a program and deadlines. Of course, if something comes up, it isn’t difficult to meet since the board of directors is made up of three people. We might say “There is this new wonderful idea, maybe we ought to change the program”. But this only happens through a process of decision and responsibility. Carolina doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to change the program and six months later, we find out about it. This has never happened and it never will, especially because she is the most systematic person in the organization.
G.P.: Three people: one is you; Paolo Rocca is another, I believe… and the third?
C.L.: Luciano Taddei, a former shareholder of Dalmine, and very connected with the company’s history.
S.M.: He is an entrepreneur from Bergamo.
C.L.: For a long time his father was the director of the steel plant.
G.P.: This confirms that the connection between the company and the Foundation takes place at the level of top management. The board members are not just anybody.
S.M.: Yes, we could say that interest in the Foundation comes from the highest management level.
G.P.: In other institutions, the link to the company is at middle management, and consequently, procedures become oppressive for the cultural institution.
S.M.: Of course. It depends on how things are organized, as this type of unfavorable situation often happens when there is a mixed structure, as if the Foundation were part of the company. In that case, the cultural institute would need to have a lot more power in order to avoid a situation where the company concentrates on everything except the production of culture. Take our buying procedures, for example; you need to find three suppliers and then, you call for tenders. You can’t apply the same procedure with three professors!
G.P.: It wouldn’t be so bad actually….
S.M.: Of course you need to be precise but evaluations cannot be done in this way. So if you put a cultural structure inside a corporation whose purpose is to do something else, the company ends up oppressing the cultural institution with the constant presence of important people saying: “No, wait, let’s do so and so….”. Creative freedom is too important; therefore the points of contact [between the Foundation and the company] are only those that are strictly necessary and boundaries must be respected. In any case, we have never had this problem; since Mr. Rocca is so close to the Foundation, we don’t have to waste much time arguing over procedures. I’m convinced that a company should create its cultural institute based on the interests of the top management.
G.P.: This seems to me to be a very strong point. This is the first time I have ever interviewed both the cultural director and a company board member at the same time. In fact, one of the limits on the development of business culture in Italy is the initial input [in setting up a cultural structure] followed by the gradual differentiation between the figure of the curator and the company. We could even speak of the curator’s isolation—however in your case, this hasn’t occurred.
S.M.: No, it would be very unlikely given the strong presence of Mr. Rocca.
C.L.: Let’s say the work is constantly shared and communicated between the Foundation director and the company board.
G.P.: That’s why in other situations the scientific committee is so important, to help the curator to feel less isolated.
S.M.: And also to maintain an open channel of communication between the Foundation and the company. If, the quality of Carolina’s work were to go down tomorrow, we would say something about it straightaway. A cultural director who operates in a beautiful institute, but is isolated from a company that doesn’t listen much……well, a foundation has a structure, a staff of five, or six people and none of this comes for free….
C.L.: Preservation is an expensive activity, even if it is less visible.
S.M.: On the other hand, you might have extraordinary freedom and access to a generous budget…But later, the risk would be to get lost while trying to create a structure or superstructure. In my experience in the business world, I have seen that systems are varied, but not infinite; the same system can lead to success or to complete failure. Our people are the key element; if our board of directors had bizarre ideas, if Carolina had a boundless ego, if there weren’t careful management, the system we have developed would fail. On the other hand, there are cases where wonderful scientific committees and ideal structures interact, yet they do not produce anything. There are no magic formulas; system, management and control have to proceed together and this must also be true for the company. However, it’s equally true that there some structures exist with their own corrective mechanisms. In large companies, when there is an extraordinary person, the company benefits. So, the presence of a person like Steve Jobs, Jack Welch or Lee Iacocca does in fact make a difference — we remember them because they are key elements in the development of their companies.
G.P.: I see that Carolina is reminding us of the time…
C.L.: Yes, if there is one last question…we have a schedule to follow.
G.P.: Rightly so, you want to protect the time of your board member
S.M.: You can see for yourself that she protects me; imagine how she protects the Foundation. I have nothing to worry about.
