Jarre
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[Interviewer] We are here at the home of Pietro Jarre
to talk about the future
of the professional services industry
in the field of environmental engineering.
Pietro has worked in this industry
throughout his career:
starting with a strong technical background,
he quickly developed
expertise in leadership roles,
initially in Europe
and then, on a global stage
working with a fast growing
employee-owned consultancy
whose ownership quickly increased
from a few hundred employees
to many thousands.
Pietro, you started from Europe
in the late 1980s;
what were the main challenges
at that time?
[Pietro Jarre] At that time,
we were working mainly for
North American multinationals.
They were coming being perfectly aware
of the cost, due to environmental compliance.
In the countries they were investing in,
instead, the environmental regulations
were not developed yet
and we had to do a huge work
for reconciling this discrepancy, this gap.
So our work was
challenged by the fact that
technical service was not enough.
We had also to work on
this cultural awareness.
And, in doing so,
it was quite exciting at that time,
in doing so, we grew our consultancy
from a few tens of people
to almost a thousand, here in Europe.
[interviewer] So, how would you define
the challenges these days?
Investors have often difficulty
in seeing
the real opportunities
and the real risks
when they invest in other countries.
This is also due to the fact that
they come with their models,
to some extent, they come
armed with models.
I think you should keep with yourself
when you go abroad.
When you expand your enterprise
you should only use your values
and leave your models,
due to your past experiences
in other places, in other times,
behind you.
If you carry your values
and, particularly, business ethics,
you can succeed
and even succeed in the longer term.
Business ethics, to me,
starts with technical quality.
Technical quality and business ethics
are two sides of the same coin
in my experience.
[interviewer] During the last twenty years,
you developed many cross-border teams,
can you tell me a little bit about that?
[Pietro Jarre] Yes, I had challenge
and I was like enough to have this experience.
I had the opportunity to build
many communities across all the continents,
communities of technical professionals
who were engaged also in building business,
so I helped them
in building the tools to support their cooperation.
This has been a very exciting, fantastic experience.
Global clients
need these global communities.
They need people that share experiences,
that build together products for these global clients.
We can help them in doing that,
we have helped them in doing that.
It has been rewarding,
challenging but
it has given me a lot of satisfaction.
[interviewer] I know that you helped build
a global enterprise.
Now, in your experience,
what were the greatest difficulties
that you had in supporting professionals
in their cooperation efforts?
[Pietro Jarre] Supporting professionals in their cooperation
is a challenge linked to
the continual change
of their organisation.
Good professionals succeed,
a good professional gets more work.
Could.
This is the success.
This is difficult but it is relatively easy
compared to the difficulty
that you have in implementing
continual change in your organisation.
Again, if I succeed
I build a model.
"I succeeded there, okay,
then, that is the right recipe."
That becomes a model.
When I use this model
and I try to replicate
this model in a different context,
I fail.
So the challenge
in growing a professional firm
is the challenge that,
maybe other service industries have,
which is the challenge of continual change.
Then, at the enterprise level,
the challenge is mainly due
to the fact that you need to align
all the departments of the organisation
to this continual change.
So human resources,
technical departments,
financial departments and so on
must be aligned
and must have and keep the same pace
of change.
To me, in my experience,
the highest difficulty
in this area has been related
to the fact that
the way we measure
the company performance,
the performance of the professionals,
often stays behind.
And so why some departments
go very fast and change,
other departments stay behind and sleep.
This is the challenge
of the professional industry.
Too often I see firms
which are too much focused
on short-term financial measurements.
Instead, it is absolutely true
that when you put money on top,
you fail.
And so, I recommend
enterprises of this kind
to put people and clients on top.
Happy employees and satisfied clients
generate the money.
It's not vice versa.
It's not the other way round.
[interviewer] So, Pietro, a final question:
what are your plans for the next few years?
[Pietro Jarre]
For the next few years, I would like
to continue to learn.
I would like to continue to live.
I would like to continue to live
the experience of building professional enterprises
across the borders, in different units
but mainly in the fields of my technical knowledge:
environmental engineering,
infrastructures and the like.
I would like to work
from a more detached position,
more, a bit, like an advisor,
if possible.
I would like to
be less involved with day by day decisions
and, from an advising position,
working a bit like a grandfather,
if I may say so.
If I may say, in our society
these days, we have too many fathers
with their fingers in the pie,
changing things every day and so on
and we don't have enough people
who stay behind,
coach, mentor, give advice, do supervision...
So, in essence, I would like to be
an "organisational grandfather".
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