Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Alessio Politi
Are you ready for your "Morandi Moment"?
And I don't mean singing at the Sanremo Song Festival,
or your performance in the shower,
or your TikTok videos.
I'm talking about a different moment.
The moment when you'll be thrown onto a crisis' stage.
When the ground will collapse right beneath your feet
and the world will fall on your head.
The moment when someone will stash you against your will in the washing machine
and press the spin-dryer button.
And when you’ll get out, you have lost all your points of reference.
I call it a "Morandi Moment".
Morandi moments aren't just a corporate thing:
they touch us all personally, in our daily life.
That's the bad news, actually.
A friend who is terminally ill, a death in the family,
the loss of a child.
And businesses as well:
an unloyal employee, a market that suddenly evaporates.
Institutions, also - crises affect everyone.
There are some reactions, when we talk about these issues
we all tipycally, instinctively have.
So let's do a little test together:
I don't see you very well, but let's try it anyway.
While I was talking to you about these things,
which are obviously unpleasant,
I am sure some thoughts crossed your mind
and maybe some among you gestured coarsely, also.
I don't know how many of you - you can raise your hands -
have thought or gestured bad things under the chair.
A few hands.
Then perhaps this crossed someone else's minds.
(Laughter).
A little less elegant, a little more gender biased.
These are two gestures that a former Prime Minister of ours
used quite frequently.
If this is not up your cultural status,
then perhaps you fall into this third category:
the one of those who keep in their pockets,
or hang on the rearview mirror of their own cars,
a luck horn.
You may be surprised to know
that among these three attitudes one is particularly virtuous.
Not sure if anyone wants to take a guess,
or I'll tell you.
The virtuous attitude is the third.
Why is it a virtuous attitude?
Because if you have decided to go to the tobacco shop, or on Amazon,
and spend two euros to buy a luck horn,
at least you have thought you may find yourself in trouble.
When people ask me, How do you prepare for crisis?
I always say that the starting point
is to project a movie in your head.
Alas, it is never a comedy: it’s a horror movie.
And reality, be aware of that, will exceed your imagination.
The starting point of this movie is a question, a single one:
What If.?
What happens, if...? What will I do, if..?
It's a very simple question you can ask yourself on a daily basis.
This question started to occur to me when I got married -
not right away, obviously, but a littl bit later.
What would I do,
if something were to happen to my wife or my daughter,
the two most important people in my life?
And a thought like this is very tough to deal with:
there's no answer, there's no movie that can help you imagine it.
So one day,
I stopped wondering what I would do,
and I started asking myself what they would do without me.
I started thinking
what the hours, days, weeks, months after that would be like.
And then I thought: is there anything I can do now
to help them, heaven forbid,
in such a dramatic, terrible and painful situation?
I took a pen, a piece of paper
and I wrote my wife a message.
Then I closed it, put it in a drawer,
and she perfectly knows where that envelope is.
Of course, in that letter I wrote many words of love,
words that a husband speakes to his wife.
And then, there are some practical instructions.
Who is the lawyer, who is the accountant,
where are the bank accounts, who's the insurance broker.
Because we often forget
that in a Morandi Moment we lose all points of reference.
So I thought, that could come in handy,
a small attempt to help her -
again, God forbid; but you never know in life -
to overcome that moment.
Why did I start dealing with crisis management?
I started asking myself, What If?
not immediately, but a little bit later.
Exactly, it was on October 8th, 2001.
It's incredible how -
I'm not sure if someone of you ever had a terrible moment in life,
like -
you really don't know where to look at, in those moments.
I remember that day like it was yesterday.
But I don't remember the whole day, nor the following days.
What's incredible is,
moments like these leave Polaroids in your minds.
Still images, feelings.
So I thought, it might help to share with you today
what I went through that day.
On October 8th, 2001, I got up at 6 a.m.,
as I had been doing for three years, since my dad passed away.
I threw myself into work.
I left the house, like I did every morning,
and I crossed the street
to get my cappuccino and croissant at the bar.
The city was sank in the fog,
the kind we're familiar with here in the Milan area.
You could have sliced it with a knife.
You couldn't see across the street.
At 11:30, I was sitting at my desk at the office.
The phone rang, it was Scandinavian Airlines,
asking if I could urgently go to Linate.
So I picked up my computer, asked a couple of colleagues to follow me.
We jumped into the car and drove to Linate airport.
The first Polaroid is Viale Forlanini:
a completely deserted avenue.
No traffic, no one around.
We arrive at the entrance of the Linate airport
and there is a Carabinieri car blocking the access.
We explain who we are, and get to the front of the air terminal.
I get out of the car, look up at the sky -
a deep, blue sky with a bright sun was now above us.
My mind goes back to the morning fog, that could have been sliced with a knife.
All of a sudden, a wonderful day.
I look around, nothing moves.
I don't know if you remember a science fiction TV series called "UFO",
with a commander, Commander Straker.
And there's an episode, where he is moving
and all the people and things around him
are absolutely still.
This was the scene that I witnessed when I arrived at Linate:
an absolutely surreal scene.
A deserted, silent airport.
And then, the smells.
The smells - it's incredible, if you have noticed:
they stay in your mind, and stick with you forever.
The smell of kerosene in the air; the smell of burning;
the smell of firemen's foam.
I will never forget those smells.
As I entered the air terminal,
I thought:
how many times I stepped through its doors,
how many times I flew from here.
Airports are lively places:
boarding announcements; the check-ins; people who buy the newspapers;
people who drink their cappuccino, coffees, aperitifs, lunches.
A place thriving with life; now, a deserted airport was before me.
I made my move to the elevators to reach the mezzanine floor,
where the airline offices were located.
And all of a sudden, out of the corner of my right eye,
I saw a poorly lit corridor.
Some shadows were moving along it.
But they were not shadows:
they were victims' relatives.
Some of the relatives of the 118 victims of the Linate accident,
aimlessly wondering around this airport in search of their loved ones.
Paola Rota was 20 years old.
Her parents were on that plane.
Her little brother was there too.
Paola called me two years later.
She called me at the office and said, "I'd like to come and meet you."
"Of course", I answered.
She came, sat in front of me,
looked me in the eyes and said:
"I am preparing my graduation thesis on the Linate accident.
I came to gather some information".
We pulled out the folders, I explained to her
all the work we had done in support of the airline,
and I could not help but be impressed by the strength of this girl
who had decided, after that tragedy, to write her thesis on the accident.
Perhaps as a way to overcome her grief.
Paola is no more.
Ten years later, Paola took her own life.
I keep thinking back to that corridor in Linate,
to that silence.
And I wonder,
why wasn't that silence filled with communication?
Why nobody bothered
speaking welcoming words,
words of affection, of closeness?
Communication is not just about words.
Communication is also about gestures:
a hug, a handshake, a caress, a tear.
At Linate, unfortunately, these things were nowhere to be found.
Why?
I asked myself this question, for many years:
why that silence in that corridors in Linate.
Why wasn’t anyone there to help those suffering people?
I gave myself two answers.
First, that was a question no one asked themselves:
What If?
What if there is a plane crash?
How do we manage that?
Nobody, but the airline, had considered that.
Fear is the second answer.
Fear of coming to terms with one’s responsibilities,
the fear of facing the pain of others.
But in times of crisis,
we have our emotions, which are an extraordinary resource.
Not the emoticons on your mobile phone we like to type along with messages:
they are the emotions we feel in our hearts and in our minds.
They are the emotions that we have to use and calibrate.
Calibrate the fear and bring out the others emotions.
We have to place ourselves in other people's shoes,
and use the peak expression of human intelligence:
empathy, the ability to connect to others.
And not with text messages: with real words and gestures.
Are you ready for your Morandi moment?
I don't think one can ever be, but you can prepare yourself.
So remember, when that moment comes -
and it will: it's not a question of if, it is a question of when -
remember to use your emotions.
Remember, if it happens to you,
to use your words and gestures to ask for help.
And do not be afraid, if it happens to someone close to you,
or even someone you do not know,
to take a step towards them.
Emotions are an extraordinary resource:
do not wither them, do not hide them, use them.
And instead of closing yourselves in the silence of that aisle in Linate,
open yourselves.
Open yourselves to communication.
Because only communication, in life's toughest moments,
can really help you.
(Applause)