Learning that changes your life. Forever

TAKING A NEWDIRECTION, PERHAPS ONE NEVER CONSIDERED BEFORE. TAKING STOCK OF ONE'S EXISTENCE AND PUTTING ONESELF BACK IN THE GAME. THE SVOLTE PROJECT BY SDABOCCONI AND CORRIERE DELLA SERA HAS TOLD MANY STORIES OF CHANGE ORIGINATED BY THE NEWSKILLS OBTAINED THROUGH STUDY. FROM THE STORIES OF INDIVIDUALS,WHO HAVE TURNED THEIR CAREERS AROUND THANKS TO UPSKILLING OR RESKILLING, TO STORIES OF TRANSFORMATION AND REORGANIZATION OF ENTIRE COMPANIES

Everyone, sooner or later, is faced with a potential Turning Point. Something that makes you change direction, take a turn and go somewhere else. In truth, in most cases, faced with potential change, we prefer to continue proceeding on our path, to remain in our comfort zone. And it's not hard to see why. In any case, taking a turn means leaving a safer shore, or at least one that appears to us more familiar, closer to who we are and what we know to do. Each turning point is, at least cognitively and emotionally, preceded by seemingly impassable Pillars of Hercules, which inspire fear to the point that in most cases people prefer to continue navigating along the usual path. This is also a relevant trait of our national culture, which is steeped in fear of uncertainty. In a famous study by Geert Hofstede on comparing national cultures (Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede model in context. Online readings in psychology and culture, 2(1), 2307-0919), with regard to the factor "aversion to uncertainty", Italy was ranked among the countries most culturally averse to uncertainty, with 75 points out of 100, against 35 for the United Kingdom and 46 for the United States. Fear of the unknown lying behind the turning points and twists of fate is a profound trait of our national identity. In one of the most extraordinary pages of poetry in the history of humankind, Dante sings the price Ulysses paid with his life for choosing to cross the Pillars of Hercules, the limits of the then known world. It is also for these reasons that Italy is a country that is struggling to regenerate itself.



The project called Svolte (Turning Points) was created by SDA Bocconi School of Management and Corriere della Sera newspaper with the aim of communicating, innovatively and esthetically, the role of knowledge, education and training in unleashing transformative forces and energies for change, both for people and organizations. The transformative element of training is condensed in the ability to deeply modify the hard components of skills, but also in the force with which it acts on a person's cultural and behavioral mindset. In this light, education is a regenerative force, a kind of palingenesis that leads to radical renewal. Much investment in adult education arises from the need for professional regeneration, which goes through a process, sometimes consuming from a psychological point of view, of questioning one's own professional identity. What is observed, however, is that transformation-oriented training not only produces people capable of changing their own personal reality, but also the reality of the organizations they work for. These are people who are able to challenge their assumptions and achieve professional transformation, leading to positive impacts across the entire organization, by encouraging change and stimulating the ability to deal with changes in business models, technology and consumer behavior.

Thus, gathering the "stories" of turning points directly from the protagonists was a way of building a brief handbook of change, illustrating the human factor but also of the technical elements we need to go through when we decide to undertake a major change of direction in our career path. We are doing it here at SDA Bocconi, because we believe in the transforming power of knowledge.

by Giuseppe Soda, dean of SDA Bocconi School of Management