Il Giardino si riproduce - Studio Staff RU

93
Capitolo 3 1981-1990
methodology; and that the latter two, together with Aurelio Necci, would be on the MTA
payroll. The board of MTA was to consist of Aurelio, Peppe and Silvano del Lungo, from
Studio Staff; and myself from SHL. The office of MTA was in via di Sant’Erasmo, near to
San Giovanni in Laterano.
Many of my main memories of working with Studio Staff are from this period,
until we moved to via Tevere in 1994. Both in the via di Sant’Erasmo and the via Tevere
periods, I would come to Rome 3-4 times a year, generally just staying one or two days,
although twice I rented an apartment for two weeks and applied myself to the serious study
of Rome, together with my wife and various friends.
Ever since 1987, I have been fortunate to count Peppe Carelli, Silvano del Lungo
and Aurelio Necci as friends as well as esteemed colleagues, and have been privileged to
visit the homes of each of them.
The relationship between SHL and Studio Staff developed considerably during the
10 years 1987-1997, but always with Studio Staff as the majority partner in MTA, although
the latter came more and more to be referred to as SHL Italia. I had sought to increase the
SHL shareholding in the Italian company, and was finally able to do this in 1997 when SHL
went on the London Stock Exchange, and the Studio Staff partners agreed to exchange their
holding in MTA/SHL Italia for shares in the worldwide SHL group. By this time, I had
become CEO of the SHL group and reluctantly had to delegate our part of the Italian
management to my Danish colleague, Henning Bille.
We at SHL were always very proud of our Italian company, during the very varied
fortunes that the latter enjoyed with the ‘ups and downs’ of the Italian economy during the
period concerned. We would sometimes joke about the proposition of running a business in
Italy based entirely on objective assessment, but we were always impressed by the science,
professionalism and rectitude of our Italian colleagues. SHL had by the mid-1990s set up
ventures all over the world, including Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia,
India and Australasia at one end; USA, Canada, Mexico and all of Western Europe at the
other; not to forget Saudi Arabia, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey and Greece in the
middle. Obviously, these ventures could not all conform to a standard paradigm. But it is
probably true to say that our Italian business was the most different from all the others.
During the whole of this period, ‘concorsi pubblici’ were an important feature for
us in Italy, while Spain was the only other SHL company to be involved at all in this
particular activity. Initially, the Italian business was wholly dependent on ability tests, and I
remember being told that the use of personality questionnaires in selection was forbidden
by Italian law; although I did manage to overcome this apparent objection later. For a long
time, the SHL strategy of training staff from the HR departments of client companies to use
our tests was not though feasible in Italy, on the grounds that HR departments were afraid
of the possible accusation of corruption if they handled the tests. Perhaps for good, but
perhaps also a little boringly, even Italy had been influenced by the many aspects of
globalisation, so that SHL Italy is today less unlike the rest of the Group than previously;
but I am sure it is still unique and still very Italian.
One of our successful ‘concorsi pubblici’ was in connection with the recruitment
of 1000 police officers in Rome before the 1990 World Cup. There were 35000 of