CEO Today Management Consulting Awards 2021

HONG KONG

CEO TODAY MANAGEMENT CONSULTING AWARDS 2021

study and analyse every detail. For example, if it is a country, I like to know its history, its geopolitics, its uses and customs, its main religion and last but not least: its people. Knowing these factors helps you a lot to penetrate their thinking and many times to be a part of them. It is also, if you like, a form of respect for countries that have a working relationship. For this reason, even when I am in China or in other parts of the East, I feel like I am at home, despite being thousands of kilometres away in Italy.

Hong Kong as well as in Italy and London, for any differences that may arise with suppliers. The relationship with our client is not between a service provider company and a client but we believe we are the clientʼs partner to better understand their needs and make them reach the goals set as if they were our own. I think this is the thing that sets us apart from the others.

In your opinion, what are the qualities of a good leader and CEO?

What business lessons have the COVID-19 pandemic taught you?

I believe that a good leader or a good CEO must have qualities that can be summarised as follows:

As mentioned before, the COVID-19 pandemic took us by surprise and put us in front of unpredictability that we did not think could come before. I believe that such situations will happen again in the future. The lesson it left us can be translated into three words: Resilience, Agility, Sustainability. Being resilient allows you to resist by modifying some strategies and knowing how to diversify in order to be able to maintain the trend without sacrificing resources. Agility allows you to be quick in making decisions and consequently reactive to all the upheavals in the market that such a violent pandemic puts you in front of. Sustainability, understood as Financial Sustainability, is good financial management with a current liquidity base that allows you to stand up even in the most difficult moments. Here, this pandemic has taught me that these three phases allow the overcoming of epochal crises like this. Why do you encourage more companies to use the services of an export consultancy? In Europe, and in Italy in particular, many companies, even of considerable sizes, are family-run and consequently see an export- import manager as a cost and not as an investment. We recommend consulting as an outsourcing service, with a lower cost than an internal manager and eliminating all problems related to research, payment management, customs, quality control, logistics and transport. But we do not only do consultancy, we do import-export for our brands and therefore those who rely on us know that we can provide a service that is not only competent but also complete. An example is the Italian food and wine companies, companies of the highest quality, but still facing the export of their products as they did a few decades ago. Here we help them to enter the market in a more incisive way.

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Authoritativeness, not authoritarian, but authoritative. He has to be credible to their organization. Be aware of the context and consequently be far-sighted. Know how to learn from mistakes. A good leader must look in the mirror everymorning and humbly analyse what they did wrong. Donʼt always think about successes but remember mistakes. A good leader is also a trainer and a good trainer creates equally good managers. Know how to innovate and create development.

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Know how to reduce complexities. Raise awareness in the organisation.

Here, I believe that a good Leader or CEO must reflect these points in order to get the most out of his company.

What does this award mean to you?

First of all, I thank CEO Today Magazine and those who recommended me for this prestigious award. For me, it means a recognition of what has been done to date. It hasnʼt always been easy, there have beenmany sacrifices but seeing what my companies have achieved and in particular, ITM Ltd, fills me with pride. This award gives me even more conviction on going forward as we have done so far and on reaching increasingly important goals. These goals are always reached alongside the people who work within my organisation, with my wife Cristina and our children. The award is also for them. Thank you.

What sets you apart from other export consultancies?

“A good leader must look in the mirror every morning and humbly analyse what they did wrong.”

We are distinguishedby the fact that, asmentionedbefore,we donot only run a consultancy, we run import-export. So the relationship, for example, with customs or customs agents is direct, we manage our containers together with those of the companies we work with as consultants. We have legal offices, our partners, in China and

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