Andrea Pamparana - Preface "Avant-garde TEAL".

AVANT-GARDE TEAL

The future of business organisations. Dynamics and methods for teamwork and self-knowledge

Preface by Andrea Pamparana

The possible manifesto 

Massimiliano Fanni Canelles' book, before going into the heart of the issues it intends to address, introduces the reader with a quotation: 'The old theory of the scientific organisation of work consisted in conceiving organisational thinking only through structures and procedures; it now turns out that the human spirit is the best integration tool for dealing with complexity'. 

The author of this reflection, which I consider important above all for its extraordinary topicality, is Michel Crozier, a French sociologist and political scientist, professor at the Sciences Po Paris Institute, who was born in 1922 and died in Paris on 24 May 2013. A political scientist who dedicated his life as a scholar in particular to organisational behaviour. Founder and director of the Centre de sociologie des organisations and of other important institutions, both in France and at the prestigious universities of Harvard, Nanterre and California, he focused his research on the phenomenon of bureaucracy and the analysis of the phenomena of professional mobility and the factors resisting innovation. His precise, I would say microscopic, analysis of the concentration of power in the bureaucratic organisation is formidable in this sense, highlighting how the fracture between the top and the base is mainly due to the discretionary application of rules and regulations to the advantage of the top. Crozier therefore proposed the introduction of procedures to make the application of rules impartial, with the aim of making structures more elastic. 

The work of Massimiliano Fanni Canelles fits rightly, and I would add with full merit, into the furrow of this approach, applying above all to the very current field of health organisation. 

Massimiliano is neither a sociologist nor a political scientist. He is a doctor who, in this dramatic year of the pandemic, has worked as deputy head of the emergency department of the Franz Tappeiner hospital in Merano, then on the front line in the daily battle against Covid-19, in an area of Italy hard hit by the coronavirus emergency. Journalist and essayist, lecturer at the University of Bologna in the Department of Political and Social Sciences where he teaches international health cooperation. 

I met Massimiliano at a meeting organised by Loris Comisso, a tireless organiser of events, in person but these days also online, relating to the professional training of managers in various fields. I immediately grasped in Massimiliano an aspect that for me is fundamental in the evaluation of a doctor: empathy, the ability to place oneself on the side of the patient, to share with the patient the common battle to achieve what the great Argentine psychologist Antonio Damasio defines as homeostasis, or the search for well-being. 

Massimiliano is a man of the trenches, in the true sense of the word. In 2004 he founded the Association @uxilia onlus, and since 2014 he has been president of Auxilia Foundation, specialising in health cooperation and international diplomacy, especially in countries involved in armed conflicts, with the construction of health centres and hospitals. 

The protagonist of this volume is Teal. What is it about? Transversal management techniques associated with behavioural characterisations of the enneagram and the logic of gamification, i.e. the application of dynamics typical of the game in non-game contexts. Difficult terms, of course. At the first reading incomprehensible to non-experts. For this reason, the curiosity to know what is being discussed must prevail and push the reader to delve into a subject that, I assure you, is very topical. A Teal organisation, as the author clearly explains, 'in which what matters is no longer the success of the individual but the person in his or her entirety and authenticity, where hierarchy falls by the wayside, giving way to relationships between peers, and where individuals can be compared to cells of a living organism capable of self-organisation and of developing deep relationships'. 

Massimiliano loves to write, and it shows. He deals with a complex theme in a scientific way, after all he is a doctor, a scientist, but he does not neglect the pleasantness of good writing that allows you to flow through the pages of this book without fear of getting tired, but with the ever-present intention of creating further interest and a desire for greater knowledge of the themes on the part of the reader. 

From the very first pages, we can also identify Maximilian's 'political' manifesto, where he explains that 'gratification makes you free from mass conditioning and allows you to overcome frustrations, but above all it generates a greater critical capacity that allows you to better analyse information'. 

Utopia? Perhaps, but as philosopher Roberto Mordacci (2020) explains, the contemporary world absolutely needs to think of the future as a good possibility. Having overcome the illusion that progress is produced automatically by destiny or by historical or technological necessity," writes Mordacci, "we have the task of imagining social structures and relations that are less unjust, less self-destructive, more liveable, even if not perfect". 

This book should become part and parcel of the textbooks of managers involved in the organisation of society. Only in this way can the word bureaucracy regain its true original meaning, as conceived in 1750 by the economist de Gournay, and be cleansed of the encrustations that today make it one of the evils of our society. 

Andrea Pamparana

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