Giuseppe Sala: The Success of World Expo Was Built One Step at a Time

It's October. The flood of Expo visitors keeps coming just below the blackened windows of his office. Not even the bad weather slows it down. The final count of the day will set a new record, but Giuseppe Sala, Expo Commissioner and Bocconi Alumnus of the Year is not surprised, as if he had been certain all along that, once out of the logistical and political labyrinth, the Milan World Fair and its main thoroughfare, the Decuman, would be the stage of a triumph worthy of Champs-Élysées.

What do you think when you see this bustling crowd?

It's a great satisfaction. There's no point in hiding it. Expo has truly been the hardest thing I ever did. It's a little masterpiece because a public good was managed by private hands.

If I think back to the last five years, I realize that I came here each morning with the head of a business manager, and this many companies understood it, too. Otherwise all our partners, who gave Expo more than €400 million and did a great part of the work, would have never signed contracts at a time when the press carried only hellish news on Expo. I do not want to consider Expo a point of arrival, because I don't know what tomorrow brings, but as a resolving moment, that yes, certainly. It's as if all that I studied, all that I learned, my own process of becoming a man had been meant for me to get here.

What's your secret for the success of Expo?

It may sound banal, by my golden rule is to proceed gradually, one step at a time. It's an approach I've always had and that proves its worth even more in complex operations. Expo is a work in stages which has lasted five years, and during this period it was fundamental to set the right priorities each time, the steps that had to be taken and those which didn't have to be taken.

So would you say that for a top manager having the overall vision counts more than specialization?

I believe so. On the other hand, great universities tend to supply managers with diffuse knowledge. The professional world needs specialization, but being a good manager means more than just being competent. In fact, as your responsibilities grow you are less and less competent, but in exchange you acquire global vision, planning skills, endurance, leadership, a mediator's sensibility. The important thing is to build your own archive with many drawers containing all your experiences, and opening them from time to time do draw what you need for that specific job. Clearly, here at Expo I've opened the mediator's drawer a lot more often than usual.

You worked as a manager in multinationals, and as a city manager for the City of Milan. Is there a big difference between managing the private sector and managing the public sector?

It's really big. Being a manager in a private company is objectively easier. Because in that case you're never really alone. You need good advice? You buy it. You need a person? You hire him or her. In the public sector, you have to go through lengthy public competitions which are regularly appealed in court... Life as a private manager is also more financially rewarding. It's a problem that shouldn't be underestimated because Italy was crazy enough to set 250,000 euros as maximum compensation for public managers. This is wrong because this way the best talents will go to work for the private sector: those who stay in the public sector, like me, it's because they've already earned a lot elsewhere...

So can you really be prepared to work as a public manager, to be able to manage relations with institutions, politicians, lobbies...?

In France, there are great schools of long tradition preparing public administrators, while in Italy this is relatively novel discovery. Bocconi should implement it.

Maybe it should be you giving it a start when your job's over after December 31. After all, you've always kept in touch with your Alma Mater.

In spite of what newspapers write, I don't know yet what I'll do once Expo is really over. But I know my relationship with Bocconi will stay. This is also because I have always felt gratitude for a university that has done a lot for me. I grew up in a family of small entrepreneurs in the Brianza province north of Milan, and when I enrolled at Bocconi, I wanted to find a dimension that went beyond that of my father and my family. The University exposed me to international debates in an international environment, it really enabled all that followed in my professional career. Today, I try to give back what I can by teaching a few hours (in Professor Marco Agliati's course), also for the pleasure of still being part of that world. This sense of giving back to the community is the same that kept me from wavering in the months before Expo opened, I must really have it inside.

But you'll have to decide what to do in December. Don't you want to know what comes next?

Sure, I'm curious to find out, but it'll be another story. When you succeed in something this big, if you are wise, you refrain from trying to achieve an even more phenomenal feat. You have to know how to be useful without overperformance anxiety. Notwithstanding the fact, that after five years like what I went through, my head is still reeling and I would really like to take a moment of rest.