Aims
The analogies make it possible to develop by levering various intellectual and cognitive dimensions, beyond the technical aspects of the profession (widely consolidated) and have the aim of enriching the professional culture of the senior management.
Target
The learning model, by analogy, is particularly efficacious in the training of senior managers.
Topic
The “Analogies” are a training model that is part of the ISTUD heritage, since it has been successfully offered to companies in both inter-company and in-house format since 1998. In recent years it has been possible to consolidate a significant heritage of experiences in the planning and organisation of this training model and to create professional relations with a group of lecturers who combine solid preparation in their field with the ability to relate to the working world.
This teaching model is based on analogical thinking a method of reasoning that operates by similitude, by apparently improbable comparisons that potentially generate new perspectives.
Leaving behind ‘logic’, which operates according to strict cause/effect relations, it relates various ‘elements’ (topics, themed areas…), seeking correspondences and/or diversities. It is therefore useful to open new routes, offering unusual points of view in approaching a problem.
The meetings on the ‘analogy’ model are based on the concept that by examining cultures, knowledge and disciplines other than those that we are accustomed to dealing with in working contexts can reveal new and different ways of seeing and dealing with management problems.
On the basis of this assumption, each meeting foresees the presence of a speaker from professional settings very different from the corporate environment. The lecture is followed by a dialogue between the participants, the moderator and the speaker, seeking possible analogies between the experience described and the organisational dynamics.
Organisation
The Analogies are structured in cycles of 5-6 half-day meetings, each organised as follows:
- opening by the moderator, presentation of the speaker and the aims of the meeting
- presentation by an ‘expert’ on the topic of the meeting. The content and the method of the testimony are agreed and set before the meeting with the ISTUD coordinator and the moderator, in order to make them as coherent as possible with the topics to be dealt with
- dialogue and debate with the participants, guided and stimulated by the moderator. In this phase it is essential that the moderator be capable of stimulating and involving the participants, but also that the participants be motivated to contribute actively and personally to the debate
- closure by the moderator, with the aim of rationalising the topics and the considerations that have emerged.
Alternatively to the classic schedule (14.00-18.00), it is possible to evaluate the option of a ‘long afternoon’, concluding the meeting with a cocktail/dinner, with the aim of encouraging socialising and networking between the participants.
The topics of the analogies
The following is a list of the topics on which ISTUD has consolidated experience. This does not mean that new topics and new speakers cannot be proposed.
- Listening to a jazz band: what is needed for coordination without a ‘conductor’ - Marco Mariani
- Learning from strategy: defence and attack for conquering markets - Mario Unnia
- Learning from Military History: Napoleon at Waterloo. Analysis of the relations between military strategies, historical catenations and the unforeseeable - Prof. Alessandro Barbero
- Learning from gambling: strategy, risk and improvisation in managerial decisions - Prof. Guido Sarchielli
- Learning from the medieval knighthood: professed ideals and behaviour in organisations - Prof. Alessandro Barbero
- Learning from the religious orders: organisations without frontiers - Prof. Alessandro Barbero
- Learning from the study of catastrophes: the vulnerability of complex systems and the management of emergencies - Prof.ssa Bruna De Marchi
- earning from the Jewish Diaspora: the links with an imaginary territory and the realisation of virtual organisations - Prof. Riccardo Calimani
- Learning from geopolitics: the dissolution of frontiers and the Diaspora in the era of globalisation - Prof. Gianluca Bocchi
- Learning from the religious system: the Catholic Church. Relations with the territory, recruiting new followers, training an executive class - Prof. Alessandro Barbero
‘In House’ Option
The Analogies have also been proposed with the formula in-house. In this case the possible aims could, for example, be the following:
- to accompany a process of integration of the senior management of the company (encouraging comparison and exchange with a ‘softer’ but equally powerful entry, that is to say analogy);
- to accompany a process of change (suggesting new thinking and broadening horizons);
- to offer something different to a target that already has considerable experience of classic managerial training.
In this case, prior to the meetings with the speaker, it is possible to plan a further space for work finalised in linking the analogical stimulus to the organisational reality, planning new opportunities for managerial action based on and inspired by this stimulus. This could be the fact that both at a collective level, by activating the work of subgroups prior to the meeting with the speaker, and at individual level through individual coaching sessions. In both cases, the participants are assisted from a methodological point of view by a senior ISTUD lecturer.
In this case, prior to the meetings with the speaker, it is possible to plan a further space for work finalised in linking the analogical stimulus to the organisational reality, planning new opportunities for managerial action based on and inspired by this stimulus. This could be the fact that both at a collective level, by activating the work of subgroups prior to the meeting with the speaker, and at individual level through individual coaching sessions. In both cases, the participants are assisted from a methodological point of view by a senior ISTUD lecturer.