Actually · Will Media

La VERITÀ sul futuro del LAVORO

·38 min·2 clips

Two 30-year-old employees from separate divisions sent Rina's CEO a document called 'Unlocking Rina's Hidden Value' — unsolicited, criticising senior decision-making processes, and were invited to present it to the full executive staff meeting.

1. 'Actually' interviews Carlo Luzzatto, CEO of Rina, a 165-year-old engineering certification company, at a live event called Actually Arena held at the Talent Garden in Calabria. 2. Luzzatto is the group CEO of Rina, with a background at General Electric in both the Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt eras, approximately 15 years in the United States between California and Florida, and experience in private equity and M&A. 3. The episode's central concern is how companies, individuals, and new graduates should position themselves in a world where AI is disrupting the skills hierarchy. 4. Rina began in 1861 as a naval classification registry — one of the first three in the world — and pivoted to ISO certification and engineering consulting after European monopoly laws were abolished around 2000. 5. The company now employs 7,000 people across 70 countries and 5 continents, with 80% of staff being graduates, of whom 80% hold STEM degrees including civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers, physicists, mathematicians, biologists, and agronomists. 6. Luzzatto argues that AI in its generative form primarily threatens white-collar, desk-based, repetitive work; blue-collar roles are more exposed to physical automation, which is a separate and slower process. 7. He introduces HITL — Human in the Loop versus Human in the Lead — as the live debate among AI researchers: the question is whether humans will remain primary decision-makers or become supporting operators within AI-directed workflows. 8. Every time work involves connection to the physical world — inspections, field engineering, on-site asset management — it is much harder to automate, which is a structural advantage for companies like Rina. 9. On career advice for an 18-year-old starting university, Luzzatto says his answer is the same as it was 30 years ago: do what you love, because predicting the job market five years out was hard then and is impossible now. 10. For STEM graduates specifically, he recommends starting with hands-on technical experience rather than jumping to management programmes, because the technical foundation forms the base of professional credibility. 11. He dismisses the hard skills versus soft skills distinction as outdated; Rina now represents skills in a network model rather than a linear hierarchy, and treats humanistic capabilities as increasingly important in the AI era. 12. The 'burning platform' insight: in a turnaround it is easy to create urgency because the crisis is obvious; in a successful company, the CEO must manufacture that urgency before the growth curve begins to flatten — and if you wait until it flattens, you have waited too long. 13. George Bernard Shaw's quote on communication — 'the illusion of communication is that it has been done' — is cited by Luzzatto as the reason he holds a live town hall for all 7,000 employees every three months. 14. Middle management is identified as the primary barrier to change in large organisations; Luzzatto describes it as a resistant layer that, once cracked, collapses rapidly, releasing the energy of those below it. 15. The 'Unlocking Rina's Hidden Value' story: two employees aged 30-33 from separate subsidiaries wrote a document criticising Rina's decision-making opacity and sent it directly to the CEO after a town hall; Luzzatto invited them to present at his 12-person senior staff meeting including three subsidiary CEOs. 16. Luzzatto frames the story as proof that psychological safety — the willingness of junior employees to address the CEO directly — is the most important enabler of upward information flow in large organisations. 17. He describes organisational structure at Rina not as traditional tree charts but as neural network maps, deliberately designed to break down silo thinking across subsidiaries. 18. The episode is a live-audience interview with audible applause and crowd interaction; it has a relaxed, collegial tone and includes a running joke about the host defending 'humanists' against the all-engineering culture of Rina. 19. Best suited for Italian-speaking professionals in corporate or engineering roles who are navigating the AI transition or managing teams through change. 20. Less useful for listeners seeking detailed AI technical analysis or for those looking for personal finance content.

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