Two thousand, one hundred, thirty: CFMT sets records with the Starting program

A survey among participants, conducted by Bruno Busacca, Professor of Management and Director of the program, and Maria Cristina Cito, Associate Professor of Practice in Marketing and Sales, found that an additional benefit is the increased sensitivity of managers to their own training and that of their collaborators. In this way, participation in Starting opens up interesting prospects for further growth for both the managers and those who work with them.

“If it’s true that there’s no executive without a business, it’s also true that there would be no business without quality executives. Our goal is to offer the best training to the CFMT’s 10,000 companies and 30,000 managers,” says Giorgio Rapari, Vice President of CFMT.

“The collaboration with CFMT is an excellent example of what a high-quality partnership is, one capable of lasting over time,” says Director Busacca. “The three fundamental ingredients are quality (of participants, content, faculty, and organization), continuous innovation, and mutual trust between partners. This mix fuels Starting, a higher education program aimed at managing complexity, resources, people, leadership style, markets, and innovation. it is targeted at a community of talented managers oriented toward value creation and sustainable development.”

A program can reach 100 editions and 30 years of life only if it is co-designed so that it can constantly evolve with the changing scenarios and needs of managers.

“Today, for a training and development path to be effective and achieve the desired objectives, it must enhance various skills and operate on multiple levels,” says Nicola Spagnuolo, Director of CFMT. “First and foremost, technical-vertical skills must be consolidated. Then, in such a time of great uncertainty, transversal skills must be trained, which I believe are mistakenly referred to as soft skills because they are not soft at all. Finally, digital skills must be acquired, as they are enabling factors for development models where technology is undeniably pivotal.”

“I have been teaching in the Starting program since its early years,” says Gianmario Verona, Professor of Innovation and former Rector of Bocconi University. “Over the years, innovation has become increasingly central, eventually encompassing all business processes. Furthermore, the technologies we deal with have changed; artificial intelligence is just the latest example.”

As evidence of a changing environment, the percentage of women has been steadily increasing, as highlighted by Busacca and Cito’s survey. Female participation has grown over time from 21% to 28.5%. Moreover, the skills that new executives consider most important to develop have also changed: those on the rise, especially after the pandemic period, include “Developing strategic thinking,” “Managing difficult situations,” and “Better understanding oneself and managing one's career.”

“Today, we teach new executives that leadership is a tool at the service of a community,” explains Simona Cuomo, Associate Professor of Practice in Leadership, Organization & Human Resources.

All these characteristics, as emerged from the survey among participants, translate into a net promoter score (the index, ranging from -100 to 100, that measures the likelihood of recommending a product or service) of 78.1 for Starting – a level comparable to that of excellent brands.