It was Monday, I’m sure. Every proper new job cannot but start on Monday. That Monday marked my last weekend prior to becoming a GT boy, which was spent fretting about trying to understand how to build something new and innovative in a firm of chartered accountants which was synonym with “history and tradition”!
Aim of my job was that of creating a new unit within Bernoni Grant Thornton (back then better known as Studio Bernoni) dedicated to advisory activities, with a specific focus on extraordinary operations. Easier said than done, no one back then knew how difficult it would be.
Despite various thoughts whirling crazily about inside my head and issues which seemed to me really countless, I remember that during that weekend I was strangely calm. I was not worried about becoming the alien of the group, the rare bird often using English terms to say things that have a perfectly understandable Italian name and, most importantly, who did not (and still does not) understand a thing about taxation, so much so as to think that F24 (a form used to pay taxes in Italy) was a US fighter-bomber and that IVA (the Italian for VAT) was that singer my mother likes so much.
I was calm because somebody, a few weeks before that fateful Monday, had told me things that - I don’t know why - made me realise that I happened to be in the right place at the right time.
I had been invited to the firm’s Christmas party, despite the fact a few weeks still had to pass before the termination of my job contract. As soon as I entered the restaurant I was welcomed by a roar of laughter and chatting with the utmost spontaneity, like when you welcome someone who has always been part of the team. Many people came to me to introduce themselves and shake my hand, offering glasses of spumante and turning my back red with their pats!
Wow, what a happy environment. Have I arrived at the wrong party? No, no, I’m sure. These were the same smiles which I had seen in the offices of Studio Bernoni weeks earlier when I went there for the job interviews. How many young people, I said to myself, I don’t think I’ll have problems to integrate myself. But you’ll never know, all that glitters is not gold.
In the middle of the room, I see him from a distance, surrounded by young people who shake his hand, speak and smile to him. He is Giuseppe Bernoni, name and soul of a professional firm whose tradition - now I can say it - is that of changing and evolving every single day, adjusting to change and, often, anticipating it.
Giuseppe sees me from a distance, comes near, smiles, takes my hand looking me in the eyes and tells me:
“We’ll do great thing together, you’ll see! Congratulations!”
"Congratulations on what, I am sorry?"
“For the great things that you will do and that we will do!”
Giuseppe knew all about me, my past, my family and, most importantly, about the projects I had shared with his younger partners. He asked me what I would do as soon as I would have joined the firm, how I planned to organise my team and, above all, if I needed help. Yes, because for him I was not a new resource destined to create a new business within the organisation that bears his name, but a cog, a little cog in a complex engine which works in a coordinated and seamless way, maybe generating just a little smoke a noise!
The sense of peace that that look and that handshake conveyed to me were crucial. I understood that that was my world, my way of being and of working. I couldn’t wait to begin.
I believe that a good start is always essential, for anything you are about to do. Thanks to Giuseppe I decided that there were no risks in throwing myself headlong in this new adventure, that I needed to fully commit myself without spearing myself. The firm would have supported me, willing to provide me with all that I might need.
It was Monday, I’m sure. I walked in with a smile, it was my first day in a new job, a new life. I started working with a spirit completely unknown to me until that moment. I did not want to compete or emerge, I just wanted to do well, in everyone's interest.
Thanks Giuseppe, because I still treasure that handshake! And every time we close a deal or do something good, I can still hear in my head the congratulations that you expressed to me in advance back in December 2012, the same congratulations which I express, in your name, to the dozens of young professionals who, after that Monday, joined this great team that we now call Grant Thornton Financial Advisory Services.
