When I started working as a consultant, a geological era ago or so, a frequent rotation was considered an important, healthy part of the job. Projects were supposed to last two or three months; even those who were structurally longer would see their younger team members assigned just for a while – six months maximum, maybe nine in exceptional circumstances – and then rotated out. We did things fast. Daily progress checks. Weekly deliverables. Frequent steering committees and presentations. It seemed “right”, in the sense that stuff moved much faster than the standard routine at clients, who by the way often had hired us precisely because of that hectic rhythm. One place, one topic, one set of colleagues today; a different country, strategic issue and team tomorrow.
Unsurprisingly, most of our meals were also fast – takeout or a sandwich, or a quick thing at home. Sadly enough, similarly short-lived were many relationships and friendships, too.
Life has helped me drift in a very different direction from that top-of-the-corp universe, more often than not against my initial will. Time flows in a different way today and has an entirely different feel on my skin. I’m counting days to Meccanica di un addio hitting the shelves in Italy – sixteen – and to my first stop in a book tour that’s only partly defined – twenty-one. That would be time enough, for my old consultant self, to kick off a due diligence project, run with it, deliver, wrap up and move on. Dive into a world, understand it as much as possible, distill it into some kind of actionable findings, present it and shelve it in a remote corner of my memory.
The oldest draft I can find in my archives – when the book only had a working title, a very different planned ending and a still uncertain tone – dates from August 2020. The first draft that went to Marsilio is almost one year old now, and that one has changed a lot, too. The easy conclusion would be “some things take time”. Sure. But I’d suggest a more nuanced take – different things take different amounts of time. One can easily write a murder mystery much faster, and yes, most industrial processes can go faster, and I’ll always be in favor of hurrying up when there’s no good reason to procrastinate. But it won’t be the same murder mystery. Because there’s one thing that systematically, inevitably takes time – and that’s human growth, at all ages. The changes in my own sense of self and world, in the last twenty years, explain why that guy back then could run projects at lightspeed, but could never have authored this book. Even the personal and intellectual changes I underwent between August 2020 and a month ago (when we closed the drafts and went to print) made Meccanica di un addio, I hope, a better text altogether.
My meal prep also takes longer, nowadays. Some of the bread I bake takes a process of almost 48 hours end to end. My best ragù to date once simmered for over 12 hours and is a radically different experience compared to bottled sauce. There’s a time for bottled sauce or sushi, and there’s a time for sourdough.
What I still find challenging is figuring out which is which.
Carlo Calabrò 