Issue 3 2019

6 CORPORATE VISION / Issue 3 2019 1 , Sintetica is a Switzerland based pharmaceutical specialist dedicated to creating innovative solutions to global healthcare problems. Recently, the firm’s Corporate CEO, Augusto Mitidieri found recent success in Corporate Vision’s 2018 Leadership Elite Awards. Following the win, we caught up with Augusto to discover more about his award-winning leadership skills and to gain a detailed insight into the innovative firm. Leading the Way to Extraordinary Growth in the Pharmaceutical Industry Established in 1921 in Switzerland, Sintetica is a pharmaceutical company which delivers injectable anaesthetics and analgesics to pa- tients worldwide, through innovative science and excellence in develop- ment, production and marketing. With sites located in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy and United Kingdom, and their headquarters located in Mendrisio, Switzerland, Sintetica employ a total of 300 peo- ple who originate from 29 countries from across the world. Under the award-winning leadership of Augusto Mitidieri, who is able to implement a real strategic vision which places the individual at the very centre of corporate decision, Sintetica the team at Sintetica are fully committed to innovating therapies and drugs for local anaesthesia, pain management and neuromodulation. As such, all of the teams’ efforts and resources are primarily focused on becoming a leader within these respected fields through the development of new medicines, and better treatment options for both physicians and patients worldwide. Going into further detail about the firm, Augusto begins by informing us of how Sintetica works with a mission of centrality of the human being which is regarded beyond company goals. “Here at Sintetica, we follow a human-centred organizational model, which is based on a deep cultural change. This specific model requires an innovative managerial philosophy which places both re- sponsibility and merit at the centre, changing organizational models and behaviours at all times.” In the industry at present, there are many managers who are moving away from a role of command and control, and into more of a coaching position in order to manage people, enhance their talents through empowerment and accountability for results, but also to reward their merit. By using their new working model, Sintetica is now primarily based upon some necessary and unavoidable preconditions, as Augusto explains. “The first and most important one is passion. Amotivating force that is able to define the real mission be- cause without it, any role performed would purely be a formal exercise. The involvement of individuals becomes prime focus to transmit the firm’s values. This is only possible when there is information transpar- ency on strategy, values, objectives and performance. When all these are combined together, an individu- al’s and team goal can be achieved, as Augusto explains. “Together with all these conditions, there is an element which must be not only the core, but also the spirit of our company. Total respect from inside the organization, in terms of corporate and individual priorities, is fundamental for managers to make clear what they expect from their employees, and to frequently align these behaviours to expectations, thanks to the continuous and con- structive share of feedback, not to judge their work but to address them towards a continuous improvement.” There is a key factor which Augusto wants to emphasize, which is that all of these new steps in Sintetica are based upon the last essential element, which is smiling. Although it is a concept which appears to be quite simple, it is one that has a high relevance. This is because a true smile is contagious, and it is the identity of Sintetica and its concept of a ‘great place to work’. For Sintetica, the firm aspire to be a great place to work at, and is also one of the reasons why the Corpo- rate Sustainability function includes HR. People are the biggest asset and the pillar of sustainability. When discussing the human-centred strategic vision of Sintetica, Augusto details how it is structured around some main targets. “The first and most important is the peripheral decisional autonomy, which is the capacity of the individ- uals at different levels of the organ- Oct18454 ization to make decisions based on the informed risk taking. Managers are moving to an approach based on the control of results and on the accountability to get them so as to create a peripheral decision-making autonomy, based on conscious risk assumption. “To do this, we must leverage a strategic idea of growth, based on the international diffusion of inno- vation and corporate culture, which is hinged on the centrality of the individual, on his ability to take in- formed risk and respect. In this view, managers and talents of Sintetica, the real protagonists of this change, are also undergoing an endless path of high-level training (Sintetica never ending School), powered by MIP, the business school of Politec- nico di Milano.” As for the firm’s coaching process, it is a key point of Sintetica’s project of innovation. Augusto touches on how all the employees at the company are subject of this change, but also thanks to a broad training program (democratic digital learning), it enables the team to enrich their specific knowledge and prepare them for continuous improvement in the digital age. “The human centred organization is based on responsibility and merit; therefore, it is by its nature and not based on the classical hierarchical model. To spread to all levels of the