We are two former McKinsey consultants, where the motto «up or out» had a precise meaning for almost fifty years: either the consultant continued to grow in leadership skills, or he had to leave McKinsey and build a new (often highly prestigious) career in another organization. The idea of applying the same motto to the Italian economy came to us at the end of 2011, when the debt crisis made Italians rediscover the vulnerability of our economy and the problem of growth. Several readers told us that we had already addressed these problems in Meritocracy and Rules, and they suggested that we take up those ideas again to make them a real "manifesto for growth".
Today, the Monti government has also made growth a priority, but the extent of the necessary cultural transformation is not yet clear to Italians and therefore they are struggling to understand whether the reforms launched will achieve their goal. The problem – Monti is well aware of this and has made it clear – is that growth in Italy has been blocked for years and it will take time to break up the incrustations, especially cultural ones, which are blocking the development of our economy. Italy, grow up or go out! aims primarily at denounce these prejudices, and wants to explain what it really means to adopt, even in Italy, the "culture of growth", which is based on one competition that respects the rules, which generates meritocracy and excellence and therefore makes it possible to enhance human capital, the real engine of growth in a post-industrial society.
We believe this reflection is useful for several reasons. The first is that we Italians have not yet understood the true nature of the economic malaise that afflicts our country today. Many Italians believe in a series of "false myths" who would like to explain the causes of the crisis and offer the right recipes to overcome it.
The first myth concerns theorigin of Italy's problems: for many, the fault would be the international crisis, globalization, Anglo-Saxon finance or some other "bad wolf" who prefer to accuse rather than see the evils of our house. Anyone who supports this position has not understood (or pretends not to understand) that our crisis is not caused by the global debt crisis at all, but by the inability of our economy to grow, a stalemate that has lasted for more than twenty years. The global financial crisis that broke out in the now distant 2008 only made the rest of the world discover that the progressive impoverishment of Italians risked becoming a problem for them too. But the importance of growth, not only on financial markets but in everyday life, often escapes Italians. For this reason, other perpetrators and other ways out are being sought. But there are none: either you grow up or you leave.
Il second false myth is that Italy can recover prosperity and overcome his current problems by turning back the hands of the clock and rediscovering the roots of its development in the past decades: the value of "small is beautiful", the strength of the "territory", family and corporate solidarity as a safety net instead of that created by the state or individual resources. The reality is very different: the world economy, with globalization, and Italian society, with the aging of the population, have changed irreversibly. Italy has not been able to adapt its economic model, but it must learn to do so. Why isn't our economy growing? Not because businesses aren't born, but because they don't grow. And they can't do it because they were strangled by the motto "small is beautiful", which prevented them from transforming. And the need to "protect our legendary SMEs"? Our SMEs are realities that often, unfortunately, survive only because they evade taxes and pay their workers little. The best ones must instead be helped to grow, the inefficient ones must close or be absorbed. Another false myth states that in order to grow we must "copy the German model". But today this project no longer applies, our "manufacturing" economic model is very far from the German one, which is made up of larger, more technological and better organized companies, but above all because by now the "factories" constitute only a small part of a modern economy.
But there are several other false myths circulating in our country. For example the much-invoked relaunch of the «made in Italy», which, however, has had its day and must today be replaced by «created in Italy», conceived in Italy. And the need to eliminate Article 18 to allow factories in crisis to fire freely? The damage of article 18 is certainly not that it prevents factories in crisis from making layoffs (which they can do more easily than in France), but to limit meritocracy: on the one hand it prevents big companies from firing an absentee worker and hiring a good one who wants to work, on the other hand it has created an unfair apartheid that generates inefficiency among millions of overprotected workers and millions of precarious workers without any protection.
Another dangerous myth claims that competition, respect for the rules and meritocracy are "Anglo-Saxon" values, to which our economy can never be inspired because they are foreign to the DNA of Italians. Anyone who believes in this "myth" justifies tax evasion, undeclared work, the privileges of the many small corporations, familism, recommendations... And they are convinced that trying to give themselves the right rules is equivalent to a Sisyphean effort: better to keep the rules we have, perhaps turning a blind eye to who is being clever. Actually the DNA of Italians is fine: when we find ourselves in an environment where the rules work and are respected, we respect them too. When we work abroad, for example. When we make a career in large multinationals, accepting the challenge of meritocracy. When we enter international markets with our companies, we accept and often win the challenge of competition. The problem is in Italy. Because many Italians don't believe that rules and meritocracy can be made to work here too. They have not understood that the rules must be respected not to observe an ethical principle, but because it is convenient. The real ethical deficiency of our economy is not the managers who earn too much (although this is sometimes true, given the results), it is the companies that survive thanks to the undeclared and the "black".
But there is another reason why a reflection on growth is important today: we need to articulate a long-term vision of Italy's growth. Which is missing today. This vision of our future is not made up only of percentages of GDP and legislative provisions: it must become a story of the country we want to create in the coming years. It must appear clear and convincing. It should ideally generate an emotional boost in Italians, a desire for change and action. What the Monti government can do in a few months to stimulate growth (assuming it does all the right things) has a limit, which appears increasingly evident. The risk is that, in the long term, Italians, who are unaware of the epochal transformation needed, will only see the costs of the initiatives launched by the government, given that they do not understand the root causes of the lack of growth. And above all they believe that the danger of becoming a "new Greece" has definitely escaped. And at that point politics, which Monti supports today, will return to populism and will start selling dreams and unrealizable promises again.
The key theme of this book will therefore be how to achieve an epochal transformation of our economy. But one will be needed new leadership: to achieve this objective, however, it is certainly not enough to change the electoral law or found a new party that is an "expression of civil society": "civil society" really needs to be changed. We need a new capitalism, with a new generation of entrepreneurs. Need one new generation of civil servants. Above all, we need young Italians who realize that the country will not change if they too do not change and are no longer active. It is precisely to young Italians that this book is directed. To involve them. To explain to them what is really happening in their country and how different this is from what they hear every day. To convince them that the transformation, albeit epochal, is really possible. And to give them concrete suggestions on what they should do to grow and not "go out".
