It does not matter how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up.

Florence, a 27 years old guy uses Twitter to tell everybody he's quite annoyed because this summer he will stay home.

His name is Giuseppe Rossi; typical italian name. 

There are thousands of Giuseppe Rossi in Italy but this one is different.

He's gifted. He was born in the US, his parents being from southern Italy, and he came back to Parma when he was 12. One year later he started his career. He's a football player.

Parma, Manchester when he was 17, Newcastle, Parma again and then Villareal and Florence.

An expatriate like thousands of italians in the early 19th hundreds that had to motivate himself and always proof he was good enough to be there.

When he starts at Manchester he's playing with Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Diego Forlan, Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs just to name some.

A lot to learn, a lot to fight.

But he's gifted. He's a striker and he can score. He scores a lot of goals both in his team and in the National team. In 2008 after his 1st injury, a meniscus broken, he's 21 and he's preparing for his 1st World Championship. 

That's THE EVENT. 

A player has probably the possibility to play two World cups. A good one three. 

16 players could play four editions, 2 played five.

Giuseppe is 21. He has 10 years at least in front of him. 10 years are 3 World Cups.

But Marcello Lippi, a semi-god after he won the 2006 edition, decides it's not his time yet. 

He stays home and Italy comes quickly back from South Aftica after one of the worst world cup ever for the team.

For the 2012 European championship though there is a new Italy manager, Prandelli, that thinks Giuseppe must play.

He's now playing for Villareal. 32 goals in one season and he's the top scorer ever for the Yellow submarines, so is Villareal known for its yellow shirts. The first "human player" after the two aliens Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi that play for super teams though. Real and Barça.

That's what Italy needs to remember another Rossi, Paolo Rossi, that brought us to the top of the world in Spain 1982.

26/10/2011, Madrid. During Real Madrid vs Villareal a ligament of his knee breaks. 6 months out. There's still time though for the Euro Cup in Summer 2012. But the recovery will be long and tough.

Giuseppe is a strong guy though. He went around the world since he was 12 and he lost his father few months earlier. He had to do it for him.

The day after his ligament was back and now 6 months of pain. Out of the pitch for the recovery.

Winter goes by quickly and in April Giuseppe is ready again. But it's not over yet.

The 12th of April he's doing his training and... crack. Same knee, same ligament. 6 more months out.

This would have killed everybody's hope.

But Giuseppe is strong. And Fiorentina thinks he can do it and although he's still out, signs him for the 2013/2014 season.

And he's back on duty on August 2013. Goal to Catania. Then 2 goals to Genoa, 3 to Juventus and 2 to Sampdoria.

He's the usual Pepito, the nickname that was given to him when in Spain was one of the top scorers.

5th January 2014.

 

A tackle and his knee goes bad again. 4 months out.

I think that you must ask yourself why this is happening.

What "God of the football" you have insulted to make him hating you so much. Where you can find the strength to restart, again, for the 3rd time in 3 years. Always alone in a team game.

Resilience. Giuseppe has got a lot of it. And a lot of motivation.

Football world cup in Brasil is waiting for him. Football at the top level and he deserves to be there.

He's back again on May and ends the season with an impressive 16 goals in 24 games.

He's on the 30 players of the Italian team that will be shortlisted to 23.

On June 2nd the final list. Giuseppe is not there because he's not been considered ready after the last injury and he tells everybody he does not agree.

He will probably have his last chance in Russia in 2018.

Cheer up Giuseppe!!! You'll do it.

Ah... I could not run the Cortina Dobbiaco last week. 

6 months of training and 600km gone. My meniscus was broken. The little devil won but I'll try again next year. I will have much more chances than Pepito to do it.

Have a nice week end

The little devil

Just one week to the Cortina-Dobbiaco.
Just one week to the 30km that I am preparing for the last three months.
To be ready and ENJOY a great run among one of the most beautiful landscape in the world.
The "Tre cime di Lavaredo"

And the Lake of Dobbiaco

will be the great environment where I will try and finish my 1st 30km run.

These last weeks has been quite tough. Even though I traveled a lot (and I really mean A LOT) I tried to keep following the training I had to do, to be able and ready to finish the race.
Wake up calls early in the morning to go out and have my 15/18 km before breakfast or late runs have been the normal things in the last weeks. And now...
Last Sunday I had a problem on my knee that made me stop training and that is seriously threatening the possibility to run.
This is the "little devil" that became big. Veeery big.
Who's the little devil?
I call "little devil" the voice that is inside you every time you want to do something different, something bigger, something outside the "normal stuff". Every time I want to be different and to change something I have this voice that tells me... stop doing this Ale... keep on doing the good old way!

That's the feeling you have, when you're 2 km away from the end of the training. A hard one. And everything inside you says "stop, you have done enough".

Training, to me, is also if not MAINLY to be able to resist to these voices. Much more difficult to resist to temptations

The little devil is trying to leave things as they are, trying to stop you doing the extra mile.

That's valid on sports as well as on life.
This is the same voice that stop people going outside the comfort zone. To really understand what they can do and what they are. To do everything they can do (and this can be a lot!)

To make people dividing the "ME" from "I". What I must do (for example because it's my job) from what I really am. In a word, stopping people being happy because they understand what they really want to be.

But beware.
The solution is not being deaf to the little devil. Not covering his voice with other louder voices.

The solution is to learn NOT to follow the voice. Not to keep the status quo and take a step forward.

Don't stop moving forward. Don't listen to your little devil.
I hope my knee will not listen to him too

Have a nice week end

The "T" factor

This has been the "TIME" week.

Infact the time factor has popped out a lot during my recent meetings.
When discussing with one of my best distributor (and quite experienced) trying to put together an aggressive plan, he came out with a short story:
"When I worked in a family owned company, we were doing 15.000 boilers per year and we prepared a plan to increase the sales to 20.000 in two years. It was a realistic and feasible plan with some good actions and things to do.
After we presented the plan the owner said... good but not enough. I want a plan to produce 60.000 units per year. We ended up in two years producing always 15.000 boilers"

And this story immediately came back to my mind when I saw FCA (Fiat Chrisler Automobiles) plan.

Moving in 5 years from 4,4 Mil vehicles of 2013 to 7-7,5 Mil per year (2014 will be 4,5Mil vs an original plan of 5,9Mil).
Alfa moving up to 150.000 only in North America (from 70.000 in total in 2013) and Jeep up to 1,9 Mil from 732.000 in 2013.

I will not stress on the fact this is the 8th plan in 10 years and guess what... in no case the numbers were even close to the reality.

Yes, market was down. Yes, the scenario has changed but... out of the original 66 models that were planned only 32 (ish) were launched. And you know that once you start being late...

The "When" is the key issue.

Unfortunately putting together a 5 years plan, but even a 3 years plan, make you think you have plenty of time. You can fill up your days with a lot of things and everything can be achieved.
You know that a good plan is made of 1% of inspiration and 99% perspiration. So everybody must work hard on this but often you realize, after six months or one year, that you're late.

Late projects tend to make this more complex as it's not possible to speed up a process by adding people.

The development plan MUST therefore be carefully evaluated starting with the REAL availability of people and, in general, resources. And, most of all, with a CLEAR target from the beginning. This is crucial as once you start being behind schedule it's very unlikely you'll be able to close the gap. That is valid both for FCA and for much smaller companies.

CLEAR TARGETS: who the company want to be
CLEAR DIRECTIONS: what the company needs to reach the targets
CLEAR PLANS: when things must happen and with which results
CLEAR RESPONSIBILITIES: who's going to make it
CLEAR CHECK POINTS: when and what should happen in between

Will also this FCA fail? I don't know. Certainly mr.Marchionne's record is not exceptionally good and I sincerely hope that this will finally work.

What I know for sure is that.
Guess who's suffering the most from things being late... SALES!
Sales development, unless it's driven only by a coverage of uncovered markets (but also in this case a ramp up phase is required), it is just the final part of a more complex activity.
Being the last part it often suffer the delays of the previous activities and, unfortunately, it will not recover the time that it's lost and it's suffering even more as the infrastructure that is supposed to help is not supporting properly.

Have a nice week end