Leading In The Time of Virus
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 117: Karim Bartoletti
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies, coaching their leaders to maximize their impact and accelerate the growth of their business.
With this episode, we’re launching Season 2 - which we’ve sub-titled, “Leading In the Time of Virus”.
These are shorter, focused conversations in which we discover how some of the world’s most innovative and creative leaders are adapting their leadership to our new reality.
These people are among the world’s best problem solvers. And that’s exactly what we need right now.
This episode is a conversation with Karim Bartoletti who is living in Milan at the epicenter of the region hardest hit by the virus so far. Karim is a partner in Indiana Production - a multimedia production company.
Here’s Karim Bartoletti.
Charles: (00:50)
Karim, welcome to Fearless. Thanks for joining me today.
Karim Bartoletti: (00:53)
Thanks for having me.
Charles: (00:55)
Tell me about your situation. Just describe to us what you're living through right now. You're based in Milan. You live in Milan.
Karim Bartoletti: (01:01)
I live in Milan in Italy. I've been living here for a long time now. My situation right now is that I am currently stuck alone in my house in lockdown. I have my family, I have two kids and a wife, who are stuck in the mountains in lockdown also. This has been for the past 15, 16 days because I was actually on a job in Spain and when I came back, my wife and I decided that I would actually stay in quarantine for 14 days, which today is the last day of. They were stuck in the mountains because I was supposed to go and pick them up by car.
Since I am not going to pick them up, I am stuck here because as of today, the lockdown in Italy has become even more stringent, more exaggerated in a good way I would say, which has not made it in a good way for me. Because in reality, nobody can leave the city that they're in to go to a different city as of today. Because if they get caught, they might not only get a big fine, we're talking about $3-, $4,000 dollars, but also they might get imprisoned if they do have the coronavirus virus. So if I did have the virus and if I did get caught, I would actually get five years in prison max, which is actually a lot of time. So I think the way our government dealt or has dealt with it has been very much about very slowly closing down to see whether we could get to a point in which Italians would stay put, which is something that Italians, just from an anthropological perspective, are not very good at.
Charles: (03:02)
So you've been in this situation for two weeks and for the indefinite future now. We're recording this on Wednesday, the 25th of March. You don't have any idea how long this is going to go on for now for you and your family.
Karim Bartoletti: (03:15)
No, unfortunately not because when we talk as a family about, “When are you coming?” and, “When are we going to reunite?”, there is no deadline for any of the things that you think of. So it's kind of a lockdown of lockdown right now. That's where we're at. So if I were to tell you when I think I might be able to get a car and go and see my family again, I would probably say another two weeks from now. Probably.
Charles: (03:45)
Which has got to be a really tough situation to deal with every single day, day in, day out.
Karim Bartoletti: (03:50)
Very tough. Very tough. Very tough for a number of different reasons. One from a societal perspective. One is you're not only locked out of the city that you're living in, but you're also locked out of the emotional aspect. I think there's also one other thing that is a little bit... I was going to say worrisome, but a little bit of a thought that I keep on having is that I am not living with my children at this moment on a day-to-day basis, which is something that I think it is important to live together. As much as people are driving themselves crazy at home and people that have children are kind of going crazy with their children at home, I think at the same time, it is one of those moments in which you would rather actually fight with your son and daughter and maybe your wife than to be alone every day, which is something that I'm living with for the past 14 days.
Charles: (04:58)
You're talking to them every day?
Karim Bartoletti: (05:00)
I talk to them every day and I think on one side, the video calling has become very popular. I think the numbers in Italy are incredible because there has been a rise of 700% in video calling in Italy. So it's not as much as I thought it would be, but it's a lot. So phone companies are doing really well right now. For example, Mariana and the kids are in the mountains in a small little apartment and they are all on their cell phones. So my kids are being schooled by the school and they have school every day.
Charles: (05:46)
You are well, as you said, and your family is well.
Karim Bartoletti: (05:51)
I'm well. I'm well and my family is well.
Charles: (05:52)
And your family.
Karim Bartoletti: (05:53)
Yeah, yeah, everybody's fine. My mom and dad and my sister who live in Milan, they're all kind of in lockdown also. My parents are in their 70s and they are asking for me and my sister to bring them groceries when they ask us. Now that the lockdown has happened harshly, they're asking for a neighborhood kid who is actually getting 10% of the cost of the grocery shopping for them to grocery shop for them. So he actually brings the grocery to the elevator. They actually pull the elevator up, they put the money down, and they pay him. So there's a whole new set of economics happening in this country.
Charles: (06:49)
I was going to say entrepreneurship is alive and well.
Karim Bartoletti: (06:51)
Entrepreneurship, exactly.
Charles: (06:53)
Given the context that you're living in, which I think is the most extreme that I've heard of of any country in the world in terms of the severity of the lockdown, how does your day work? How are you structuring your day?
Karim Bartoletti: (07:07)
Well, I'm a partner of a production company here in Milan. The production company actually is a company that deals with, I would say, any type of content. We do feature films. We do five a year. We do a TV series, a Netflix series. Then we do advertising, which I'm the MD of. So I do all the part that has to do with brands and brand content and stuff like that. On one side, the company has obviously been in lockdown also, so not that we actually keep our people inside the company. We actually have asked people to actually stay at home and they have been for the past two weeks, two and a half weeks probably. The lockdown has allowed maybe things to slow down a little bit. But I think honestly for the jobs that we have going on, I would say that we're actually working at the same speed that we have always worked on. The reality is that for obvious reasons, because we're in production, we are a production company, everything that is in production has halted or did halt immediately.
So to answer your question, we still work. I think the thing that I am doing personally and I think everybody else is doing is, you wake up and you treat it as if you were going to work. You get out of your pajamas and you take a shower and you go to work. The weird thing is that the way that we work might feel a little more domestic, but it's definitely a lot more technological than it was before. We talk in the same way we are talking right now with whatever the platform that is requested is.
I think one thing that is very interesting to analyze, and I think it's going to be interesting to analyze, I don't know, in the weeks to come is that there's a new iconography of lockdown. Right? People are getting used to seeing things in a certain way. We get used to seeing each other in boxes. Then there's a whole other part that makes it more domestic, right? We have never seen each other's houses. We don't see a CEO's house. We barely know whether they have kids or not. But then you're having a call with, it might be a serious one, but when they come on, you see that they have a 12 year old kid right beside them and it becomes more domestic. It's interesting that there is a...
It might even make things a little easier. Presentations and conversations become a little clearer because they all start from the same place. They all start from, “How are you doing? Where are you? What's your story?” Right? “Where are you in lockdown? Where is your family?” And whether it's a CEO or a CFO or the PA, it's that world that we're living in right now. Right?
Charles: (10:13)
So do you think because, to your point, there's a greater level of intimacy and as a result of this, do you think that in fact that creates more collaboration? That people actually having different conversations than they used to? Is there less hierarchy in these relationships?
Karim Bartoletti: (10:29)
I think so. I think so. I think that is actually something that makes it interesting to me because when hierarchy disappears, the way that you can actually ask people to do certain things is probably a little more at level. So all of the meetings usually started from me. Now my guys actually ask for meetings because they can't come into my office to talk to me. They actually say, "Hey, how about we all talk at 5:00 to talk about this new technology that we're thinking about using." Right?
Because the other thing that has happened, because we have time, which we never have, which is another thing that happened during this period, is that you start doing the things that you didn't have time to do. Right? So it is interesting to me that you actually use that time or you try and fill it up. Because one of the things that you have to think about as a leader is how to fill that void that doesn't come from being together all the time. Because the biggest thing that's going to happen with this is fear. The fear that we had before is going to be different from the fear that we have now and the fear that we have later. The fear that we had before was you didn't have a fear of losing your job because you didn't have a fear that the company wouldn't exist. Right?
I was talking to friend in the U.K. and they are actually wondering whether some of the companies are going to survive. People are going to think whether they're going to have a job. The lower level, if we're going to talk about hierarchy, the lower level in companies are going to wonder whether they're going to be the ones to be disposed of first when companies are going to try and figure out what to do to fill that two month stop.
Charles: (12:28)
As you are thinking in terms of your own business with your partners about what the future looks like, what's the time span that you're thinking about? Obviously you've got a short-term reality of projects in the pipeline, projects you're working on. You've got a mid-term time-span in terms of the things that were there before and how much of that is going to be there later. How far out are you guys thinking in terms of what could this look like and what do we have to really plan for in the "long run", whatever the long run looks like?
Karim Bartoletti: (12:56)
Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. The funny thing, I'm just going to open a parentheses, which is funny to me, is like we are in war. Right? It feels like war time. There's a very short-term deadline, which I think is, for us, let's say after Easter, right? Catholic country. We would be on holiday if it were Easter. I think Easter is right now around three weeks away. Right? Two and a half weeks away. So I would say after Easter is probably the new deadline that I would give myself on a short-term basis.
In that regards, you keep everything going as much as possible. You have the same meetings. You talk about certain things. You do certain things that you might not have done strategically as a company. Things you don't have time for. Are we going to change our website? Right? We were thinking about changing our website. Maybe we'll change our website in this time-frame because it's not only something that we can do, but it's something that we can give work to as far as somebody that can work at home on a website and we can have a meeting every week about how it's going on. Right?
Then we can talk about how the technology that we're using right now can actually help the work of the future. Because I think it's going to change everybody's jobs. Right? Are 15 people from client and agencies going to come to sets when time is going to happen? Are we all going to huddle around a monitor? We think about strategic ways to be prepared for the future. As a board member of the association, we're also talking about whether we should have a decalogue, like rules of the game of what will happen when the world is going to open up, but it's not going to go at 100%. Because again, we're not in the same type of war that wartime would bring you. Right? It's not that one day on the third of May, the curtain's going to open and we're going to run in the streets and we're going to kiss the first girl that is going to walk by or the first guy that is going to walk by because we're all happy.
This is viral. Because it's viral, it is going to change for a while, I think, the way people interact. I see it how we go to the supermarket. I see it when I pass people on the street and you think, "Should I walk to the other side of the street when I actually pass this guy who doesn't have a mask and I'm actually wearing gloves and I'm..." It's going to change everything because it has changed the way we interact. I think you and I were talking about the fact that I really don't think social distancing is actually the right word for this. I think physical distancing is the right word for this because we are physically distanced.
I don't think we're socially distanced. I think we're socially much more in touch. I've been talking to people that I hadn't talked to for ever. I started getting in touch with my college friends and roommates that I hadn't talked to for years. Why? I don't know. Because they kind of know that I'm in the middle of all things and they ask me how I'm doing and it starts a conversation. I think socially we are kind of possibly closer than we've been before. Physically, we're totally far apart and that's going to change everything.
In the long-term, as far as the company's concerned, it is very difficult to decide. I think we all have to decide that in a world in which production companies, like most companies, especially in Italy, don't have money in the bank, have to figure out what and how to make things happen. As a company, we actually are doing the first user-generated film during this break. It actually came out today. The news came out today. We are actually asking people to send in information about how they're spending their day and we're actually doing a film called Viaggio Italia, which means Voyage in Italy, like trip through Italy, asking people to share their user-generated content on how they spend their day in this day and age. Then we also have a very well-known director, Oscar-winning director that is going to probably be the editor of the amount of information that people are going to send and we're going to make something out of it. It's going to be a film, and RAI, which is our national TV station. It's actually going to participate in this.
So as a company, we've actually kept ourselves busy. There's a new Vodafone campaign that went on air today. It is all user-generated. So Vodafone asked people to use their cell phones to film and they actually put together a film talking about this moment.
It's going to be interesting to me how purpose-driven, which is something that you always talk about and you have talked to a lot of your guests about, how purpose-driven is going to change. Right? Purpose-driven is going to become also about being accountable, which is something that was happening already, but it's going to happen much quicker. Being relevant, talking in the right way, not being able to bullshit your way through. I don't know if I can say bullshit, but I said it.
Charles: (18:58)
You said it.
Karim Bartoletti: (19:00)
But it's-
Charles: (19:02)
It's interesting too, isn't it? Because to your point about user-generated content, that's going to be a thing for a bit. Then the users who generate the content who suddenly show up in people's ads are going to say, "Well, fine, then pay me for that."
Karim Bartoletti: (19:13)
Absolutely.
Charles: (19:14)
There will be that whole dynamic. Then some of those people will be really talented at generating content that people want to use and there'll become a new marketplace for content creators, I'm sure.
Karim Bartoletti: (19:24)
Absolutely. We all have a high definition camera or video camera in our pockets. Even Apple, with their new campaigns with “Shot on iPhone,” right? Both on film and both on the pictures, like still images side and on the video side, have pushed to the fact that you can actually push the boundaries of what amateur means. So amateur and professional don't have a boundary anymore. They overlap now. They have overlapped. So we ask ourselves, the young director that comes out of... who wants to be a director, the young kid that comes out of NYU or Northwestern, which is where I went to school, who wants to shoot something can shoot something. Right? “I am afraid of anybody who has an idea,” somebody said, right? Anyone that has an idea can actually create it. I think creators will always be there.
The Vodafone commercial is the sign of the times and it's the correct way a brand can speak because they're a telecom company. I think it scares me to a certain extent because the quality's so high, but at the same time, I think at a certain point there's going to be a big John Lewis commercial for Christmas at a certain point and we'll figure out how that's going to be done.
I don't know whether those will ever disappear because film is not able telling one story one way. It's about telling a million stories in a million different ways. Fruition is also that. Right? So add to that the fruition being in a million different ways. That becomes a whole new set of parameters that you have to deal with, the formula that you have to create.
Charles: (21:26)
Yeah. I think you're right. I mean, some things are going to change so much and other things are going to change imperceptibly. They will evolve. My last question for you is if you had to... Obviously no one knows when this is going to end. Nobody knows how long this is going to go on. If you had to forecast two things that you think will come out of this that will be good, either for society or for your business, what are you starting to think about that's going to be better coming out of this?
Karim Bartoletti: (21:56)
So if I were to find something very positive about it, is that the world that we were living in, in all of our businesses and the world in general of how we were actually abusing the world itself, was getting to a shutdown mode. Right? We were talking about the world getting to the limit and being a lot more eco-friendly and smog-filled cities and the world will not be able to take it and nature is being taken over. Blah, blah, blah. Right? So on one side, there is that.
I think the weird thing that happened, if you think about it positively, is that we have been given a chance to reset, to reboot. Right? Every IT in the world in whatever language you actually call your IT guy up on, will tell you one thing when your computer is not working and when it's crashing a lot. It tells you, "Turn the computer off and turn it back on again." Right? So you reboot your computer. When that happens, some of the problems stay the same if they're big problems and some of them actually go away. I think we've been given a chance to reboot. This country is under lockdown for the past three weeks and the canals in Venice are clear and there are fish in it, which is kind of weird. In our biggest ports, we have two big ports in Italy, one of them is Genova, we have dolphins jumping around. There are photographs, at least from before the lockdown of the lockdown, of parks in Milan with little bunny rabbits hopping around which I didn't even know we had bunny rabbits, which is actually fun.
But in a very I Am Legend kind of way, we have given a chance for nature to actually a little bit take its space again. Our very smoggy cities, and Milan is among the top 10 in the world unfortunately, have un-smogged themselves, have cleansed up in this time period because there are obviously less cars. I think all of this rebooting will actually bring to some people that will go back to normal. But I think if only 10% of the people change their minds or change their habits or grew their tomatoes on their balconies, it might actually have been the biggest reboot in the history of time, which I think is very interesting.
Charles: (24:56)
It's going to be so, not just interesting, but crucial that we start making really good decisions about the long-term impact we want to have. I want to thank you so much for taking the time today and joining me. I mean, I-
Karim Bartoletti: (25:08)
Thank you, Charles.
Charles: (25:09)
... feel so much for you and for your family being stuck in the very middle of this and dealing with this in such a personal way. I mean, obviously it is personal for everybody. But I think what you're dealing with just feels different to me at the moment and I hope that it remains different for the rest of our sakes actually because it's so extreme what you're going through.
Karim Bartoletti: (25:33)
Thank you, Charles, and thank you for having me and thank you for allowing me to actually talk about this because I think there's a little bit of learning, not a lot, but I think a little bit of learning from the learnings that we actually went through. I think that is very clear because all of the countries have looked at Italy after China, but more like I think we're all closer to Italy than we are to the way the Chinese government dealt with it. So I think any learning that we can give back I think will help. I think we will actually be helpful in actually talking about it and you allowed me to do that. So thank you very much, Charles, for allowing me to be here.
Charles: (26:07)
You are very welcome. Stay well, my friend.
Karim Bartoletti: (26:09)
Thank you very much, Charles. Ciao ciao.
—————
Let us know if there are other guests you’d like to hear from, and areas you’d like to know more about or questions you have, other questions you might have about leading in this moment.
And don’t forget to share Fearless with your friends and colleagues.
If you’d like more, go to fearlesscreativeleadership.com where you’ll find the audio and the transcripts of every episode.
If you’d like to know more about our leadership practice, go to thelookinglass.com where you’ll also find links to articles I’ve written for Fast Company and for the Profitable Creativity blog on creative leadership.
Fearless is produced by Podfly. Frances Harlow is the show’s Executive Producer. Josh Suhy is our Producer and Editor. Sarah Pardoe is the Media Director for Fearless.
Thanks for listening.
