He has a calm voice and a gentle tone as he tells Luce! how he managed an almost impossible feat in our day: obtainand the attention of a wide audience of people telling each day only good news. Philip Poletti, Milanese, born in 1970 with an executive MBA from the Polytechnic, is the top voice of LinkedIn Italia, a well-known social platform dedicated to professionals, on which since 2017 she has edited a daily column dedicated to changes in the world of professions, marked by the hashtags #rassegnalavoroit and # grammarnewworld. The peculiarity of his posts, in fact, is that they concern only good news: “Gianni Rodari used to say that ‘we have words to sell, words to buy, words to make words, but we need words to think’ and I strive to sow every day positive words to help people fight the negativity of thinking. After all, social media are the people’s new books and we can all help write them positively as well.”
A journalist since 1997, Poletti made his debut as a musicologist in the pages of Il Giorno and during his career he has written for over thirty national newspapers. Today he deals with corporate communication and has published several books, including “IoP time: Intranet of People”, “New world grammar” and “MBA Power: innovating in search of one’s purpose”, now in its third printing in November 2022 , after only a month of its release in the bookstore. During an interview with Caterpillar on Radio2, he was called “the Ferragni of LinkedIn” and when we asked him what he thinks about it, he replied: “Even if several zeros separate us in terms of followers, the term influencer still leads me to have a great responsibility towards the many people – almost 90,000 – who follow me all the time. days. Therefore I strive to have a positive influence on the issues of work and social engagement. I just celebrated 2,000 posting days without interruptions, since, in 2017, I published the news of Ragusa which had become the Italian capital of blood donors. I thought it was really positive news and I decided to spread it on LinkedIn, getting a great response from the network. From this I guessed that the possibilities of giving birth to one room for good news they could have been concrete and since then I have never stopped: I have made 3,160 posts, with almost 24 million views in 2022″.
Really important numbers, if one considers that the news posted by Poletti does not contain scandalism or polemical ambitions: “Every day I carry out an accurate research – he explains to Luce! -, I take screenshots of the news that I find most interesting on the net or in newspapers and in the evening I decide which good news to post the next day. As the former cyclist Ernesto Colnago, a well-known bicycle manufacturer, says, between saying and doing there is no sea, there is effort: between creating a daily column on LinkedIn and posting, there is a lot of research and a lot of passion. It’s a commitment that takes me at least two hours a day and that makes me feel like a real ‘good story seeker’. Internet has been defined by someone as a weapon of mass destruction: I like to interpret the network as a tool for building a new humanity“.
Why LinkedIn?
“Because in the end this social network is a very shrewd network, in which it is more difficult to find compulsive reactions or handshakes. Everyone presents themselves as a professional, so the platform is a polite and kind space, which is more like my way of doing and being. I’m not interested in a daily struggle with words.”
What were the best stories of 2022?
“There really were a lot, but maybe three in particular made their mark. For example, I helped launch on LinkedIn the story of Simone Terreni, director of the Montelupo Fiorentino telecommunications company VoipVoice, who interviewed Federica Granai, a 27-year-old professional eight months pregnant who was looking for a job. In front of her request and her belly he replied: ‘ Is that all? And what’s the problem? It’s wonderful news. I’m hiring you on a permanent basis.’ A positive story, in short, of equal opportunities, which later became of national interest, so much so that Terreni ended up in so many
television broadcasts, from Rai to Mediaset.
Another story, this time linked to the theme of solidarity, is that of Andrea Leoni, a driver from Sandonà di Piave, in the province of Venice. Having lost his wife Chiara, the colleagues who work with him in the Veritas company decide to give him 270 hours of work to allow him to have time to be close to his eleven and thirteen year old children. Finally, a story of innovation, that of Cristian Fracassi, a Brescian building engineer and founder of Issinova. In times of pandemic he had transformed snorkel masks into devices for mechanical ventilation, and this year he mobilized to create low-cost but very functional artificial limbs, intended for the more than 3,000 people who have suffered a leg amputation during the conflict in Ukraine. These prostheses use existing material: the foot is in polyurethane, the structure is in aluminium, the covering is in 3D printed plastic and the cup, on which the stump hooks the prosthesis, is a modified sports brace. We could continue by telling stories of training, such as that of Margherita Campanelli, a thirty-year-old working student who lives in Fano and who has Down syndrome, graduated in Pedagogical Sciences with 110. At the moment Margherita is building an ‘AgriNido’ , or rather an open-air kindergarten”.
Why did you decide to focus your efforts on the positive dimension of journalism?
“I’m not looking for likes, but ‘love’ on true and beautiful stories. I want people to get passionate about real life. I’m looking for meaning in the world of work, personal fame doesn’t interest me. On the other hand, I have a much more precious return in human terms: I have become friends with various protagonists of the stories I tell, but also with readers from all over the world, Italians who follow me because they want to re-establish contact with Italy, and my stories , based on true, positive stories, contribute to making those who now find themselves living far away feel close to us”.
Any examples?
“I could cite many cases, such as that of Enrico Borgogna, a Piedmontese entrepreneur who moved to the United States, California, where he realized the American dream. Or Alberto Manzo, an Apulian who left for Qatar at the age of 18 where he became a manager of Qatar Post, and Mauro Porcini, chief design officer of PepsiCo in New York since 2012. Or, to stay in Italy, Giovanni De Cesare, Luca Maniscalco, Nicola D’Adamo, Michele Pogliani, Francesco Russo, Monica Bormetti, Carmela Guglielmo and Matteo Mangiacavalli. I simply believe that good unites and I try to tell the world of work not through corporate profits, but through social profit. Neuroscientist Paul Donald MacLean, who died in 2007, mapped the human brain giving birth to the ‘triune brain theory’. Based on his hypothesis, the oldest brain is called ‘reptilian’, and is the seat of the most basic needs such as fear and self-defense. Well, I don’t focus on this component of the human brain at all: I don’t like to arouse fear in people, rather to help reactivate the mutual need to help each other, the beautiful dimension of human solidarity. The same recalled by Collodi in ‘Pinocchio’, printed in Florence 140 years ago, in this splendid sentence uttered by Alidoro: ‘It is known: in this world we must all help each other’”.
A bit like our channel dedicated to inclusion Luce! telling stories of resilience every day…
“Exactly. With Luce! there is certainly a parallel, so much so that I often quote your newspaper as the bearer of stories of good. In February, for example, my new book ‘Ukraine: grammar of hell’ (Lupetti Editore) will be released, which will contain many stories of refugees who have found refuge in Italy during 2022. In my pages I have mentioned Luce! Many use LinkedIn to say a ‘No’ and affirm their ‘I’, acting against it. Personally, instead ofI am (the I am, in Italian), I believe we can and should promote theI am with, the ego with as the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy says, rather encouraging the interpersonal relationship. Here, I find this ‘ego cum’ in Luce!and I humbly try to carry it forward too, every day, through my stories of life and work”.
A wish for 2023?
“Definitely to live the new year ‘Michael Jordan-style’, because he was the player who jumped the highest of all, and he wore the number 23 on his chest. My personal wish is that every day you can always jump higher, even in the world of work. In fact, we can all make many baskets ‘at Air Jordan’. Three ideas for work in 2023 come to mind: the first comes from the Japanese saying ‘If anyone can do it, I can too. If nobody can do it, then I can be the first to do it.’ The second is to know how to evolve: Bernardo Caprotti, founder of Esselunga, said that there is no future with the systems that were used yesterday. Finally, the third cue is a smile as petrol to face the journey called life, according to the suggestion of the founder of Eni Enrico Mattei. And, actually, isn’t it nicer to enter a workplace and be surrounded by positive and proactive people? At work and in life, meeting a smiling person, net of the problems that we all more or less have, is just good for you”.
In addition to the smiles and positivity Filippo Poletti, for years a volunteer, together with his wife Marina, of the Arcobaleno association of San Donato Milanese, promotes meetings on LinkedInNew Normal Live” in which he tells stories of doing well related to the world of work. “On New Year’s Eve 2020 and 2021 we made a special episode with a focus on the non-profit organization GECA of Padua for research on the ‘mad heart’ and on the non-profit organization ‘Vamp’ by Roberto Miglio to support multi-specialist assistance for Parkinson’s patients – Poletti points out -. It is what I call the link of solidarity, or generator of proactive energies”.