Founded in 2011 from a far-sighted idea of entrepreneur Roberto Castaldo, a professional trainer and business consultant – the only Italian included in the Global Gurus ranking of the thirty best international professionals in time management – 4 M.A.N. Consulting is a consultancy company highly specialised in Performance Management (PM), which has established its leadership in the business management market. Thanks to a strategic vision and an innovative, integrated and certified consultancy, training and coaching model, this all-Italian excellence is today able to support SMEs in their development and growth path, making their employees’ performance more effective. Very important features in an increasingly global and competitive context.
by Roberta Imbimbo
Dr. Castaldo, with what mission was 4 M.A.N. Consulting born?
The company was founded in 2011 with the ambitious goal of asserting its leadership in the market of business consulting to Italian family-based SMEs. A challenge that it succeeded in winning thanks to a strategic vision and an innovative business approach aimed at combining the purely quantitative aspects with the more strictly qualitative ones referring to human resources management. Thanks to substantial investments in R&D in management, over the years we have been able to devise and certify a whole series of cutting-edge methodologies, now used internationally. Our integrated model of Performance Management with a humanistic matrix is based on mathematical algorithms, but it is also able to give a numerical quantification to the intangible aspects of human resources management. It is a model that is based on humanistic leadership, on the recognition of the leader as facilitator of the process of improvement and increase in employee performance. A model that puts people at the centre, in a context – such as today’s – that has an objective need for this: in the era of digital transformation, artificial intelligence, automation and digitisation in the spirit of Industry 4.0, it is indeed fundamental that workers remain at the heart of every operational and production process.
So why is your consultancy approach so innovative?
Because it enables us to support companies in achieving important goals by intervening in three specific areas: people, processes and numbers. The resulting scientific system is also based on three pivotal points: Mathematics (for the precise measurement of data and business models used by the client), Neuroscience (for learning processes and human resource management) and Coaching (for planning and standardisation of processes within the company), thus enabling the entrepreneur to work on those functional areas that must necessarily be managed to perfection in order to make a company grow. This is a very important model for Italian SMEs, especially in perspective. Today, in fact, many of them do not survive the death of the founding father, and few make it to the second generation: in the delicate generational transition, a large part of the know-how accrued by the entrepreneur is often lost, and he is not always able to managerialise the operational and organisational context, creating a generation gap that is detrimental to the survival of the company itself. It is precisely in these cases that humanistic leadership intervenes and produces its effects, changing the paradigm and forcing the leader to adapt to the context and not vice versa. The leader is the advocate of the change process, he is a strong and reliable guide who must support human capital with an adequate transfer of knowledge, he must indicate the initiatives necessary to achieve long-term transformation goals and implement strategies that help all stakeholders to achieve these goals. Our humanistic matrix model allows us to perform a qualitative-quantitative analysis, intervening on governance leadership style, balance sheet analysis and brand awareness. These areas of intervention allow us to make a precise mapping of talents and skills within the company; thanks to a mathematical algorithm we then go on to understand, with respect to the numbers expressed by the company in terms of turnover and value, how to bring out its unexpressed potential. By intervening in specific areas – Strategic-Directional Consulting, Management Training, Coaching and Temporary Management – within six months, we succeed in increasing company performance by 34%.
Today you are developing meticulous work on the appropriate organisational, administrative and accounting arrangements for the company. What is it all about?
The entrepreneur has a duty to set up an organisational, administrative and accounting set-up appropriate to the size and nature of the business, also in view of the early detection of a crisis and loss of business continuity. In fact, an adequate organisational, administrative and accounting system represents an important source of information for identifying the best management choices, aimed at guaranteeing continuity and safeguarding the company’s assets. Previously optional, today this fulfilment has been made compulsory with the entry into force of Article 375 of the Business Crisis and Insolvency Code (Legislative Decree no. 14/2019), which supplemented Article 2086 of the Italian Civil Code, a strong reminder of the duty of sound management to which the entrepreneur is bound. Thanks to substantial investments in R&D, we are now highly specialised in measuring and reporting to the entrepreneur the interventions required to take care of the adequacy of organisational structures.
Many achievements over many years. Future goals?
To start exploring markets that are still unknown and that offer numerous growth prospects, opening Business Units in Spain and England to better embrace the international context, on the strength of the experience gained in so many years of activity (to date, I am the only Italian in the Global Gurus ranking, which rewards the thirty best international professionals in time management). To continue to grow, transforming the company into an S.P.A., to win ever more ambitious challenges while always having at heart the maximisation of customer satisfaction.
For more info (https://4mancons.it)
