My CIMBA Journey: Jacopo Bonato

Jacopo is a passionate and open-minded manager who likes challenging goals. Due to his "lean" background, he likes to question the status quo and reach those goals in a new or innovative way, making everything as simple as possible, especially in complex contexts.

1. How did your approach to the business world change during or after your MBA?

I feel much more confident in the way I manage every single situation: the approach now is much more holistic! I’m able to go back and forth in the depth of the situation, jumping from the details to the big picture and back in depth. On another side, it becomes easier to perceive and analyze the impact of every possible solution, make connections with other processes linked to the one I’m managing, evaluate different scenarios, assess risks, consider the short-term impacts and the long-term ones, and decide what to do. Every decision is more aware than before!

On another side, I’m more focused on coaching my collaborators and peers in this enhanced approach. The benefits of making people able to approach in the same way and to “feel” them in the same wave are incredible!

2. What do you feel was the most valuable lesson you took from it?

I brought home 2-3 “big tickets” from every class of the MBA, but the BIG TICKET is clearly the mindset. I do not meet a person, approach a problem, assess risk, or make a decision in the same way I did before the MBA. I’m used to introducing myself as a person with a special pair of glasses: the “Lean glasses” because I love lean management and I see everything as a process with improvement opportunities. Since July 2022 I can say I also have in some way a “new brain cortex”. Day after day I feel more and more like a Leader than only a manager.

3. How has studying in an international environment broadened your mindset?

Dealing with different cultures is always enriching. In CIMBA there are two further factors that have exponentially amplified this enrichment. The first is given by the very nature of the context: we are people who have chosen to get involved in this experience, therefore there is the desire and the will in each of us to confront each other...and the will has incredible power! The second factor is that CIMBA has structured the MBA to further push you to share your personal and professional experience with your colleagues and professors. Finding ourselves after class playing soccer, full-timers vs part-timers, with the teachers in the audience chatting about family, work, study, and life in general is the result of the above. In addition to friendships with people living abroad, knowledge of other cultures, what I brought home is a new mindset, a new way of approaching new situations and people, open to diversity, and respectful of differences.