Marcello Vinciguerra
Marcello Vinciguerra, Managing Director at Honda Italia
Every time I read the quote by Soichiro Honda, my passion and determination of pursuing the most challenging objectives are renewed.
An enthusiasm that, when I was a kid, I learnt from the person who more than anyone has had an impact on my education: my father Umberto. He was a dreamer, but also very pragmatic and determined.
He used to tell me about his experiences and the people who taught him the profession.
Above all, he used to tell me about his many ideas and the projects that he had been carrying on with enthusiasm.
He started with nothing and thanks to his strength, he transformed his job as bricklayer into an entrepreneurial project that had allowed him to pursue a dream: sharing the emotion of a client of flying the flag on the roof of his house, seeing it finally finished.
From him I have learnt respect, fatigue, humility but also the curiosity about the new, positivity and passion; and these are the values that I have been cultivating in my professional life, on a daily basis with the fortune of putting them to a good use in a company of great culture.
I have been working at Honda for twenty-two years, with the same enthusiasm of the very first day, because the many dreams I had, one after the other, have found their expression within a working environment, where every person has a real opportunity of putting the ideas to good use.
Since I started to work in the personnel management, I have had the possibility to put forward new proposals, also in fields far from my role, and, in doing it I have always received signs of encouragement from all the people who have been working with me.
Opening constantly with curiosity to the new and developing enhancement projects are the factors that have been accompanying me throughout my career.
Anyhow, it has been a negative experience that, more than any other, have made me grow!
In 2012, when I understood that we had to reorganize the company following the crisis in the two-wheel sector, I had the opportunity to put the precious teachings received by my father, into practice.
Starting from an open dialogue with every single person of the plant in Atessa, together with the leadership team, we interiorized enough strength to transform that difficult situation into a project of company’s renovation and enhancement, having the employment protection as main goal.
The first mobility interview made quite an impact on me! I met a person who I had known for several years, I asked him for the name of his wife and his children. I started explaining the reasons behind the reorganization project and then looking at his eyes, feeling his uncertainties, I sat next to him and mildly we analysed together what was the best for him and his family. When he told me: “Everything is clear, thank you, tell me what to do, I trust you” my sense of responsibility and respect burst vigorously inside me.
Since that day I have started to consider every single human story as unique and in such a dramatic situation I finally felt confident in myself again.
Today the colleague who I met during that prophetic first interview continues to work with a seasonal contract in the company.
From 2013 to 2016, there was another change: I had the chance to live with my family in the UK. Once again Honda allowed me to live an amazing experience.
Having the chance to face an international environment with very different cultures, I found strength in the values of all time: respect, fatigue, humility but especially the openness to change.
Still today the will to act nurturing my enthusiasm is exactly the same when I started my wonderful journey.
Like my father, I have managed to pursue my dream: to give value to the people I work with, transmitting my system of beliefs that can be summed up in a Giuseppe Mazzini quote: “Thought and Action”.