In a fast-changing business world, creating, directing and using training as a collective journey of self-awareness can make all the difference.

In the last years of his life, Michelangelo sculpted the so-called unfinished works: marble characters trapped into the material, struggling to get free yet never succeeding. With these sculptures, Michelangelo "challenged the prejudice that finiteness was the mandatory connotation of value" (C. G. Argan).
We too are incomplete, unfinished, striving for completion. We can’t free ourselves from marble, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t at least try. 

At I MILLE, we have given form to this effort by developing a training program and naming it BETA. 

“Keeping our mindset in permanent beta will allow us to acknowledge that we all have bugs, just like softwares. There’s always room for new developments and to adapt & evolve constantly. Permanent Beta is essentially a life-long commitment to continuous personal growth.” - Reid Hoffman

BETA was born in July 2022 as a fourfold promise of identity: 

• Blurred Boundaries 
• Evolution
• Tech-Native
• Adaptability

This acronym encapsulates our identity and fuels our aspirations. We are individuals constantly in motion, proficient with digital technologies yet also comfortably grounded in the physical world. We are adept at navigating both online and offline spaces, through our remarkable adaptability to change. Our boundaries are increasingly blurred, making them more easily overcome.

B- New Seeds, Freedom-Grown

What does it mean setting up an internal training program?

It’s a question that we, quite naively, did not ask ourselves at first. We saw the space and claimed it. We didn't even need to impose ourselves, as we immediately received our own piece of land. The first impact with BETA was unlike any other project we have experienced so far, a deep sense of belonging brewing within everyone. We were happy.

Happy because we had the chance to experiment. We wanted to create a training experience with our own imprint, using our core beliefs as a compass at every turn. 

It became a collective journey of self-awareness and reflection towards the path we envision both for ourselves, as individuals, as well as for the agency as a collectivity of diverse people and skills. Here are the first blurred boundaries.

E- Open to Confrontation

After the first year of a courageous and engaging BETA, we now find ourselves more mature and aware in our sophomore outing. One of the main advantages is that, having started from a base, building has been more straightforward. The prospect of improving pushed us to do more and be on the lookout for shortcomings and what didn’t work the first time. 

By reminding ourselves that we are still in beta, we grew without performance anxiety. 

We started by asking our colleagues how the first year had gone, whether the courses we organized have been more useful or more interesting, we collected feedback and new proposals. The involvement of everyone, the exchange and the comparison were - and still are - fundamental. We identified the most popular courses and retrieved information and suggestions for new ones. The result is that, this year, BETA belongs to us even more because it has become an instrument of collective knowledge and learning. 

Compared to the first BETA, we chose to design only a few of the courses we will be launching this year, leaving space for later training proposals that can accommodate new projects, needs and trends both within and outside our sector. With this approach, BETA's strategy is constantly evolving: we anticipate the typical reflection on "what we can do better" from next year directly to the months to come. Here is our evolution.

T- Managing Complexity

One of the many challenges we face is that a corporate training plan is a fast-paced project involving a large number of people, its effectiveness or ineffectiveness falling directly on us. 

In order to navigate through all of this, we chose to empower course recipients by making all BETA content accessible to everyone. We also fostered direct dialogue between unit leaders and team members, with a focus on course participation. These discussions aim to support the employees’ personal growth, while aligning with their individual trajectories in I MILLE. This facilitated the establishment of spontaneous collaboration and an incessant exchange of knowledge in which important stimuli were regained, such as learning, being up-to-date, and actually being able to grow with the agency. 

These training courses have presented us with challenges, prompting us to blend external and internal expertise to fulfill our ambitious educational commitments. For instance, our AI course is structured as a continuous cycle that alternates between teaching general skills and providing sector-specific insights. This approach is vital because the pace of today’s challenges and changes demands that we navigate them with both passion and enthusiasm, making us true tech natives.

A- An evolving Brand Identity

In keeping with the spirit of the project, the design team that worked on BETA 2024’s brand identity, Riccardo Schito and Maria Vittoria Navati, decided to focus on the process rather than the output, choosing a medium that is by nature changeable, dynamic and transparent: water. The brand identity was created by hand using colored enamel, water and sheets of paper. 

“The water and the random, uncontrollable movement of the enamels on its surface made it possible to produce a series of ever-changing images. The logo, with its angular and imperfect shapes, harks back to the realm of analogue and handwriting. The primary typography is instead a variable font reminiscent of the behavior of an expanding liquid”. 

- Maria Vittoria Navati

If the consistency of a brand is in its evolution, you have to embrace its nature to make it work. This is what we did with BETA, having decided that the brand identity of the training plan would also change every year and be designed by a different team each time, adapting to its natural evolution. Here is our adaptability.

Striving for BETA 

When we strive to improve through deliberate practice, critical reflection on our performance and adaptation to feedback received, we embark on a continuous journey of self-learning, which does not end in an end goal, but is rather defined through the ability to remain engaged in the learning process.

By ceasing to carve figures out of marble, Michelangelo chose to give a new outlet to his tension towards the goal, the end and the completeness. 

By not finishing, he was overcoming his tension towards perfection. 

He excelled in BETA.