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Work Organisation
What's the plan, then?
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Adela Gooch
Spanish Correspondent,
The Economist
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The Spaniard's attitude to forward planning is just different. I mean they consider forward planning to be a time scale much closer to the event than we would in England.
It makes people around them panic, 'cause they think: will this event happen? And the answer to this: yes, it will happen. And it will happen very well, but don't try to get it to happen too far in advance.
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| I think they're a little bit more holistic. I mean if we're looking at an agenda for example, they'll be looking at all aspects of the agenda. It could well be that once you get down to the agenda, you're bringing up things which are going to impact on something before, so planning therefore hasn't got to be rigid. There's no point in looking too far forward into the future because there are going to be other things to take into account. Their approach is: "The best plan is one that you can change."
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Jay Kettle-Williams
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| The boss is the boss is the boss
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Wayne Rosemin
Managing Director,
Addison España
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Spanish companies are quite hierarchical. However, in terms of our business, if you know what you're doing, there are ways of getting round that, i.e. you get everyone else to give an opinion first, and then you get the boss to give an opinion. Because if the boss gives the opinion, people tend not to want to contradict the boss's view.
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The further south one goes in Europe, the more hierarchical, the more autocratic becomes the boss, and so that's what you would expect in a Latin environment where somebody is in charge of the company. Fine, he will take on everyone else's opinion, liaise with them personally and professionally and consider everything, but the decision will be down to him.
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Jay Kettle-Williams
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William Gibbs
TV Band Leader
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I think in Spain teamwork doesn't necessarily come naturally. The Spanish themselves recognise the fact that their national football team never does anything worth talking about, although as individuals they've got some great players. They have more success in tennis or golf, which are individual sports.
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We like to think of the Spanish as individuals and not working well as a team. I think this reflects also the fact that the further south in Europe you go, the more autocratic, the more hierarchical things become. So teamwork has got a slightly different dimension as opposed to, shall we say, the northern European concept of a consensual team working together or the British concept of team building.
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Jay Kettle-Williams
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- In Spain you'll have fewer staff meetings, but more one-on-one with the boss.
- Each team member carries the responsibility for a certain part of the project but it's in the hands of the boss to unite all the different aspects of the team.
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Being there index |
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Being there