2016_02_26_ECO_Alberto_Andreu

director "Why is everything so difficult when it could be so easy?", reflected Alberto Andreu Pinillos, Telefónica's Global Head of Organization and Corporate Culture, at the beginning of his talk at lecture , which he gave in the series 'My experience managing people' of the Master's Degree in Personnel Management Service in Organizations, developed by School of Economics at the University of Navarra.

The question was, in addition to the degree scroll that Alberto Andreu had chosen for the discussion paper, the door to the organizational framework of the companies. "Why do execution times take so long despite the existence of urgency, will and resources? Perhaps the core topic is in the corporate culture," he continued.

Alberto Andreu, who is also Adjunct Professor of the School, explained that in an organization "normally the functions are vertical", but that the challenge consists of acting horizontally: "you have to think about how to inject culture in the financial area , in the commercial area , quality...".

Companies operate with "four levers" which, he said, are the formal structure (governance, written rules and procedures); the informal structure (internal network and social networks); people (conditions and behaviors); and technology (systems and operations).

The professor emphasized the informal structure: "If you are not aware of who occupies space in the mind of the decision-maker, you don't know where you are, because there is a parallel organization chart of client networks. If you help me, I help you. If you don't, I'm in front of you.

In addition, he distinguished two types of people: the"senior executive" and the"millennials", who are those who have grown up in a technological environment; profiles that generate "great tension", since, as he explained, they have caused a change in the hierarchy of values. Thus, there are professionals who request laundry service, rest on Fridays instead of Sundays, working from home and working while traveling, among other requests.

"Technology allows transversality, because it admits a different language. Whoever is not on the cell phone does not exist," warned Alberto Andreu. This places organizations at "the moment of singularity", because "there will come a time when the generation and processing capacity of computers will be substantially higher than that of humans. They will have the capacity to learn by themselves and will be faster in almost everything.

"It is important to clarify, to know where your business is and where you want to go; to share objectives, budgets and incentives; and to emphasize the how," stressed Telefónica's Global Organization and Corporate Culture director , who recommended "connecting" processes to work with a "horizontal" structure.