Today we spoke with Carlos Sánchez Magdalena, Irium’s expert in agile methodologies, change management, coach and trainer. He has participated in projects in Dubai, Qatar, Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Algeria, Nigeria, Colombia, Mexico, Italy, France, Portugal or Greece, among others.
We talked to him about the key points of his current project and his best tips to encourage other professionals to overcome their fears and get involved in international projects.
He actually immersed in a very ambitious international initiative where the standardization of the analytical processes, the data originated in a portfolio of between 75 and 100 projects distributed in different countries in Europe and Latin America, is pursued to make strategic decisions more efficiently. The challenge is to lead this project office to ensure task alignment models through agile methodologies. To achieve this successfully, and although it seems contradictory, he recommends, precisely by its geographically dispersed nature, to leave a small space for local personalization, allowing for the cultural particularities of each region.
These methodologies, explains Carlos, help companies to not get lost among the infinite data that current tools allow to extract. All of them, without a good capacity for analysis and relevant visualization and prevent the correct decision-making. This aspect also leads in many cases to production, economic and brand loss by allocating resources and efforts to projects that do not add up to the company’s strategy. It makes a big difference when having consultants like him, who know how to listen and identify the key points that the client needs to monitor in their dashboard, and know how to provide a graphic image of clear, simple and loaded with strategic significance.
Leading this with the additional distance handicap and time difference becomes a challenge. These agile methodologies are helpful, for example, Carlos organizes the team with a 15-minute daily up-to-date meeting, maintaining a virtual face-to-face relationship with colleagues from other countries.
"In the end, general issues or even personal culture always arise in working meetings and this enriches you a lot personally and teaches you different points of view."
This exchange of views, developed in different cultures, is precisely the great growth value of such projects. In his words "working in an international environment is always enriching, cultural diversity helps you a lot to open your mind, the international project gives you a lot of security."
From his travels, we also learned how different business protocols are from different countries and cultures and how all this can develop our capacity for adaptation and learning. Carlos believes that these experiences have generated his growth in knowledge, self-confidence and experiences.
But you don’t come without a decision. "Making the leap to this type of project requires a major effort, first because it forces you out of your comfort zone, then, it forces you to see things from other perspective unknown for you until then.
If the project requires a change of language the effort is greater, but I wouldn’t change the experience for anything, the international environment always gives you much more than a national environment. It helps you to try and get many things out of you, even in the language, it forces you to grow, to move away from the egocentrism that we all have and to start developing active listening, to think that other approaches are possible".
About the language change, he also tells us that he barely knew English when he started traveling and had to pick up the pace with effort.
"You have to manage your own changes and adapt yourself. The daily closeness with colleagues, so typical in Spain, becomes a virtual proximity and is managed through a good approach to these. If you are transparent and honest, friendship is generated even through the camera."
In his own words, to onboard on an international project "the extra effort is great but the value you get back is greater, you have to lose fear because it is worth it".