“My everyday life at Telefónica” by Alejandro Chinchilla

My start to the day

As an early riser and night owl, I always wake up happy and active because of reading or a good film. My friend the alarm clock really appreciates this, her friend the radio usually helps too, but I’d be better off not confessing the programs I usually listen to (that’s an RGPD thing). After that, shower, breakfast, traffic and more traffic because I’m in Madrid, landing in Distrito Telefónica without the help of one of the drones that fly over our offices, although who knows… maybe one day they’ll be the solution to traffic be , and here no one is superior to us in terms of innovators, so wait and see.

I am usually one of the first to arrive, because as a child I listened to my grandmother who always told me: “The early bird catches the worm.” And that seems to be the case: I “ship” the first E -Emails on simpler topics and leave the rest of the day to more complex topics and meetings. This gives me the opportunity to introduce you to one of my most important work tools in the following question…

Without a doubt Outlook, with its calendar full of “life and activity” and a Teams that makes you accessible to all colleagues to be more agile, as well as to our external interlocutors, which in my case are numerous and varied. Also to organize those meetings that take place all day long and for which you often hardly have time to prepare as you would have liked. And many other tools that make our lives easier and more “agile”, especially the smartphone (cell phone), which we cannot part with while working.

Being somewhat traditional and orderly since EGB (I come from that era), I always have my notebook with me, free from cyber attacks and the best complement to a memory that is inversely proportional to age. The issues we work on are diverse and as diverse as the people we work with, and that requires this double support.

My best moment of the day

I think the best moment is when you take a short break and chat for a few minutes with your closest colleagues. These “micro-moments” do not have to be outside the work environment, but rather within the “perimeter”. They humanize our daily lives, they often inspire and help us, sometimes they make us laugh, and that is why they are entirely in line with Telefónica’s “mission”: “To make our world more human by connecting people’s lives” …and that’s what we do, starting with ourselves.

My tips for organization

Since the word “Decalogue” has not gone out of fashion, I will try to do it in this style:

• Distinguish the important from the unimportant, the urgent from the non-urgent.
• Adjust your time in the short term and organize it in advance in the long term.
• Anything you can solve with a phone call or Teams, do it before you write.
• The rule of three applies to meetings: no more than three people, three points and thirty minutes (by Steve Jobs).
• More people and meeting minutes lead to digressions, not solutions.
• Always write down the names of the people you meet because they are all important (Enrique Rojas advice).
• Take a break and add some humor (in honor of my colleague Sergio de La Calle).
• Don’t hold meetings after 5pm or on Fridays (says Chema Alonso).
• Work in a team with shared responsibility: the results will be better.
• Use telecommuting to address topics that require more concentration and writing.

Finally, two pieces of advice: digital shutdown and WhatsApp only for family and friends.