#14 - Italian Meetings

Usual Italian sight during my first visits to Rome.

One interesting co-operation project took me often to Rome in Italy. All the practical arrangements were taken care of by our Italian account manager. The office was located outside city area, as well as the hotel where I usually stayed. This was already my fifth travel to Rome in business and I felt bad that I had never seen the city. It was time to break the business routine. My colleague Mr W. and I had a nice walk at the city center in the middle of the historic attractions. After that we enjoyed a tasty Italian dinner and the sweet taste of Limoncello. That experience carried us easily through the exciting meeting the next day.

Pizza and Limoncello - Not a usual combination but it works.

As usual, the meeting was scheduled to start at 9 o’clock. I and Mr W. together with couple of local colleagues arrived punctually and started drinking some coffee. Around 9:30 most of our Italian colleagues had arrived, as well as the first customers. Because we were still missing most of the important customer representatives, we continued small talk and drank some coffee. At 10:30 o’clock most of the participants were already present and we considered starting the meeting gradually. The last customer representatives arrived around 11 o’clock, after which the meeting really started. After some discussion it was lunch time and we enjoyed Italian sandwiches at the meeting room. The meeting kept going on until evening, when it was time to take a taxi back to airport. 

That was a regular Italian working day. Italians know how to take it easy and why should you take meetings too seriously, if you can enjoy pizza, pasta, Limoncello and ancient culture everyday. On the other hand, it might be the Mediterranean climate that gets people relaxed. Maybe I could get used to the relaxed rhythm, maybe not. At least I have succeeded to enjoy the slow motion on a vacation at the Mediterranean area. That is a good beginning.

Lessons learnt:

Cross-cultural differences between Italians and Finns.