Dacsa Group is a family business and an international company that has grown exponentially over the last 10 years. Nowadays, Dacsa Group operates nine production plants distributed across six locations throughout Europe and has more than 500 employees.
The growth of the company has led to the need to change to a more efficient management model, and this has required an organizational restructure. This transformation that we are experiencing has been driven from the outset by the Management of the company.
We spoke with Santiago Martín, General Manager since 2017, who joined the Group in 2015 as Corporate Director of Operations to oversee all these changes and transformations.
Santiago emphasizes that in order to address a process of change like the one we are carrying out, we must first know what needs to be changed, and for that it is fundamental to understand where we come from and where we want to go. For Santiago, Dacsa Group is what it is today because of everything that has been done in the past, but also, everything that we are building together today will impact on the future of the company
Santiago emphasizes that it has been fundamental to have a team of people who are very involved, courageous, persistent and have the ability to generate enthusiasm for the changes. This has been key, choosing the people who will lead change is fundamental.
He also highlights that we have been able to manage the pace of change relative to our potential and resources, and adds that most change projects fail in the execution phase just because they do not know how to set the pace of change.
The changes made are based fundamentally on the movement towards an organization based on the definition of responsibility for functions. This step is key to being able to really delegate decision making. When people have clearly defined responsibilities, they proceed with a mission to fulfill and act with more autonomy, and this has a clear and automatic impact on their motivation. As organizations grow, we must move towards the delegation of decision making, become decision makers with autonomy and decentralize decision making to ensure a more agile organization. Additionally, autonomy brings an intrinsic motivation and encourages everyone to contribute more to the company.
Evidently, this delegation of decision-making must be accompanied by a system that allows establishment of limits and, in turn, clearly defines the objectives that are expected of each person. For this we have had to implement a solid budgetary process that has allowed us to set limits and establish a system of continuous improvement. Our ‘Espiga Sistem’, allows us to manage and focus on our improvements, and simultaneously establish clear objectives for everyone in the company.
We have worked, and will continue to work on promoting our company´s culture, which is also key if we want the decision making to be carried out in a manner aligned with the company’s ethos. We have worked tirelessly on our company model, our values and the definition of our leadership model, a key piece of Dacsa’s DNA. In essence, the culture of a company is what we do when the boss is not present and is linked to the priority we give to things. Resources are limited, but what makes us successful is how we use them and having the ability to assign the correct priority to everything. Culture must accompany the strategy in its execution.
Finally, we have created our functional groups in parallel with the formation of our structure at group level. This has been fundamental in being able to connect the plants in a structured way at a functional level. This allows us to take advantage of all the knowledge that exists within the Group to create our own Best Practices, learn from each other, have common action plans for all the plants and be able to standardize and guarantee that we move forward together. Each functional group is made up of local coordinators in each plant who are connected with a function manager at group level. This organizational structure also allows us to improve the sense of being part of a group and even to raise people´s professional expectations, to be able to participate in group-level motivational projects and in turn, help the company to grow.
These functional groups have helped to integrate and take advantage of the value of diversity within the Group. Santiago firmly believes that if you really want to take advantage of all the added value intrinsic to diversity, there is no other way than to integrate it, create exchange platforms and have a single language. At Dacsa Group we have established English as the main language of the Group, and currently we have Executive Team members who are not Spanish, with meetings held in English. This is not trivial, we have had to make significant investment in English classes, and we have had to learn a lot from Cultural Intelligence, but there is no doubt that integrating other cultures into the governing body of the company has only enriched us.
Dacsa Group is a company that moves forward with a clear strategy, focused on improving our competitiveness and sustainable growth, always hand in hand with our customers, accompanying them in their challenges and always with a clear mindset focused on continuous improvement.
Santiago ends by thanking all those who have seen the need for change and have been courageous in accepting the challenge of managing part of this process, because without any doubt one has to be brave to do so, and as he points out: “Without this team nothing would have been possible, because if you do not have a team you do not have anything. “