Running a telephone answering service involves getting a great many people to work together across different departments and, to keep our customers happy, every employee, from the most junior to the most senior, needs to know their part in the chain and to do their job to the best of their ability. If one part fails then the result is poor call handling and a dissatisfied caller and potentially customer.
Visitors to our offices will have noticed our boardroom is adorned with an enormous image of a “human tower” known as a castell. Castells are traditionally built during festivals in Catalonia, Spain. At these festivals, several teams meet and try to build the most impressive towers they can. The teams usually come from towns and villages where the castell is viewed as symbolic in that everybody’s effort counts, from the oldest to the youngest. Besides the people who actually climb, many are also needed to form the pinya (the base of the castell), to build to 9 levels as many as 200 are needed for the pinya. The pinya helps sustain the weight and acts as a sort of safety net, falls are rarely serious beyond bumps and bruises.
A castell is considered a success when everyone has climbed into place, the enxaneta (the last one) climbs up to the top, raises one hand (with four fingers erect, said to symbolize the stripes of the Catalan flag), climbs down the other side of the castell, and then everyone else comes down safely. Unsurprisingly the enxaneta is the lightest team member, children as young as 5 will often climb 30 feet into the air to great applause.
Would you send your youngest to the top? Click here to see a human ‘castell’ being built
