Designing Brit helps bridge cultural differences

Simon Quick ended up changing careers after a chance encounter with a Swiss woman led him to Switzerland. He was running his own architecture practice in the UK when he met Petra, a Swiss lawyer, on the beach in South Devon, England.

She was visiting for an 11-week intensive English course. Quick proved to be more than a good conversation partner and the two married after a year-long, long-distance relationship. In October 1999, Quick moved to central Switzerland.

“I decided that I wanted a new challenge,” says Quick, who lives and works in Cham, Zug. Following a stint with the Santiago Calatrava architecture firm in Zurich, Quick decided he was ready for yet another challenge.

He launched Third Person, through which he now offers coaching and seminars for professionals, dealing with business skills such as negotiation and conflict management.

“I specialize in the non-technical aspects of business, all the things that rarely get taught on MBA courses but which business folk are involved in nearly 98 percent of their time,” the 46-year-old says.

“My background as an architect gives me a different approach to business, in that I start from the belief that we can design good solutions.”

Quick consults with companies across German-speaking Switzerland. He typically works with groups of seven to 10 people, but he also does a lot of one-on-one coaching with managers.

Occasionally, he leads workshops with much larger groups. “I give people the opportunity to crash-test ideas,” says Quick, who provides a safe place where participants can practice using their skills in English, which is a second language for many of his clients.

Quick is also a commercial mediator with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, CIArb. Through his work he helps others to take decisions, with the key goal being to maintain good relations between both parties. According to Quick, a natural extension of this is dealing with other cultures.

“Using ourselves as a good example of others’ culture leads immediately to misunderstanding at best and conflict at worst as we try to come to terms with why others are not acting as we do, or expect them to,” says Quick. “Cultures for me are other groups who think differently to your groups, not necessarily nationalities.”

But speaking of nationalities, Quick sees similarities between the English and the Swiss, describing both as individualistic “island nations.” He offers the following advice for people new in Switzerland and having trouble coping.

“Nobody’s going to come to you with a tray of tea and say, ‘Welcome to Switzerland.’ You’ve got to make all the effort – and keep trying, because it’s worth it,” says Quick, who has made long-lasting friendships here by demonstrating his desire to become a part of the local community.

Quick also suggests joining a club or two. For example, he and his wife joined a nearby golf club both for fun and for the chance to meet more people in the area. By Swiss standards, his wife Petra is also somewhat of a “stranger” in Canton Zug.

At a café in her home canton, Uri, she and Quick met one of her old schoolmates. When the woman asked Petra if she was homesick, Quick was so startled and amused that he spat cappuccino across that table at his father-in-law. After all, they live just a 40-minute drive away. But everything is relative.