Proactive Global’s Post

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to Automation Answers again brought to you from Atlanta, GA and being at the Modex events. With me is Francisco is that good foundation. Francisco, Francisco, Francisco Spanish is not quite like the city. San Francisco, perfect cover. Thanks for coming in. Pleasure to meet you. I guess just for a very quick. Explanation I assume within the intra logistic world, most people would know you, but obviously you've went to university in Madrid, I think if that's right, obviously Spanish and then you've all been everywhere I think, right. So been Kuwait projects in Chile, Mexico, I think I've missed a few. Obviously we're in Atlanta as well. So would you mind just giving a bit of an intro into into yourself and and where we are today? Well, my father was Spanish Navy officer and so generally the people that work for the Navy. They moved to one city. From one city to another. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the my, the story when I was a child. Yeah. My childhood, I lived in in Spain in different cities. I lived in Paris also. Umm, and I did high school in the United States. And then I went back and studied university and in Madrid. And as soon as I finished, I was deployed in. I found a job, I went to Lisbon, and from there I went to Panama. And then from there I went to Brazil. OK And that's been a little bit the story until now. Yeah. Yeah, moving around. Awesome. OK And and today's topic as well be discussing about obviously, leadership. Your leadership principles, but how you get the most out of teams etcetera, which we'll go into detail afterwards. But I I guess my first question and maybe quite an obvious one, you've got such a a vast array of experience in different countries, counties, states, continents. How, how does that help you not just specifically, but how does that help in general? Being a leader you became, you become a little bit of chameleon. Umm, you have to adapt and you get a little bit of everywhere you go. And and I guess that makes you super flexible with time. And I guess that makes you have a little bit more awareness. Mm-hmm. And and you really interiorized that to reach to a point you can go different ways. Yeah. And there's no one way that is the right way, another way that's wrong way. It's different ways to arrive to the same. Yeah. The same place. Yeah. So. So yeah, it's it's you gotta have a little bit of passion for that and you really have to to like it. But. But it gave me flexibility to try to listen more and see details and see other things that might not seem important but not important. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think that's really important about, I guess, how you adapt into into different environments. That's good to know. And I guess as well, how do you then say if you've adapted to different environments, you understand maybe what's important to this culture versus another culture? How do you go about maybe implementing, of course, you don't want to go in like a Wrecking Ball or bullying a child, a shop and completely. Change the culture if you go to a new country. But also it's important, if you have a head office, maybe in a different location to bring in some of the values and and and and the culture. So how do you, I guess, adapt and help bring some of those. Yeah. Values into a new culture. OK. So I think basically the, the general rule is you're not going to change the country or the place. The place is going to change you. OK. It doesn't mean you cannot bring some ideas, of course. Yeah. But, you know, trying to move from football to basketball and bring the rules of football into basketball. Cannot work. Yeah. Of course. So that's that's I would say that's more like a 90 percent, 85% adaptation. OK would requires to be very humble. OK yeah. Very humble and very respectful and trying to listen a lot and understand a lot, especially at the beginning more than you know coming with you with your book of how things are done. Yeah. Because that's a very typical mistake that happens. So it's it's. Yeah, it's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I think that's funny. Funny you say that. So we've. I'm, I'm from London. We've just opened an office in in Krakow in Poland. One of the funny things we make maybe a bit weird so for to to some people that don't really understand. But normally in our world it's very busy. The offices, it's very, very loud in most cases. I went to Poland, I tried to introduce having a radio in the office and that didn't go down very well at all. No one liked that. So again like you say, right, it's about bringing ideas but don't just bring the book and go, this is how we do it. Because if you force it then one of the things that one of things that I do when I come to a new country or new place, environment. Just ask the people locally. Very stupid questions. Like, you know, is this something you would generally do here? Yeah, yeah. And if they say, well, no, we generally don't do this here. Don't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, do whatever is normally done of course in in that environment. Yeah. And build a picture and then yeah, obviously go from there. Awesome. OK. And then moving I think a really, really big factor to leadership and I guess it really changed dynamically. Obviously you've been based in Europe and and globally. So you're used to managing people remotely I guess in in in different countries. I guess that was really accelerated within the well, not just the industry globally with with the pandemic. And COVID-19, so I guess with the experience you you've got an understanding the cultures, I guess firstly, how do you personally manage teams remotely and then I guess we'll talk about COVID and the the craziness of the pandemic afterwards. But I think we have to talk about the pandemic, because the pandemic demonstrated that from an operational point of view you can have remote teams working and doing amazing things with the high productivity and low mistakes. And that is and they could do it even from home of course. So that can happen and of course there are exceptions, but generally in in most of the businesses you can do this, especially when you talk about engineering, of course, software development and administrative tasks, etc. Now the key is that that is only from an operational point of view. Umm, and that's what people usually that's the easiest part to see. Yeah. The easiest part this processes and operations and and you know men are how many man hours to do this, how many engineering hours to do this and that. Then comes the other part, which is. Really understand empathy at work. Understanding the people. Umm. Receiving a call from another team in another country. Umm. And. Being happy to talk to that person, of course. Or with versus receiving a call from somebody in other countries. You know, not again. Yeah. Yeah. You know, how do you make that? How do you create that harmony? Harmony. And that's more difficult. OK. And that. And if you don't have that harmony, you don't have that understanding and you don't have that empathy between the teams, They're not going to be efficient and you're gonna have a lot of misunderstandings. Yeah. And and and sometimes even different agendas. Yeah. So how do you build that? I mean, there are. Yeah, it's many things, but I think human beings, we need a percentage of physical interaction. Umm, that needs to come. Yeah, at some point, Yeah. Yeah, of course. I think that's obviously being married exits, obviously. You see everywhere the advancement in AI and technology, right. I think especially if you go into a bit more of a specific niche, I think it's a general statement. But if you talk about the engineering and intralogistics world, right, you don't really need as much manpower on site as as as what you may be needed to I guess pre COVID or before the. Advancement of technologies I mean some of the the boots up you were looking at what I I was looking at sorry. They said you can log in remotely into the WMS and some of their servers and you can have a problem in a warehouse in Boston and then you can sign in from Barcelona or from Austria and you can fix it. Right. So I think you're right there the the advancement there and just just aids that that remote working. Yeah. So yeah it's good to see and as well you mentioned earlier about getting the harmony understanding their needs asking silly or stupid. Sessions as well. How do you not necessarily remotely but how do you get that get the best out of teams. I guess two questions. How to get the best out of your team remotely and then how do you get the best out of your team when you're all harmonized in the office? Well, of course you need you need the basics in the bases. Go back goes back to having an efficient organization with the processes that eliminate barriers to execution that are efficient. You need to delegate. So you've got the basics that everybody knows the management playbook, we know that but then you need to work more in the intangibles and that's the that's the. I think part so and that comes more to do you have a diverse and equitable and inclusive environment or you don't? Do you really have it? Do you really allow other opinions, other ways of doing? Are you really open as an organization? And, and and then it's, it's a little bit something very simple. As I said, physical interaction. Umm, I remember in Barcelona we were having, let's say, difficulties. We were not very efficient working together with the team in Germany. And and I had and I had many people that were interacting and that was before COVID, right away they were interacting by phone, by e-mail, by conference call. Yeah. And they were just not working. They were not on the same page. OK, Yeah, they were going in different directions. Plenty of mistakes, misunderstandings, cost overruns. Projects. Umm. And then I did something very simple. I just, you know, I was, I I was fed up of people coming to my office, umm, and complaining about the Germans, right. So I said, listen, the Germans cannot be that that bad. The Germans cannot be that bad. So I said, OK, we're gonna do something. We're gonna fly. Who are the 10 people in the office that interact most with the with the German team? But it's this, this, this, this would fly in there. I talked to the general manager at that time. I said we're going there. We're gonna spend one day at 1:00. OK. When Omega Workshop. Yeah. I want you guys to take us to have beers. Yeah. Yeah. And and whatever you. Yeah, in the city you are. And then next day we'll we'll fly. Yeah, we went there. They were super welcoming.