I always remember the first client that we sold under a big trash.

We celebrated like we won a World Cup 2011.

That's great.

Some people might say work's not done, we can't celebrate yet.

That's not your mindset.

You got to celebrate even the small victories.

Are you looking to increase sales, grow your brand and share your leadership message?

Then check out our business podcast program.

Each week more people listen to podcasts than have Netflix accounts and one third of the US population listens to podcasts regularly.

So your customers and team are already listening to podcasts.

It should be yours.

Discover our five step profitable podcast framework and what results you can expect for your company by setting up a 20 minute call with my team@BenLeads.com schedule.

That's BenLeads.com schedule.

Welcome back to Lead the Team with.

Number one, bestselling author and in demand.

Corporate trainer Ben Fanning.

On this podcast, the world world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success.

Strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate.

Your top leaders and accelerate your career.

Let's get started.

Here's Ben.

Hey there.

Lead the team nation.

Welcome back to another great episode.

Today we have a truly global leader joining us.

He spearheaded digital transformations across continents, he's built teams from the ground up and now he's at the helm of a company shaping the future of finance and other industries.

Please welcome Marco Santos, the global CEO of GFT Technologies.

Marco, it's a pleasure to have you.

Your journey as a CEO is truly fascinating.

You've essentially taken GFT to new heights, multiple markets, starting with that incredible expansion initially in Brazil.

What were the early days like when you're in Brazil with the team, building a team of thousands and introducing your German company to a whole new continent?

It was a fantastic opportunity for me and I'm very, very proud to have, to have created a fantastic team that we never deliver things alone.

Right.

We always deliver things with a fantastic and a dream team.

Well, so you.

So I want to double click on that a little bit because I mean, imagine you, you're bringing this German company in Brazil, you're trying to grow it.

People probably didn't know the brand initially in Brazil and you had a big, big job.

What was it like in those early days?

It was quite challenging for sure because I was starting the company and bringing the value proposition of JFT and the JFT brand into, into new clients and nobody heard about the brands.

And it's different that if you have a brand backing you, like Google aws, right?

Or Microsoft or you name it, right?

Those big brands.

But once you have something that nobody hurts, and then you need to create a brand.

You need to create a brand promising and articulates very well the differentiation that you can bring to the clients, to the market.

And it was.

It was an amazing exercise.

It was an amazing job.

And.

And I think that we were able to.

To convey that message, to articulate those differentiations and.

And start step by step, right, to build up our brands.

And I must say that one thing that I always remember, the first CL sold in Brazil, the first clients after some months of work.

And obviously I was the CEO, the county manager at GFT Brazil at that time, under a big pressure, right?

From the company, right?

Because they want to see the newly.

The pressure was big, right?

Exactly.

You say you want a big job, here's a big job.

Exactly.

And I remember, like today, the first client that we bought, which was a small project, a small service to a.

An incredible bank.

And at the time, and we celebrated like we won a World Cup.

I remember myself and the whole team there in Brazil when we got small, small project, small service.

It was our first sell as the Country Manager CEO at GFT Brazil at that time, 2011.

That's great.

I love it.

And it does.

I bet you're like, finally, we've got some momentum here.

And I love the fact that some people might say, well, y'all, the work's not done.

We can't celebrate yet.

But it sounds like that's not your mindset.

You got to celebrate even the small victories.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

We need to celebrate every everything, every good thing that we.

That we conquer.

Right?

We need to celebrate.

And that's.

And that's something that's.

Even today that I keep telling the team that we are much bigger, that we are in 20 countries, 12,000 consulting engineers across the globe.

And I tell the teams we need to celebrate the small winners and the big battles.

Yeah.

So good.

Don't forget to celebrate you all.

First message.

First big message of the interview here with Marcos.

Now the next question.

You've led GFT since to success across many markets.

What's been the secret sauce of how you've applied those lessons as CEO?

And other than that first moment of closing your first deal, was there another key moment that was helpful in shaping your journey?

I remember that once we established our vision and mission, it was something that I work at thoroughly to design it, because I believe on vision, on mission, in order to drive change, to drive real execution.

And we created that we Shaped that and deliver when we launched, I remember when we launched that and we started to communicate that to our teams internally to the market as well.

And it was great.

And I think that's one element of the elements of the success, right?

You need to have passion to create a vision, communicate that and convey the vision and mission with passion in order to create inspiration and push forward the teams together with you.

I really like that part of the work that leaders, executive leaders, is to craft a vision.

But I, I feel like a lot of times they forget or they, they don't prioritize communicating it effectively and they forget that you got to do it a lot.

Right.

I suspect you're still doing it today.

It's like you got to beat that drum consistently because if the top executives not communicating the vision and you're depending on other people to do it, it's like losing it loses some of the passion since you came up with it in the first place.

I mean, how do you think about the communication side of this and, and getting it out effectively?

Because y'all, he's, he's leading a team of 12, 000, right.

Communication is different languages.

I mean, what are you doing that exactly.

Multiple language, multiple cultures.

Right.

So let's also take in the, in consideration the cultural aspects.

Right.

So communication is key especially and especially nowadays with the pace of change that is so fast and things that we are implementing, challenges that happen that you are not planning before.

So communication is key and communicates your vision, your mission and communicate your new strategy.

It's the most important link to a good execution, to a successful execution.

If you don't communicate and then you don't.

You don't bridge that gap right.

Between the thought process, the design thinking, the strategy and the real operational work, which is execution.

And any that is, there are.

It's quite common to see guys, leaders that design good visions, but then challenging to execute.

Right.

And vice versa.

Happens all the time.

Exactly.

And other leaders that kind of don't plan very well.

Right.

And then execute is acute.

Then you just have brute force.

Then also the ultimate results are not so, so good.

But to do that in a comprehensive way in a 360 way, 360 degree.

This is, this is a key for success.

And I, and I love that.

And I love that.

I love communication.

I tell to my, to my teams of marketing communication internally I tell, I tell them if I hadn't done computer science, I would have done marketing communications because that's an area that I really loved.

And I think it's key for success.

Definitely a helpful interest to have as a CEO with a big vision.

What have you seen to be the most effective way for communicating your vision, communicating your message internally?

Because a lot of leaders are listening probably saying yeah, I get remote working.

We've got people around the globe, things are changing fast.

How do I do it?

That you need to.

First you need to create and shape your, your strategy, vision, mission, strategic goals.

You need to shape that with, with key, with your key team.

So I think the one element of success is if you do, if you shape the pro, if you shape the thing and bringing people on board to make the key leaders, the senior management of the company, the leadership.

Right.

As part of the process.

This is, this is really people that report you directly.

Exactly.

People that report to me directly.

People that are.

That are key stakeholders right below them or in, or in other distributed teams.

I like a lot distributed teams as well with less hierarchy.

So if you can combine those two dimensions, distributed teams, key leaders and obviously the reports and then you make them part of the shaping of your strategy.

And so that's let's say the first major first step for success.

The second one once you, once you crystallize, right.

So once you finalize the first version of your strategy and then start the communication communication I believe in a rollout process in the organization and then rollout then you need to really make sure that your direct team understands that in a comprehensive way.

And then the, the, the second level and then the, the, the whole team of the company.

I can, and I can use examples how, how we did in previous, in previous communications that we had GFT in the past.

So we used to take the team the off site and then take the key, the key team for an off site.

And then you can have an off site with a different environment if I did a different setup.

And then you can have time, qualitative time to communicate and think through it and discuss it.

After that do a town hall, global regional town hall.

And then you, you, you push the message forward and then you start to work and say multi dimension in the company in order to, to roll it out right across the board, across countries, across layers of the, of the company, your business unities.

And to finalize which I think that's the cherry on the cake which I really love as well, to do it is to keep doing the communication.

So we need to create the cadence.

The cadence, right?

The cadence of communication.

The thing never stops.

It's like you, it's like you don't clean your House.

Right.

From every time.

Right.

So we need to, we need to do it and we need to keep doing and keep communicating.

And I like to address the new employees.

So the new employees of the company, I also kind of forget on the end of the process.

Right.

So everybody that's new in the company, obviously with a senior level, talk to 12,000 people.

Right.

In one month.

But for everyone that joins the company and then you have the time as the CEO to come and give the 10 minutes, 8 minutes of a communication.

So they hear the vision from you on their first day of work or their first couple days of work.

Absolutely, yeah.

And what you hear, what I'm pointing out to listeners is there's a big, it's easy to forget because you could just obsess about execution, getting in the weeds, but you're like, no part of the job is to make sure that we routinely remind them of the vision.

And I suspect you get better at it by communicating it.

And when you've communicated a hundred times that 101st time you communicate, it's going to be better than the first time you communicated it.

That's it here.

So with that said, what is sharp?

You're sharpening the, the messaging.

Yeah, absolutely, you're sharping the message.

So what is the vision for gft?

So I would start with the vision of Marco and then I, I translate that to jft.

Right.

Even better translation, I translate to Jeff T.

So I'm going to answer both.

So first, what is my personal vision?

Obviously, considering I'm talking about information technology, right.

My, our industry, GFT technologies.

My personal vision is that in three, four years from now, all the process to develop new digital solutions, software development and deliver technology services.

So all that process is going to be created and shaped with AI in the heart of the process as the underlying, the main elements of value creation of this process, of software development, of creation of a new digital product.

This starting from ideation, strategic design, to the implementation, the coding, the testing, launching, support and maintenance.

And for all types of projects, say ISV projects, a cloud project as software, as a service project, a custom, traditional custom development, and even an AI native project.

So for all of all those types of projects, migration, modernization, everything, and we are going to do things 10 times x times faster and more efficient than we do today.

And this is gonna create new breakthroughs on the development and creation of a new digital products and new digital solutions to the markets, to the clients.

And, and we are, and, and we are definitely gonna get into a really different, not a different but we're gonna add a different, but quite say abundant and bright time of throughputs, right.

Of creation new digital products.

So that's my personal vision and then translating that to jft, right?

So for our vision and mission for JFT that we are strongly communicating and pushing forward to the market, to internally to our clients, partners, we will not be the best responsible AI centric software development and technology services company in the roles.

So we want to be the benchmark, the number one and we are in that mission to deliver the best responsible AI digital products software to, to our clients.

So that's, that is something, that is something comprehensive and we are on this, on this, let's say mission and vision.

And we are very happy, passionate about that.

We believe on that and we want to make this thing happen.

Are you looking to increase sales, grow your brand and share your leadership message?

Then check out our business podcast program.

Each week more people listen to podcasts than have Netflix accounts and one third of the US population listens to podcasts regularly.

So your customers and team are already listening to podcasts.

It should be yours.

Discover our five step profitable podcast framework and what results you can expect for your company by setting up a 20 minute call with my team@BenLeads.com schedule.

That's BenLeeds.com schedule.

So what's been the power for you of starting with your personal vision and aligning that with the overall corporate vision?

We are, we are, as I'm stepping in as a CEO, I have the, you know, the, the mandate, right?

If I can say like that, the mandate to reveal, right, the strategy of the company.

So, and I am required, right to do that, right, by, by all stakeholders.

And, and so with that, with that scenario, it's perfect for me because I have a vision.

I see things changing very fast.

I think I see the markets going towards the direction and I have the, I'm blessed to have that opportunity, right, that mandate to shape something new.

And then I brought those two things together, right?

I brought what I, my beliefs and translate that into the business of gft, right?

It's powerful when you align the two.

And I think as we talked about vision a lot, he was like, oh yeah, corporate vision, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But yeah, when it aligns to your personal vision and you put the thought into that, it really adds a lot more to it because it helps the passion sort of infuse.

Use it.

Now when we talk about AI, there's a lot of positive things coming from that.

And I hear, love to hear from you.

So far, what's been your favorite or one of your more memorable applications of AI that you've been a part of either in your personal life or at work?

That's, that's really been, been fun.

Yeah.

So, so let me, let me step back and tell you that I, I got bachelor degree in computer science in the 90s and I studied AI as a specialization in the 90s in university.

Seemed like science fiction back then.

And it was completely, completely, completely conceptual.

It's, it was completely mathematics and statistics conceptual and, and we designed many things and it was pure mathematics and it was, I'd say okay, but we could not see things right getting, getting into the, into place right.

And then in now I know over the last 10 years, over the last 15 years, 20 years after the 20s and then we see scaling things scaling up right.

And then the underlining elements to support the real AI, Internet, cloud computing, data processing and, and then many other breakthroughs right there.

The, the, the really materialization of deep learning was a quite important breakthrough.

And then finally in 2018, the creation and launch of the Transformers, that that was something that's, that was the underlying element of the generative AI.

And, and then generative AI really took off from 2018 onwards after the transformation.

Piece took it into, into outer space probably literally in terms of how fast it could advance.

Absolutely.

And then you, we came from perception AI that you could perceive things better multimodality and then transform it and then generate it and then things are escalating.

So I, I, I, so I see that, you know, so, so, so I, and I, I, I participated of that journey.

I saw that right in my career, right on my, on my career, my technical career, my business career.

And, and then coming to a question.

So obviously the use cases, right the thing.

So considering all of that, I, I see, I see things materializing with a new society for new new business models with agents like that.

Your agent is going to talk to my agents, right and they are going to, and they are going to discuss and articulate and organize the podcast right with the interviews and then they're going to do all the work and we are going to come and really bring the human, the human value added right on top of that.

And they're going to be much more efficient and going to create many other things.

We are going to, so we're going to step into a agent society.

We are going to, we are going to also be in times that, that you're going to have recommendations so personalized recommendations considering really 360 degree about, about you and your behavior.

We still see today like lots of kind of silos and issues right on the, on the marketing things that we receive right from all the brands that we consume, all the service that you consume, products.

So things are going to be much more integrated and we are going to have different, new, different sorry new business models.

I believe that you can have even different types of banks and insurance companies different types, different type of banking that can come into play that even we are not see yet.

And also on the technology, information technology per se which was what I mentioned before that that all the process will change and will be accelerated and then I'm going to create more value, more throughputs, faster, more efficiently, cheaper.

Such an exciting future ahead on AI on the other side of the coin, there's a lot of fear out there.

People listening could be saying man, I used to do that or I used to arrange stuff for the CEO.

That's been my job.

And now you're talking about these AI agents that are going to take my job.

And so it, it could and probably will lead to widespread job loss to some degree, but also opportunities.

So want to hear from you, what's your advice for people who are feeling the fear right now?

I would advise to embrace the new.

So that would be the advice.

So we need to.

For those that are enthusiastic with that and for those that are.

That are fearing right.

They both, they both should simply be open for, for the new, for the new and embrace the new and learn with that.

So I, I started myself working with the large language models and I'm using that as a.

On doing several things right.

So for myself, for my family, I mean personally on the job and so we need to embrace it in many angles, in many levels.

Right?

On the, on a small things that we do in our day to day for our personal life, on our, on our jobs and on the work that we do and, and obviously push the company right to, to bring, to bring into and to provide right more efficient tools and solutions for us.

So that would be the piece of advice.

Let's embrace it.

Let's be open for the new.

Let's adapt ourselves.

We are in times that is not the smartest, is not the strongest but is the ones that can adapt better, that are going to really make the next step and we are all capable to learn to work with information and we have many things available for us and it's the pace of change.

Right.

I'm incentivizing and I am an enthusiast because I believe that we are gonna reskill people.

So people are going to be reskilled, they're going to learn, you're going to upgrade and we are all going to do more with the job that we do that AI is not going to do, which is the human job, which is the innovation, the ingenuity, the creation, the design.

And we are going to have a generative AI to accelerate.

Right.

The value that it creates.

Yeah, really, really like that philosophy.

And the first word you said was, hey, if you're concerned about AI, the first word was embrace.

Which is, which leads to us being more adaptable with our skills and really expecting it to change things.

And if we do embrace it, we're going to be more open, we're going to learn more and we'll be able to integrate these tools in a positive way.

Instead of being left behind, maybe we'll be out front.

Another thing that you said that really resonated with me too was it's almost like a call to action, to leaders, to get your teams to engage with AI.

Like don't wait for them, engage them, ask them questions, ask them to participate.

Provoke.

Right?

Provoke.

Yeah.

Who, who?

Push them, Push them, Right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Provoke them into this space and it'll, it'll resonate for their careers for a long time if they get involved with it now.

No.

Thinking back to the early days of your career, what was your first job and how does it still influence your leadership today?

I started up my career at Oracle, so I started working Larry Ellison.

Exactly, exactly.

Larry Ellison.

I started in 1990 something.

Right.

And it was an internship job.

So I was also studying and then I started that and it for me was, you know, was something that I was life changing.

Right.

I take it many lessons, many things from, from the, from that internship into my, my life.

I got exposed to cutting edge technology at the time, right.

So I was exposed to, to as a quite complex, quite complex and high value added technology service at the time.

And I also had an international opportunity.

So I flew outside of Brazil at the time and I went to usa, stayed in USA for a while, also learned a lot and so it was amazing to have that opportunity that shaped several elements, I think I take it.

To today over the years, what's been your biggest source of inspiration and when's a challenging time that it got you through?

Very good.

I, I, I also, I feel my, some of my bosses, some of my leaders that I had, they were definitely source of inspirations.

I, I think I, I'm, I must say that I, I Am blessed and I was blessed to have very good leaders in my career and I, they were source of inspiration for me direct.

Right.

That I could see right.

On the, on the day to day.

Yeah.

So that, that is one and obviously as I'm a person that I love to, I love to study, I love to read, so I'm very connected with the academical part.

I, I also got several inspirations right.

With fantastic leaders that created breakthroughs right.

In our, in our industry, in information technology industry like Bill Gates, like Jeff Bezos, right.

Like, you know, Larry Page.

Right.

And Mark, Mark Zuckerberg, you name it.

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

So all of them with fantastic, with fantastic breakthroughs with a vision that's a created markets.

Was there one tough time where you're like, you know what?

I'm glad I had that inspirational boss to help me keep pushing or I had that, I had that quote from Bezos or the book from Gates that helped me keep rolling and get through it.

I, I, if, sorry, can you repeat the question?

I, I could not hear you.

It's yeah, you really listed out.

I, I like how you're drawing inspiration from so many sources and I was just wondering if there was a time where things were pretty difficult and having that boss or that mentor helped you get through it and ultimately succeed.

Yes, yes, yes.

I, I, I, I, I must say, I must say that in all the change that I did, all the steps that I took in my professional career in companies or within the companies, even within gft.

So all the big steps that I did, all of them I faced major challenge.

I faced big hurdles.

Right.

In business wise, you know, cultural wise, political wise.

Right.

So in many aspects.

And I, I always got very good mentors and source of inspirations and some former leaders and leaders.

And I remember also another one, one guy that was the CEO of one of the companies that I work at, I did not report to him and then I moved on and then I kept in contact with him as a source of inspiration and market leader in and I always came there to say, wow, no one facing those challenges.

I'm facing this challenge.

What do you think?

And then good, good to hear some feedbacks and then you can bring that to your reality.

Right.

It does not mean that you're going to adopt everything, but at least that you're gonna, you know, get, get to learn something.

Right?

Yeah.

It seems like so many leaders as they rise in organizations, a lot of times they, they keep their challenges to themselves and they try to work through it themselves versus taking it to a mentor, talking to people even outside of the industry and working through it and really sharing it.

Do you find that to be helpful?

It sounds like you do.

When you have a challenge.

I did.

Versus just solving yourself and I mean it's lonely at the top.

It doesn't have to be.

You can build your own.

Absolutely.

You need, you need to choose.

You need to find, let's say and choose the, the right and the right mentors and coaches.

Right.

People that can.

Can really have an open talk that is going to be truly sincere.

Right.

With you and without any strings touch it.

Right.

That you can definitely gonna simply listen to you, hear to you and bring comments.

Right.

And.

And so that's a, that's something interesting that you need to find and nail down.

But once you do it, then I am a strong believer that you can do things fantastic.

But if you can also get the learning from outside, you can do it.

Exponential.

Such a good reminder.

I am always on the search to help build my inner circle and looking for people who can help give guidance and give feedback.

And oftentimes I get asked to play that role and I really enjoy it.

We can learn from each other if we're open to sharing our challenges and try to grow that way.

Mr.

Santos, this has been so much fun today.

What's your parting thought for our listeners?

The.

The main one.

The main.

What's the main one?

Yeah, the main one is let's, let's, let's, let's be open for the new.

Let's embrace the new and let's get ready to adapt ourselves.

The world is changing a lot.

Information technology, you name it, right.

With AI, with next generation technologies, robotics, all those things together, they are bringing an acceleration right pace of change.

And we all need to embrace the new, to be open to learn new things and keep learning.

Keep learning.

Keep learning.

Right.

Keep learning.

So that's, that would be my say, my, my final piece of advice.

Right.

And by the way, I use that into myself, right.

I use that to my life.

I am always open for the new.

I'm always seeking new trends, new things and learning.

Yeah, that's one of the takeaways for me today.

Just reminding me of the importance of walking the walk.

Well, you say you want open leaders, you want an open company, open people and demonstrating that by role modeling it and aligning.

Not just the, not just taking time as a leader to think about the vision of the company, but also how your personal vision aligns to it and infuses it with passion.

All really good stuff.

Thanks for coming on.

Lead the team.

Thank you very much.

Want to boost your productivity and decision making?

Get vital insights from each episode delivered directly to your inbox.

A great resource whether you've listened to the episode or not.

Go to benfanning.com insight.