Technological innovation shaped wars and empires throughout history much more than we are taught in school, so it is not a recent competitive challenge.

The main difference now is that we are experiencing a digital evolution where innovation is much faster and distributed due to online access to know-how combined with the low level of investment required in digital technologies. Additionally, the world wide web has removed geographical barriers empowering local to become global.

This means that we (Celfocus) need to organise ourselves differently due to the pace of innovation and that is why moving towards an “agile” organization is the basis to evolving any strategy. Defining the playground part of the strategy has not changed. We need to search and invest to create and sustain a competitive advantage in our target market. The pace of evolution just needs to be at the same speed of technology changes.

Whenever we start something new, whether it’s an offer, a new customer or working with a new product, the only certainty we have is that it will not go according to our plans. Celfocus’ strategy is the result of a lot of hypotheses, trials and feedback from the market.

For example, Celfocus’ geographical focus is the outcome of the learnings we had throughout years of trial and error. We now have clarity that as a system integrator, we cannot work in many time-zones. We can certainly deliver small projects in very distinct time zones, but we will not scale unless we create new delivery centers in those time-zones. Smaller projects may not be sustainable in the long run, unless there is high potential to become bigger and open new heights. Celfocus travelled around the globe from Japan to Brasil until we got it clear.

My difficulty is not remembering one failure, but selecting one. The Unitel project helped me shape my ideas around setting up project teams and the “power” of experience. In a nutshell, Celfocus was growing fast and in new technological areas, so we had to set-up the Unitel project team in a hurry and it was composed of many new people in the company. The project started, time was passing, and we struggled to progress. We managed to stabilize the technical solution and plan by adding just a few experienced colleagues that knew how to take the right decisions, fast as well as teach and lead the remaining team.

I see tactical actions and decisions as the operational implementation Celfocus’ strategy. So they are aligned with strategy in the vast majority of the time. There are always dilemas, mostly because we have to choose where we are going to spend our time and energy. A good example is the relevance of training to assure our proficiency. Training continuously builds our expertise and value, but every day we struggle to take people off critical assignments.

Celfocus is an IT services and engineering company and that is our stable baseline. We have a good basis to grow due to the collective know-how and references in top tier customers. One of the main challenges we need to address is the way to scale-up our teams, in particular how to scale know-how. This is one of the reasons, Celfocus has reviewed its organization and gathered people in communities (Capabilities guilds) that will foster that collective know how.

Our mission is to create this environments and get our people motivated for this journey by combining training (technical and behavioral), knowledge base, tooling, delivery methodologies, coaching and accumulation of experiences that build this collective know how.

On a general level, I see Celfocus continuing to evolve towards a distributed organization in terms of responsibilities and decision making. This change occurs essentially by having more people with the holistic knowledge, good leadership skills and a common alignment on direction and path to take.

To compete, we must be as good as (some) others and better than most. It becomes less evident once we realize that some companies compete aggressively by price. In contrast, others have specific technical advantages in certain domains, broader coverage of services, more experience in delivery & management processes, and many times worldwide brand awareness. But to explain to my kids, let's try this: Most people saw Finding Nemo. Sharks and clownfish live around the same reef. Sharks look like the dominant species in that movie, but the reality is that both are successful species because each one explores its "market" (food and shelter) and is very competitive in that market. Celfocus strategy focuses on a market that fits our strengths, namely our technological and industry know-how, ability to scale, right to play and geographical coverage. We can't be "best" in all things, but we are one of the best in the areas where we decided to compete.