No I in team

Flash Interview with Henrique Cravo

C — What is the thing you are most proud of having participated in and which clearly depended on teamwork? Tell us why.

HC —During my journey at Celfocus, I had many challenging objectives to overcome, and in the end, they all had a different meaning.  Not only because of the professional achievement itself, but also because of the impact it had on my personal experience and growth as a person. Looking back on my track-record I can find 2 big milestones (sorry not picking just one, but these were really important to me).

The first big thing, to create Celfocus’ Delivery Centre in Oporto, starting from an empty room and four white walls. This was a big moment for me, because it was when I realised how much we can change people’s lives, by just activating the right support from our organization and bringing the right people to achieve a goal. The first step of embracing that challenge, even doubting my ability to do it, was a very small detail when we compare it with the work done by a great team and their positive impact in hundreds of people.

The second big thing, to deliver the Vodafone Turkey Transformation Project. Today, Turkey is almost a cliché, and there were other big and complex projects after that, but it was the first to push our organisation to prove that we are not just a couple of managers and engineers doing cool stuff, it was the moment where we showed that together as a team, we can achieve really big things.

Even today, while I’m sharing these words, I still feel proud of being part of that great team, who in the middle of bombs, political revolutions, the tough customer (and some great parties too), were able to deliver what we promised.
Why were those experiences so important to me? Because they thought me that every challenge is too much for one person alone. The doubts I had about myself, allowed me to learn with humility that teams build those major successes.

C — If you had to define our company starting with "We are ..." what would your phrase be? Why?

HC — We are who we choose to be. Our organisation has proven that it can grow, adapt and challenge big players and markets just because we choose to do it.

Our path was built with people who believed that the constraints and limitations are only in our minds. Our story tells us that if we really want to achieve something, first we have the intelligence to know our value, then understand our gaps and finally the courage to choose that there is a path of change to be done towards what we want to be.

Today, starting from our top management to all those who make things happen every day, we have people who really understand this, transforming our organisation into a living organism.

C — What would you say to someone who has trouble delegating responsibility to others?

HC — I would share the experiences that I mentioned before, because it was when I deeply incorporated that if we want to do everything on our own, three things will happen: burnout, demotivation and loneliness. The mistake is looking into this as a problem. This is just a growing phase of our personality. The first step is to acknowledge it and then understand how bad it is to yourself.

My personal experience thought me that I didn’t share responsibilities just because I didn’t have confidence in myself. Confidence to choose the right people, to understand them, to guide them and to motivate them.

When we activate this tool, things happen naturally and imagine this, we really start enjoying what we are doing, because we are not alone and we begin to have motivated people that energize us. This moves our mindset from the problem to the solution side.

C — In your opinion, is it possible to have great collective ideas or does genius always come from a brilliant mind? Why?

HC — I strongly believe that the difference between someone brilliant and someone valuable, is that the first one only has lot of ideas, and the second one not only has ideas but also turns them into reality.

Looking from this perspective, yes there will always be people thinking out-of-the-box, raising our boundaries, but they won’t be worth any value, if we don’t have others to pull them back to the reality of execution according to the context we are in.

For me, great collective ideas are the ones that are possible to implement, so it’s the mix of personalities that really changes our game.

C — Which sport is most similar to your current job? Why?

HC — The long marathons in any sport, running, cycling, motorsports, you choose. I’ve been doing long marathons in cycling, on the road, dirt roads, mountains or anywhere you can put a bicycle, since I was thirteen.

The big lesson was that the limit is only in our mind. After 10 or 12 hours of tiredness, you can be a great athlete, but reality hits, and your body is going down. This is when the game begins, because we start to really know ourselves when we overcome a certain level of tiredness, demotivation and energy.

If we look into these symptoms, you can easily find the same in your work life. Embracing pain, strong resilience, mental strength and energy through the pleasure of achieving a major goal are still my tools today.

C — In your opinion, what is the ideal size of a team? Why?

HC — I’ve had the pleasure to lead teams from 10 to 200 people. What I’ve learned with those experiences, was that the team size is only a problem when the complexity of the organisation hides the reality from you and filters your messages and mindset across the layers, wasting their meaning and value.

Think about this, if we put ourselves in the shoes of a CEO, team size cannot be a constraint, because it will immediately limit growth. Again, I believe that it’s all about the people that you put together and the mindset that you build.

We can set-up a “best practices organisation” with all the roles and fancy concepts of lean reporting, agility and co-working, but at the end of the day, the people that implement those organisations are what really matter.