Procurement as a People Business: Leadership Lessons Across Borders

In this episode, host Stacy Joslin sits down with Carlos Perico, Managing Director at ProcureAbility, to explore the leadership principles that have shaped his global procurement career. Drawing on experiences across multiple countries, cultures, and industries, Carlos shares why understanding people is often more important than understanding processes.

At the center of the conversation is a simple but powerful idea: procurement is ultimately a people business. While organizations invest heavily in technology, processes, and transformation initiatives, sustainable success depends on trust, relationships, and the culture leaders create for their teams.

The conversation explores why people-centered leadership remains one of the most powerful drivers of organizational success. From building trust and fostering collaboration to developing talent and embracing diverse perspectives, the discussion offers practical insights for leaders navigating increasingly complex market environments.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Procurability's Procurement Pathways. A journey into the dynamic world of procurement called through the voices of its most trusted leaders. Here, every story, every lesson, and every hard-won insight reveals how personal passion fuels professional impact, and how those moments taken together shape the future of our field. Today's guest is procurability managing director Carlos Perico. Carlos Perico, thank you for being here today.

Speaker 0:30

Thank you. Thank you. I'm a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 0:33

I'm looking forward to learning more about you. Unlike a couple of these other podcasts, you and I have only worked together for the last nine months or so and not terribly closely.

Speaker 0:43

We're known commodities, that's sure. Yeah. No, but a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you for the invite.

Speaker 1 0:49

So let's start the way we typically start these sessions. We'd love for the audience to learn a little bit more about you, your background, your procurement path, and a little bit uh a little bit about your personal life as well, if you'd like.

Speaker 1:02

Sure. Let me let me start with the usual. Uh you hear the accent. I am not from the U.S., so let me start from there. Uh I'm originally from Bogotá, Colombia. And um I moved to the U.S. exactly in the year 2000. So I was mid-college in Colombia, decided to move to the US to finish my bachelor's, and uh finished the um my degree, economics, and then decided to go straight into a graduate degree for finance. So I I like numbers, I like the whole idea of geopolitics and geoeconomics. That was my passion back then, 26 years ago. And um and then started working, um not in procurement, as I I found the more I'm in procurement, the more people I found that we are just landed in procurement from something else. So I started more finance and accounting, and I guess the company I worked at that time, uh, you manage the cash flow, you pay the vendors, and somehow paying the vendors led into managing the vendors and then and then the relationship with the vendors. So I really landed in procurement. Um I I worked for a company that was importing and manufacturing a lot in Asia. So that was my my first, you know, my first circles around procurement was all about what we used to call the low-cost country sourcing and really going at uh and uh buying commodities or buying finished products out of Asia, mainly China, Korea, Vietnam. And that's how I learned procurement, uh, including traveling there and and and building relationships in that region. But, you know, sometimes I introduce my career as as uh I started in the quote unquote dirty procurement, meaning the actual boxes and smelling the warehouse and getting dirty with the oil in the assembly line and shaking hands with the engineers, uh quite different from what I see a lot of folks start uh more of a digital career, right? Everything is PDF and docusign. And I I used to sign everything uh with my blue pen because it had to be blue. Or for a lot of Asian countries, you needed this red stamp. And so a lot more tangible. Uh but that that was my routing to procure me. Um, at a personal level, and uh as I said, I'm from Colombia. I live in Seattle, so I moved to the US, back in the US the last time about 12 years ago, to the Pacific Northwest, and really enjoyed living here. Um I'm married, I have two daughters. Uh, that keeps us extremely busy with their activities and their learning. Uh that's that's it on the personal side.

Speaker 1 3:33

So tell us a little bit what about what you do now. So you started in the indirect path, as a lot of us in our procurement generation did, uh kind of falling into procurement eventually, right? Um, and into the dirty side. I love how you say that, the dirty side of it, because it's it's so true. It's so true. And where are you now? So tell us a little bit about your role at procurability.

Speaker 3:55

Yeah. So I am a managing director right now with procurability. And um, wow, you just made me look back into those early years of the career. And I don't think I would have been uh able to even conceive the idea of what I do today when I started procurement 23 or so years ago. It's so different how it evolved. But my my role with procurability, you know, we we are, of course, a professional services firm, so we focus on that advisory and and and the support to the client, right? However, they define that that support that is needed. But it is clearly on the services side. And I started on the opposite side of that spectrum. I started on the on the goods, right? On the on the manufacturing side. So it took me a while to understand procurement for services. But um, when when I started, um it was, as I said, more of that manufacturing phase. And then I did about 10 to 12 years of that manufacturing procurement that involves a lot of logistics as well. So you get involved in that, maybe that was the first part that I touched services. And when I when I switched, right, that was in industry, by the way. It was manufacturing and working for that company that buy the stuff, right? For industry. Then I switched to the first the first part of that idea of consulting, professional services, manager services. Uh, and I did it uh for a while by myself uh as an entrepreneur. I thought, I thought I could do this, and and I had uh understood something interesting about procurement that was doing it as a service for others. And I did it for a couple of years, and then I I went into more of a formal role with one of a you know a large company doing it for clients. And since then, I've changed a couple of companies since then. Um and now the the the role as a managing manager manager, the role as a managing director, uh, think of it in terms of oversight of the leader, right? We we commit our teams to do and drive uh deep transformations or manage services execution for our clients. And we need to make sure that what we are saying we will do, we actually do. And so my role involves a lot of team leadership. I spend a lot of time with both the client and our teams, understanding what are the real challenges, what how can we deliver those, uh the value that we committed to? And you know, in many cases, almost in all of them, what you thought the scope was going to be, it always evolves into something else once you touch reality. And so, how do we adapt to that? How do we maintain that quality? How do we uh go for the extra mile and deliver, even though we didn't anticipate the reality, right, after a few months? That's a constant for me when we're going today. So my role involves a lot of client conversations, building relationships with the client, and understanding what is it that they their challenges really look like uh in terms of processes, in terms of people, in terms of knowledge, in terms of uh technology, in terms of uh evolution of their own procurement organization or their business needs, as as I keep hearing, you know, that a lot a lot of the needs are now more and more technology, more AI, and and many of the procurement organizations weren't really built for that. And so, how do we adapt to that? That that kind of conversation and translate that into our teams and how do we solution for that, how do we staff for that, how we deliver those services that they need. So it's it's a beautiful bridge, which I like a lot between the client and the delivery team. Um and I think I'm I'm very happy doing it because it touches one of the important things for my career that was always people. Um I think I'm a very social person, very people person. So this bridge between our team leadership and the client uh helps me maintain that contact with the reality, right? That's that's really at in a nutshell what the what the managing director does for our company.

Speaker 1 7:42

I definitely want to segue into that social element, but I do have a question for you first, based on your role now. Uh manufacturing to a services role. As you've said, they're two very, very different roles. It's a two-prong question. So, prong one is what were some of the key learnings that you had when you moved from the manufacturing side of procurement to the services side of procurement around those things that are different. That's prong one. And prong two is what were some of the key things that you learned in that first pathway that influences how you work in the services side of things.

Speaker 8:24

Um wow. Um, you're challenging me here, but I like those questions because I think first it's important to acknowledge that are different uh and it's very, very different. And so, but yes, there are some translatable skills, I think, or translatable aspects to it. I think on the challenges side, I thought that when I was supporting engineers or RD departments on the manufacturing side, I was dealing with complex scopes because there was a lot of engineers, I'm an economist, that was hard for me. But when I switched to services, I realized how easy that was because you have a specification sheet, you have a blueprint, you have something tangible that you could point to and say, This is what I need you to do, potential vendor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Give me a sample, give me uh uh uh some type of uh what do you think about this? Even if it was a new product, right? When it was RB, go take a month and come up with a sample and we can play with that. And so it was tangible. Back to my comment earlier, was it was dirty? You open a box, you look at it. Does it fit? It doesn't fit. Okay, go back at it. The first challenges that I had on services is that services is hard to scope. Uh, services is something that everyone you and I may use the same terminology, and we could actually mean something completely different. And we don't know about it. And so we need to adapt from the professional services side on asking different questions, validating, are we are we really talking about the same? I am someone known by my teams to use examples, and I try to use as many examples as possible just to make sure, are we actually talking about the same? Because the terminology sounds the same, and we could throw it left and right, but we may be talking about something completely different.

Speaker 1 10:09

And to you earlier, the scope could be completely, once you get in there, the scope could be completely different than you originally anticipated for something services, really.

Speaker 10:17

I I think it happens quite a bit.

unknown 10:19

Yeah.

Speaker 10:19

I think it happens quite a bit when it comes to it, and it's because of that. I think we, you know, in the in the corporate world, we tend to use a lot of buzzwords and a lot of things that make us look very smart. They have meaning. I've I've learned from my contracting uh friends that every word has meaning. And you need to be careful with what we are saying because are we actually talking about the same, right? Even think about uh on what we do today. We could be helping a client on one technology or another technology, you know, being the coupas of the world, the arribas of the world. Uh even between those technologies, some terminology is not the same, but it's the same word, right? And so being aware of, hey, are are we really talking about the same? What exactly do you mean? And taking that self-awareness to say maybe I'm wrong on my interpretation, what do you think? And driving that conversation. That is the solution I have. But oh, Stacy, I I had a really hard time at the beginning understanding how do you scope something as opposed to let me go to the engineer and ask for this fact sheet, right? And ask for the blueprint. That was very easy, which I thought was hard in terms of challenges. Now, the second part of the question was what from that world uh has helped me on that? And I think uh I think it has helped me lead teams better because I find, as I was mentioning earlier, that a lot of the teams that I have the privilege of leading for the last 10, 15 years, for the most part are younger than me. And and so that means they have learned procurement in a different way, right? So take into account the cultural and geographical aspect on how I learned procurement to versus how the teams that I'm leading learn procurement, right? So you're comparing someone who was, as I said, in the warehouse, in for the most part, you know, maybe developing countries, developing economies with a lot of low tech versus someone who's learning procurement completely remote on a laptop, most of them remotely from their home right now, on a tool, everything is digitized. Our understanding is different, right? I I had the privilege of seeing the process actually happen. You you see the materials coming in, they go into the inventory, they go into the assembly line, someone actually puts it together, then someone packages it, then someone puts it in a box and a container, goes to customs, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's that's now that's just buying from abroad and Tariqs and Incoturns. When you smelled it, when you touched it, when you deal with that, when you shake hands, I learn a lot through that, and I think I'm able to then translate that to some of them today to say, hey, there are many implications when you go into that, right? The ETAs on the containers and why is it difficult sometimes to manage logistics or the custom brokerage or the idea of inventory management. If you haven't grown up professionally in that environment and you see it remotely, it's uh you're just imagining things. And you could be accurate, but it's good to have that guidance from someone who was in the ground. So it has helped me a lot when it comes to that. And I think also building those relationships because you're able to bring realistic examples, as I said earlier, right? I I was there, I I touched that machine, I know what you're talking about, or at least I can imagine it, but a little bit closer to reality as opposed to someone who hasn't been in that environment.

Speaker 1 13:34

Exactly. And it it is different, yeah. It's nothing like walking the manufacturing floor and right, being in the warehouse, that kind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So let's dig into what we were talking about before, that social aspect. Um, you you've already mentioned it a couple of times. And when we talked in prep about different topics for today, one thing that we discussed very early in the conversation was the fact that when I joined in our, we have these interviews, you just talk to people in the organization, get to know everybody. I came into the interview, wanted to learn about what you did, your organization. But the first thing that you asked me about was what I like to do, what my hobbies were, what what I was passionate about. And that made me realize right away what a whole person person you are, that you you really consider and think about the entire personality of the person that you're talking to, not just the what I call the work side, right? It's just the the entire person. So I would love to dive into that with you a little bit more. What gave you that perspective or that way of way of working and leading and managing? Um, what has your experience taught you about that? How do you cut bring that to life in what you do? So anywhere you want to start there, how did how did that piece of your working personality come about? Is it innate or is it something that a good leader taught you at one point?

Speaker 15:00

I wish that someone had taught me that, Stacey, really. Looking back, I've had wonderful mentors. But when it comes to that, I I put it in that bucket of soft skills, if you will. And um I think that just comes from who I am. Now, keep in mind the cultural background is very important here, right? I grew up in a very social uh society. Uh my mom would be very proud if she were to hear this podcast in terms of you need to say hello to everyone. You need to say please and thank you. These were these were values at home that were non-negotiable. So I grew up in a very, you have to interact with people environment. And then you pick up on that, and then you become who you are. But to to, and I'm happy that those questions made you feel well and welcome when we met. And I have to say that for the most part, I think those type of questions have that effect on people, right? Maybe some exceptions, but I've just come to understand that um when you're meeting someone for the first time, I like I like to be treated that way. And right, the the the golden rule, right? And so I I like to be treated that way. I I I have to assume people also like to treat it that way. We all are an individual. We come to this world with so much color within, and and how can you get to know someone in in a 45-minute initial conversation when you jump straight to the subject of business, right? It's very hard for me to believe that things don't bleed into the other, right? You you have your background, you have your culture, you have your likes and dislikes, you have your passions. They are going to filter into the business life, like it or not. I rather embrace it and say, hey, tell me about it, right? In that way I can learn. And and and initially I think, you know, for throughout my life, I I've done it because I like people and I like to establish relationships with people. I I I don't I don't do it with an agenda of let me manipulate the conversation to make you feel better. Yeah. But with evolution of my career, I've come to understand how important those things that I've done are, and then so I stress them a little bit more. I'll give you an example. If you were to answer to me that your passions are, you know, uh intriguing and curiosity and a little bit of analytics. My business side of my my listening is already building that to say if I have two things to give you as part of the team and one has more analytics than the other, well, guess what? If you are analytical and you like that that as a passion, you're gonna be doing it better if that's what the scope is for you, right? There are this uh specificity into the into the passion to the delivery, into the quality, right? If if you ask me to do something that I am not that passionate about, guess what? I'll do it well, but not as well as I could if I'm personally passionate. I've I've tried to understand that, and then it's never perfect, but I think the more I know about the individuals, then the more I'm able to make better decisions in terms of maybe, yeah, you know what, Stacy, I think you're gonna go very well with that person and try to build that team in the chemistry of two human beings and how do you communicate or how not to. And therefore, maybe it's better to go in a different way because ultimately, procurement or not, we are in the big in the people business. And so if we don't know the people at the client side or our teams, we're we're potentially making the wrong, maybe not the wrong decision, but the sub-optimized decision of getting two people that could work together really well, right? And you may assign different tasks. And so I do, I want to get to know you as an individual. I like people like that, I like the relationship, but there is a business connotation to that that would allow me to make better decisions when we are staffing a team and things like that.

Speaker 1 18:53

So true. So true. And for anybody who's a manager or a people leader who's listening, I think that's so important to not only, you know, talk to the whole person, but using that as a springboard for what that person's going to do on a team. And it goes back to the flexibility we were talking about. Having the flexibility if you see somebody has a certain talent in X, but they're placed in Y field to be able to make that pivot because it builds on something that they have an ability at that the organization may need, something that they're passionate about. So, you know, whenever you're passionate about something, you're gonna put 150% into it. And you're also gonna feel heard. Right.

Speaker 19:36

Yeah, and and think about think about the opposite as well, right? I remember conversation maybe a year or two with someone who who ended up being part of one of my teams. It's not just what you do now that you're passionate about, but you're also we I'm very proud of our team members are really smart about their career. And so someone very articulate comes to me and says, I would like to grow into this area. And so now I know. So that enables me to next day, I'm in a meeting about staffing a new team, and I'm like, that could be a great opportunity for someone paired with someone expert to learn. Uh, guess what? If that person hadn't said that to me the day before, I wouldn't know. Therefore, I cannot influence that decision. So it touches on that career element on as an individual, everyone manages the career, they're the brand, but you need to communicate. And so, who do you communicate to? How do you communicate your passions? It's part of, it's not just the business side, it's you. And so looking at you as a full sphere, is you will, if you will, then allows, I believe, at least it's my style, to include that into the decision making. And sometimes at a risk of perfect technical knowledge. But I have I have this belief that I I want to bring the best technical knowledge to a team. But I need to understand also that we work as humans in a human team. And if that interaction is not great, it could hinder the delivery, right? So sometimes you need to make these trade-offs about do you need a PhD level on something technical, or can you do with a little bit less technical, which is a lot already, but a lot better communication, a lot better interaction within the team because that's the finished product, right? And so getting to know someone a little bit more than the, you know, the CV on black and white to me is absolutely necessary. Again, for the business side, but I just enjoy working in that style, right? I I like to connect with you. I and sometimes I even when I meet someone, I ask for permission to ask different questions. You know, uh the cultural part again. I've learned in the US it's very different. You know, the the rules here are very clear. HR is super intense from where compared to the cultures that I've worked in the past in different regions in the world. So you're not even permitted to ask some questions at the beginning. So I learned to ask for permission, but I do it because I think it's important. I have kids. I want to know if you have kids. What What other areas of our sphere are compatible, right? Do you speak another language? Do you like to travel? Have you experienced this or that? So then not only I get to know you a little bit more as an individual, but that gives me ammunition to we share this. I can use that as an example, right? I I can see how it's stressful to be a week because your kids were working from home in spring break. Oh my God, we're all tense because the kids are running around. If I don't know that about you, I could I could assume the wrong thing. So again, it I build it for relationships, I use it for relationship building for my own interest of people to people, but I think it has tremendous value for the business side as well.

Speaker 1 22:41

And I think there's a safety inherent in what you're providing to the people on your teams. I've talked to a lot of people, it's a tough time right now. There are a lot of people out of work. Um, but having the ability when you're in a role to say honestly to your manager, I'm not feeling so hot today, or I'm going through a thing, I'm I'm getting divorced, or like you're saying, my kids home from school with the flu and you know, whatever it is, to have a safe space to say, look, I and I've had those experiences, right? Both as a manager and as a direct report. And the the I always I always want somebody on my team to tell me these things. Because if I don't know, I don't know. Right? And I can't help, and I can't, you know, that trust has to be there.

Speaker 23:24

And but you you just mentioned it. I think it's the trust. And trust is something that you it it just doesn't happen in the first meeting with a digital handshake saying, hey, this is Carlos, nice to meet you. I'm part of your team.

Speaker 1 23:37

Oh no.

Speaker 23:37

It takes time, right? And so but but I I have I believe, at least my style, is that I can shorten that time by asking these questions, by getting a little bit more personal, right? So uh so if I if I and I start with me, um uh you would always hear me about talking about my daughters and the international spike uh side of my life and and my culture. And I try to share because I I like to introduce myself in that way, but I I do believe that breaks the walls on others and say, oh, if you hear your leader talking about having a bad day because a kid is sick, then then maybe I'm okay saying the same. And I'm welcome to share that as opposed to other organizations that may be more about keep it at home, right? Keep that Chinese wall as they say, and don't don't mix your personal life. I rather I rather know, hey, maybe Stacey's a little distracted because you know her partner had surgery last week because she shared that. So I I I can't even start making adjustments on the team as opposed to assuming the wrong and saying, why is she distracted? Uh is she interested? Maybe it's a performance thing. It could it could clearly change the thing. So the trust is very important. Uh, and establishing it really quickly is very important and is not something that I don't know about you, but nobody taught me how to gain trust in college. I never read a textbook that I was graded on on that. There is plenty of books on that at your leisure, but or your mentors. But that's what the real life teaches you that that the academics don't. And back to that, we're humans. Shouldn't we teach that first? Shouldn't we talk about that? At least on our business, it's so important that I think we need to spend time on that and and and make uh I'm not saying we're not, I'm not saying the organization doesn't expect really high level of delivery on the skill sets, right? Right. It's uh it's that I believe that you can do that while being comfortable with your team and your kids. I I do believe that. And then if something happens, as always happens, safely, then you're comfortable texting me and saying, I'm on my way to the hospital, something happened, as opposed to lying or not sharing and then hiding. I'd rather do that and then I can cover it for you. I'll bring the coverage, I'll talk to the client. I just need the trust. So building that trust quickly is imperative. How you do it in my style, the more casual, the more soft I think works better. I've seen very diligent leaders doing it more formal. It's just my style to do it a little bit more.

Speaker 1 26:06

Yeah, yeah. But regardless of the style, you're modeling what you are inviting the people on your teams to to do. And that that means a lot. And I just I keep thinking as you're talking, there's this quote, I can't get it right, but it's something about 10 years from now, people will remember what you said to them or what you did, but they will remember how you make it how you make them feel.

Speaker 26:29

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. And that's so true. And and you know, it's always on the tough moments, right? Um, and and because our business is people business, I I recall the tough moments of team members that I've worked in in many, many years ago. I recall how when I meet them after changing companies, they re remember that. They remember also the good, right? Uh hey, yeah, you were there when when I had my first kid. And I remember we talked about that. And when I bought my first house and when I got my first promotion, but also when my parents passed away. And when I needed time, uh, you know, even though I didn't have any PTO, I needed an urgent time often. You guys understood because you understand the human aspect to that. You're you're right. Ultimately, we're we're enjoying procurement, but that's what we do. Uh, who we are, uh it has to be the person first. And again, at least that's my style, Stacy. I don't think this is right or wrong. It's more how you feel comfortable doing.

Speaker 1 27:23

Yeah, yep. But at the end of the day, it builds morale and it also builds not just trust, but longevity, right? And we we're a 30-year-old company. And when I came in nine, was it nine, 10 months ago now, whatever it is, and I learned what people's tenure was here, that made me go, oh, I get it.

Speaker 27:42

I agree. Yeah, absolutely. I I I have to, as a leader, I have to believe that it works. As a as a team member of someone else who is leading me, I absolutely see it that way. In multiple times in my career, I have followed the individual rather than the scope. To me, the scope may change, the clients may change, we the technology may change, but I am I would follow someone who I trust blindly because uh in many ways they will provide future opportunities. Or if you are in a bad place, then you know that you can have that conversation and it will be understood.

Speaker 1 28:18

Speaking of culture, um, I would love to dive a little bit into your international experience, various places in the world you've worked, some more about those cultural differences. You mentioned, you know, starting in Latin America and then working in Asia for a great deal of time. Um, how has that influenced and colored your career?

Speaker 28:38

Um wonderful question, but also you you uh you you wouldn't be able to talk to Caders without touching that. That's so much of who I am, uh, and you'll get to know why in a second. So um let me give you a little bit more background on that. So so in Colombia we have compulsory military service. When I graduated high school, you go into, you're supposed to spend a year in the army. And so while I was in the army, I I had this incredible influence in my life that was my godfather, my uncle in-law, if you may, right? My my aunt's husband. And he he was British, and since very little, he instilled this idea in me that I had to learn English since very, very little. And so that was a very big influence that then held me when fast forward when I was in the army, I was able to speak not as fluent as I do now, but much more than others. And so at that time they were selecting a small group of people for, I guess, incredible opportunity, a small Colombian battalion in the middle of the desert in Egypt. So I get reassigned to that and I and I get this assignment, and that was the first time I had traveled internationally with my family before, right? But I never experienced it independently at that level. In a completely different culture, language, food, weather, right? I mean, I'm from Colombia in the mountains. Every single day it rains in my city. I'm now living in the desert in the middle of uh the Middle East. Uh, very, very different. And and immediately in that base, we had 11 different countries. And I spent almost a year interacting with very different people in the same environment. And it just, it was this thing that happened to me. I couldn't come back to just the usual when I went when I returned to Columbia. Immediately I started college and I started, okay, I I want to I want to be somewhere else. I like this idea of not knowing everything and speaking different languages and different cultures. So I managed to get my family support and I moved to England for a while. So that was my second experience, right? A little bit of Europe in England, perfecting my English, that was the purpose of that. And uh and then I returned back to Colombia again uh for college, and then I moved to the US when we started our conversation. So by the time I moved to the US, I have already lived in three different countries. And you have different people, different languages, different food is very important to me, by the way. So then food also enables that relationship. And then I get to Miami, right? What an international city. Of course, very Latino as well, but but it's not the same to be from Mexico than Colombia or Brazil, etc. And so you continue expanding that. Then I get the opportunity with this company to move to Asia. And so I lived in China uh about six and a half years in two different cities. And then you go to this Colombian, and again, now I'm in Asia and I'm interacting with this world, and I'm another new country, another new culture, another new language, and now doing business in that, and how that's different, and how how can you enable the business with who you are? And to me, culture or knowing different cultures was always that enabler. All right, I may not know you, but I'm gonna try a few things, right? The Europeans do it this way, the Middle Eastern do it this way, the Latinos do it this way. Something has to apply, and it gives me tools to do it. And then you learn the Chinese way, and then you learn that North China is different than South China, and so on and so on and so on, right? And so to me, it's a wealth of knowledge. Uh, some people acquire it by reading. I like to acquire it by eating and speaking with people. Take me to a restaurant, talk to me, talk, talk to me about you and your culture, and I learn. And then I can apply to that. I returned to the US after that, and I I just kept that as a weapon for business. But I use it socially as well. And so it has enabled me to relate to people in a very different way, right? I married a Russian person and I had kids in China, and then my second daughter was born in the US. And so I I have I have come to understand that my point of view sometimes may not be as similar as the other person across the table. But it's because that opportunity that I've had to be able to say, you know, sometimes the same news are seen differently in Asia than it is in Latin America, than it is in the US. And having that record in my mind to say, try to be more objective. Are you sure that point of view is all that there is? Or could there be that someone is seeing the same information in a different way? If you think about that in business, it's especially procurement, right? What are your needs versus my needs versus finance needs versus engineering needs? Right. But also the way we relate to folks, right? And so am I I I'm very aware of that. Sometimes maybe it's uh to a default. I go into a meeting and I try to try to pick up on those things very quickly, right? Can how can I relate to you? Is the is there a is there a cultural thing that we can relate to? Is there a language, is there an experience, or is it all about business? Even though I I haven't started a conversation. My mind works that way, and it has helped me tremendously building relationships throughout my career. And it's gotten me to some trouble as well because sometimes I assume the wrong thing, and then but it's always funny. But to your question, culture for me and and you know, multiple geographies, multiple cultures, uh, it's very active in my life. It's something that I pursue, and I'm always thinking with my wife, hey, where do we want to go next? Because I don't want that to stop with me. I want to pass that to my daughters and be able to say, hey, I enjoy this and I benefited tremendously. How can you do it and then benefit as well? I think that's amazing.

Speaker 1 34:11

Do you have any? I'd love to hear stories.

Speaker 34:13

I have so many stories. I knew you were gonna ask me about it. I'll give you one that I think is is uh so now you're getting to know me a little bit more. I like reading and I like structure, but I am not the person who has a theory for everything. I rather do more empirical stuff, right? And I have a lot of colleagues who are very much structure in that way and say, I'm interested in this, I'm gonna read about a book about it. Um maybe I'm not that person. I'm more about I'm gonna find someone who can tell me that and invite them for lunch. That's how that's how I live, right?

Speaker 1 34:42

That's a good summary.

Speaker 34:44

I'll tell you something that I've always find. And and I saw a documentary the other day about it, is you know, the uh the the business, how how different cultures relate to business, right? The way that they communicate in business. And are there all these amazing theories, and there was this guy with these models and charts, and it all makes sense to me, right? Japanese culture relates to business differently. There is an order of things that you should do, and there is some diplomatic things that and everything is true. To me, it's different is that I simplified it in the way social and business. In most of the cultures that I've lived, but the US and some areas in Europe, social goes first, then business goes second. And that was one of the hardest parts for me when I returned to the US after China to realize that here is the opposite. Business is business, and then you go social. And and you need to adapt very quickly, but at least be aware of it. So I'll give you an example. When I was in China, I would spend crazy amounts of time interacting with my potential suppliers in social environments, things that may be even you know, borderline not well seen in the West world. Why are you having a drink with a supplier? And why are you interacting socially? And it's because if you don't establish that trust, they will not work with you. They could say they will, it just is not gonna work. So once you understand that the social part, then you could do business, right? One of them who became a very good friend of mine used to say to me, first you establish that initial friendship, and then if if business happens, it's okay. But first you need to do that. Can I trust this individual? Then we go and talk business, right? Um the US is quite the opposite. You may not even see uh the the the lobby of a of a good restaurant unless the contract is signed. Then you go and sell it. And so then you need to adapt to that and say, okay, this is all about business, it's all about agenda, and then and then you go and establish that, right? So you become a business partner or or or supplier or or writer of uh first, and and hopefully the relationship comes later when it comes to deep relationships. I was in a meeting last week, Stacy, with someone for business in the US. So I'm going on this approach. But it happens that this person is ethnically from Southeast Asia and and then even from that from China. And we ended up talking about Chinese culture, and he asked me, Do you speak a little bit of Chinese? I said, Well, yes, I used to, but now he's very rusty. But we switched to it and he tested me on my Mandarin, and we ended up speaking for like five minutes. Oh, okay. And I I could see how it now we have a different conversation. The meeting since then, I I can connect with him differently just because of five minutes of cultural interaction, right? Little things like that, uh, they just in my life proven one and once and again that culture and cultural alignment or interest, curiosity, right? Even if I know nothing about your culture and the fact that I asked, the fact that I want to learn, opens the human brain a little bit more for interacting and building that trust that we discussed.

Speaker 1 37:51

That's I love that story. That's fascinating. You saying, you know, I'm just imagine you sitting there with a gentleman switching the language, and it just takes the whole conversation to another level because it's that respect, that appreciation that Yeah, you know, it's it's funny you say that because I told you I was I was influenced by my godfather to learn English since I was very little.

Speaker 38:11

And so I grew up with the idea that English-speaking countries were so lucky because you were already speaking what I am trying to learn. And I was so envious and saying, Man, life is so easy. And then when I grew up and we started getting gray hair, I realized the lucky ones were us, that we are forced to learn something else.

Speaker 1 38:33

I think that's right.

Speaker 38:34

Because then we are forced to adapt and then you multiply, right? So I do that with my with my kids at home. Lucky for us, we do have Spanish for me. Of course, we're in the US, English you know, dominates because of school, but my wife speaks Russian to them, and I'm saying to them, think about this for a second. You have a multiplier, you can make you can have friends in English, friends in Spanish, friends in Russian. That's just building your social life, I guess, because I'm very social, right? So when we go to the parks and and they come to me and say, Oh, I was playing with that, and I asked them, what language were you using? Because I want them to feel that that is just the norm. The normal is that you speak multiple, the normal is that you can interact with people of different backgrounds, and you then if you have to specialize in one because life takes you there, that's fine. But then, as as it happened with me, right? I've worked most of my life I've worked in English as opposed to Spanish, but my culture is my culture, and I'll keep it with me as we discuss in examples. I want to pass that for them to see the same and treat people the same way, right?

Speaker 1 39:33

Oh, this is so lovely. I have one final question for you today, and thank you for this. It's just been a lovely conversation. What have you learned on your pathway through procurement, through your career, all the things that we've just discussed that could help other practitioners and colleagues along their own paths?

Speaker 39:52

What have I learned? Um I'm gonna give you an answer that that has nothing to do with procurement because I think it's more about career and life. Excellent. Um and I think it's it's twofold. Hard for me to choose one or the other. But one, now that you know a little bit about my path, I have been the product of saying yes, even though I didn't know anything about what I was saying yes to, right? Uh did I know what I was gonna get into when I moved with the army to Egypt? No idea. But I signed up. Did I understand the challenges of living in the middle of a small city in China by myself? I have no idea when I said yes to that. But I just said yes, right? There are opportunities in life that come to you, and and it's fun to say yes. And maybe they are not as as great as you thought, but you have to say yes. So I couldn't be here talking to you if I hadn't said yes so many times to these crazy ideas that cross cross my my life. So definitely be courageous and say yes to whatever you think is a God feeling, right? You may research, you may read, but sometimes it's more about how does that feel? And just jump. And I jump. The second one is be confident to say that you don't know. It took me a while to say confidently, you know what, I don't know. Now it's very important to back that up with let me go do something about it, right? That's the caveat. But I was very hesitant on accepting publicly that I didn't know about something. I was very quick to what generic things I can say to make me sound good enough, at least to pretend. I think uh maybe I'm growing and I'm getting closer to 50. Now I don't care. I'm gonna say that I don't know. And I think I see value in that. Someone who can accept that we are not experts on everything and we're gonna go and research. Of course, if it's a core subject, then you should know. You shouldn't even be in that call. But I'm talking about the periphery, right? Sometimes with my clients, we're talking about procurement, and then the you know what, the the issue is not procurement, it's technology, it's finance. And it's it's important to say, I don't know the specifics, but this is what I'm gonna do about it, and then I bring you a solution. As opposed to maybe not being genuine. That I think the sooner I had learned that, the better things would have would have been in some instances. So if you're able to say yes a lot of time, but also saying I don't know genuinely, I think that that would have guided me a little bit better in my career.

Speaker 1 42:26

And it's okay. It's okay to say you don't know.

Speaker 42:29

It's totally okay, especially in some organizations that I have been lucky enough to belong to, where that's there are resources for you to complement your knowledge that you can partner with others that can teach you. You could then be better fit. Remember, we talked earlier about that passion. Well, if you're if you're not genuine about what you like, then you're gonna you you may be matching a project that you shouldn't be there and it's gonna test you too much. Maybe it's better to say I don't know, so then the the support is there, so then you can learn, and then the delivery of the project can be better, right? Back to that trust that we were talking about, right? Are you in are you able to tell me I don't know? Are you able to tell me yes, I want to do it, I can support you.

Speaker 1 43:09

Carlos, thank you so much. Thank you for saying yes to this interview. Thank you for your thoughts. Thank you for your guidance. And I think your your points are gonna help a lot of people across industries, not just in procurement.

Speaker 43:22

Oh, no, not all of Stacey. I enjoy this conversation tremendously. Thank you for inviting me and for setting this uh idea of uh there are there are things that are also important, not just the business side of it. So I'm I'm I agree with you and I'm passionate about it, as you can hear from my from my exciting conversation. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 43:40

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