"The biggest challenge with a fast-growing company is always ensuring the right team is in place to deliver on the vision."
Ruy Franco Tweet
Throughout his career, Ruy Franco has demonstrated a passion for business improvement, taking the lead in driving change that facilitates significant growth and transformation. He has worked at the Executive level in agile, start-ups, and in large, multinational businesses such as SingTel and illion, navigating complex structures to engage cross-functional decision-makers in a shared vision for the future.
As Director of Enterprise Sales for Optus Business, he managed a $400M P&L and a high-performing team of 60 through significant growth and transformation, driving 190% YoY revenue growth and delivering continuous improvements to customer experience and retention. In 2016, he was headhunted to join agile start-up SaaS provider, Access4, as Director of Sales & Marketing.
In this capacity, he led the company’s go-to-market strategy and fostered strategic partnerships with 80+ channel partners to drive exponential growth during start-up and 7% month-on-month growth thereafter. As part of the Executive team, I was instrumental in capital raising and investor relations to secure significant capital investment, securing the company’s future.
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Table of Contents
Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
Ruy Franco: I’m Ruy Franco, CEO of ThingsAt.
I am a typical immigrant of the 80’s having been born in Brasil and living in Portugal until age six. I grew up on the northern beaches of Sydney. My move to Melbourne in 2014 was my biggest move and life change yet, marrying my wife Sally and having our child, Ruby who is now 6.
I am a passionate golfer and those who have played with me can comment that sometimes perhaps I’m a bit too passionate.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
Ruy Franco: In my youth (at 19yrs old) I was part of an internet start-up and enjoyed the variety of challenges facing the business each day. Back then my interest was probably more about the tech (the Internet was new) than leading a business and understanding just how much was involved.
At Uecomm, I moved into a sales leadership role and as part of a wider leadership team across the business, was exposed to company issues that as a group we had the opportunity to take on. This experience was what really set my ambitions off. Once I was resolved that this is what I wanted to do, it really focused my efforts. I did my MBA to improve my knowledge, I took on every stretch leadership project or course I could get my hands on, I made a pest of myself with our executive team and CEO to make sure that they knew I wanted to go places and that I wanted to learn from their experience.
Two important things happened at Uecomm. 1. I was part of an organisation that had a high-performing values-based culture, and took the development of its people seriously. This gave my ambition a place to start its journey. 2. I sought out an executive coach. Someone who wasn’t in the business and whose only job was to hold up a mirror so that I could see my behaviours outside of the throes of sales targets and KPIs.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
Ruy Franco: There is a very long list of people that have helped me along the journey. Sometimes from where you wouldn’t expect support. Often assistance has come from the person that on the face of things isn’t a supporter or is hard to work with initially.
Additionally, it is easy to look up the ladder for support and assistance. Some of the greatest support has been from my team. Giving them permission to be honest with their feedback and sharing my aspirations allowed them to provide me direction when I needed it most.
How did your journey lead you to become a CEO? What difficulties did you face along the way and what did you learn from them?
Ruy Franco: Once I had set my sights on where I wanted to go, I was clear on which jobs I would take to stay on this path. One measure that I had was that for each new role I was promoted to, I would ensure I would do it at another organisation. This measure to me, was to help separate my internal knowledge of a business and my relationships to prove I could operate at that level on my own merits.
A couple of challenges come to mind. The biggest was coming from a sales background; very few organisations in Australia have CEOs from sales and there is often a stigma attached to salespeople and their motivation. Breaking this perception was the biggest challenge. I had to work harder on the right things to prove my actions weren’t commission driven.
I think its easy when you work in a business unit or functional area to see issues and be frustrated that they haven’t been resolved. In your area, fixing the issue, in theory, is simple and should have been done. What I have learnt is that often these issues are a compromise of all issues in a business requiring attention and the competing priorities. One of the learnings is to communicate and share more than you think you should so that people understand what comprises are made and why. They don’t always like the order in which issues have been prioritised – bringing them along the journey is important so that they feel that they have been listened to. The natural instinct for a lot of leaders is to believe that these decisions need to be kept at the executive level, in my experience the more you trust people with the detail, the better the outcome.
We are working hard at ThingsAt to develop a culture where we give people the next job they want and take a calculated risk on people that are aligned with our strategy and values. For people that are seeking to grow their careers this is proving to work for us. We have a team that is challenged professionally and personally, and the output is reflective of this opportunity. An additional benefit has been that newer thinking into senior roles means people are more cavalier with their line of questioning and willingness to challenge the status quo. To an outsider it can look like subordinates are out of line, to us, it’s a healthy robust exchange of ideas and commitment.
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
Ruy Franco: ThingsAt provides a device management solution called Device as a Service. It’s a model for outsourcing the company-wide management of devices to an external provider. It bundles the leasing of IT hardware devices such as laptops, tablets, and accessories together with software and lifecycle management into a single per-person-per-month fee. Outsourcing device management via a paid subscription-based service helps simplify your company’s IT, mitigates the cost and hassle that comes with managing IT in-house, and frees up your IT team to focus on core business tasks.
A large part of our business is about providing governance
As CEO, I am responsible for setting the company’s strategy and goals and then aligning all of our team to help achieve these. A large part of this is ensuring the business’ financial performance and that we have a sustainable business model. This sustainability is very highly linked to customer and employee satisfaction, especially in our business where often our people are the product.
Whilst some theories challenge the financial first view, our business cannot provide opportunities for staff if we are not able to fund the costs to do so.
We work hard to ensure that we provide clear and transparent updates to all our people going as far as exposing them to our P&L performance each month. We also show how each person’s role in the business is linked to this P&L and how we generate profits for future investment. I don’t shy away from advising some team members that their roles fund free cash to invest to newer parts of the business. It’s been counter-intuitive, where some believe this would devalue a role, I’ve found it gives that person responsibility to the business over and above their ‘day job’.
What does CEO stand for? Beyond the dictionary definition, how would you define it?
Ruy Franco: I often say that I am the custodian of the business, a privilege I am entrusted with on behalf of our board and our team. It is important that I see this as my role to ensure I get the best from my team for our customers and for our long-term success.
Some days it has meant the expected discussions on the economy, markets, and competitive strategy. Some days it means driving to someone’s house to drop off a laptop and check in on them (especially during COVID) or making time to sit with some of our most junior staff and hear their thoughts. Most impactful is knowing when to apply pressure and when to recognise just how hard our team works, even if the outcome is not what we expected.
When you first became a CEO, how was it different from what you expected? What surprised you?
Ruy Franco: The level of operational work that comes with the role was unexpected. It means that you really need to build in processes to ensure that you and the leadership team are thinking about the future and what we need to do. You need to take the time to work on the business and ensure you are not always in the trenches working ‘in’ the business.
It has also meant that I need to ensure that the operational work is seen as just as important. Having done my MBA and ASIC Director’s Course I am very cognisant that we need to have strong governance in the business to de-risk it.
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
Ruy Franco: My leadership style has definitely matured like many leaders, to start with I had the view that control can be commanded downstream, and I very quickly came to the realisation that did not work. I was blessed with an experience in the past where my team was brave enough to provide very clear feedback that they supported me, but my style needed to change. From that point my awareness and ability to motivate and lead developed more and more.
A business cannot run around a CEO and the ability to get the best from the team is an important capability for the CEO and the business. A shared view of leadership needs to extend into the executive team to ensure it is consistent across the business.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Ruy Franco: The biggest challenge with a fast-growing company is always ensuring the right team is in place to deliver on the vision. My biggest challenge so far as the new CEO has been to restructure and re-organise the team from where they were to now. This meant challenging previous assumptions and decisions from all areas of the business including our board. The support to do this has been very refreshing and our performance has improved markedly from these changes.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
Ruy Franco: To be clichéd, it really is a mix of things that define success. It’s about our customers, our team, and our results. These are easily measured however I believe volunteering and helping to support causes I am passionate about will get me closer to my community, connect me to people and ideas that will positively impact my perspective, and enrich the lives of those around me.
I am proud that we also have a team that believes this and one of our values is to embrace community and ensure our place in the greater community is beneficial. Whilst we are not an ASX200 company we have built some structured programs on how we help non-for-profits including access to devices and heavily discounted managed services.
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
Ruy Franco: I have always had a strong drive and the ability to operate in a future mode, anticipating what will be coming down the line and where we need to go.
I have had to learn to communicate this better and ensure that my team understands where I am focused and why so that they can be part of it and provide a valuable contribution.
How did your role as a CEO help your business overcome challenges caused by the pandemic? Explain with practical examples.
Ruy Franco: Our business is intrinsically geared for a pandemic as it delivers better solutions to our customers to provide flexible working. Internally we have done a number of things to support our team through this pandemic.
Firstly, communicate openly and without the corporate jargon or expectations of a business. We have given the team the freedom to share their views openly including if they are not supportive of vaccination without judgement. I fear to some extent we have lost the ability to have public discourse and our team has been great at having open robust discussions on their views.
We have increased the support we give our team including leave in addition to their existing provisions for vaccination days, to have a day off and rest after the jab. We provide an additional two days of sick leave if a person is COVID positive to rest and know they can be away from work. Lastly we provide reimbursement through our expense policy for all RATs for staff, contractors and their immediate families so that the team can ensure that they are safe.
Do you have any advice for aspiring CEOs and future leaders? What advice would you give a CEO that is just starting out on their journey?
Ruy Franco: Be ambitious and don’t be afraid to share your ambitions with people around you. People are smarter than you give them credit for and when you see ambition in people, being honest with them more often gets you a supporter. In contrast, also make sure you enjoy the journey. One of the best pieces of advice I got was that I was so focused on the next role I was not enjoying the current one. Smell the roses.
Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge with our readers! They would also like to know, what is one skill that you’ve always wanted to acquire but never really could?
Ruy Franco: Personally, it’s patience, the unexpected in business and in life will always derail you when you least expect it. Sometimes taking time to reflect and be patient with my career progression was a challenge. For people that are looking to get their next role, often it’s hard to get that role until you have the experience from doing the role – which is clearly impossible. This can lead to frustration especially in larger more risk-averse organisations.
I’m always moving at 100 miles an hour and I usually assume that everyone is coming along for the ride. Sometimes they just can’t keep up and I forget that! Innately I’m thinking ahead, whipping from one concept to the next in rapid succession. It’s a conscious skill for me to have to slow down and take the steps backward and allow others to catch up.
Before we finish things off, we have one final question for you. If you wrote a book about your life today, what would the title be?
Ruy Franco: ‘Let’s Do it’
Mike Weiss, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Ruy Franco for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Ruy Franco or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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