O Valor da Disciplina - com Daniel Geiger Campos

Thank you very much for this introduction. I will frustrate your listeners for sure.

Starting there, you mentioned my parents are doctors. They separated when I was very young, I was less than a year old. But I took a lot from them. The theme of family, I am very close to both and I value family a lot because of the coexistence I had. But also work. They chose to work in what they like and they still work today. My mother is 90 years old and still works. She is a psychoanalyst, was a neurologist, made a career change to psychoanalyst. My father is a general practitioner and both are still working. My father is 80 years old. So I think for me it's important. I am part of my mother, of being able to help. I have a Jewish ancestry, that brought me important values in life: values like knowledge, always studying, honesty, resilience, but with optimism. That is very important to me. And you already mentioned, a lot of the cultural part from my mother, who is also very active, but I also have the sports part from my father. So thinking about which position of the Greeks, I came a little from both.

I was born in '72, so many children also wanted to be astronauts. The difference is that I kept that in my head until I was 22 years old. And that led me to the desire to be an astronaut and work at NASA. I even did my undergraduate degree at ITA, but as I was graduating, I saw that it would be a very unlikely life and I ended up switching to business life.

Disciplined I always was. Focused, I'm still learning. I think I am more determined perhaps than focused. I want to do a lot of things, I am very curious, so maintaining focus for me is actually a challenge. But I was always very disciplined and I think that matters. In my marketing career, that helped me on one hand but also balances me because marketing is very generalist, so I can maintain a good balance. My family also takes me out of that discipline a bit, otherwise I become boring. But it was very strategic in terms of putting my energy and time into making good choices. In that aspect, I still make many, but over time I learned to actually do less, to dedicate the time I need to the things that are important. And I think the team here, the teams always help me a lot to know how I'm doing, if I'm asking too much, and I stopped pushing back so much at the beginning of my career. Now the team helps me stay more focused.

And perhaps that's why one of the hardest things for me is to say no. Saying no to something boring that doesn't spark your interest and won't give you results is easy. Everyone knows how to say that. But how do you say no to sometimes interesting things? Without that prioritization, we lose the depth of what matters most. I end up saying little because it's a big difficulty, not only because I'm interested in everything, but people when they ask me for something, I have a hard time saying no. So if someone asks for an opinion, asks to have coffee, wants to talk about career, I usually say yes. And then I have a great secretary who helps me manage the time. And I have a family that is understanding but also denounces when I do too much. I don't have many personal hobbies; the free time I have is to be with my family because that's important to me. So I don't like the concept of work-life balance because I think work is part of life balance. So I like life balance and focus on the rocks that are important. So my family is important, my friends are important, my work is important. I try to do everything well, and when I can't, I apologize, move on. The boring things I've already learned enough not to do.

Actually, when I was in my first or second year, I always had many interests but ended up being led to physics and math olympiads. I participated, was a medalist, I really liked that. My nerdy side was always there. But I was in doubt, you know, other things like medicine again always stayed in my head because of my parents. And then obviously in the second year, watching Top Gun at least a dozen times with my nerd friends made me focus on aeronautical engineering. And before taking the ITA entrance exam, I did a preparatory course in the third year. My plan B was PUC Rio, UFRJ, or even ITA itself. But thank God everything worked out, I got into ITA in aeronautical engineering. And during the entire undergraduate, I achieved excellent results, graduated summa cum laude. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but at some point, having that achievement became a goal. Did you know about that achievement before entering ITA? Did you enter with that in mind? How did that happen in your life? It's very funny because we arrive at ITA in January to do military service first, and when you arrive, you receive a student manual. In the manual, reading it, there was the story of summa cum laude. And I remember a friend of mine, a class monitor, said, 'Look, if you graduate summa cum laude, you get a gold medal.' I thought, 'Wow, that's such a distant thing.' And I literally forgot about it for the first two years. The preparation at ITA is like a boot camp, and the first two years don't count for summa cum laude; it's the last three years. In my first semester of aeronautical engineering, when I finished, I had a mentor who looked at my grades and said, 'You're on the path to summa cum laude.' And I looked and said, 'Man, are you crazy?' But it stayed in my head. And it was really only at the end, in the third year, when I saw the grades and such, it depends on the average. Eventually it worked out. And it's complicated because at ITA you only receive grades with letters: L for 96 and above, MB between 8.5 and 9.5, so you can't calculate, you don't know if you're close or far. But eventually, everything worked out. I only found out I had achieved it literally when I went to pick up my diploma. It was very beautiful because the woman handing out the diplomas looked at me and said, 'Wow, I haven't seen one of these in a long time.' That was the moment I knew I had made it.

Very much. I think it's one of the differentiators of ITA. The students not only report but also judge. There is a disciplinary committee with defense, with facts, and the students end up making a recommendation to the teaching directorate. It's a great differentiator. We took exams in the dormitory, and the professor would say 'two hours, no consultation.' And I think that generates values of integrity and ethics that stayed with me a lot. And I think it's important for students who graduate from ITA to value that because many times in our society, and as a Carioca, I often suffered from the story of the Carioca being a 'malandro' (trickster). I was always a 'mané' (fool) because I always did things right, I always did things correctly. I don't like that 'malandro' ethics. And I think sometimes in Brazil we end up idolizing the 'malandro,' and I think we need to value the 'manés' who do everything right. ITA is a place that does that. It was important for my formation, and it was important for me to know that there was a future following that path.

I take a lot of notes. I have a more visual memory, so I take a lot of notes. My notebooks became photocopies for my colleagues. I used to take a lot of notes, pay a lot of attention in class, and ask questions right away to make sure I understood. Obviously, ITA led me to study a lot more outside the classroom as well. But one of the things, if you ask me what the big secret is, it's doing other things too. So in the year I was preparing, I did Aikido. That was very important to keep my head in the right place. And at ITA, I am very proud. I was a goalkeeper for the ITA handball team, which won a bronze medal in the Paraíba Valley futsal championship. I was a handball goalkeeper, one of the founders of the ITA junior enterprise. I also dated. So for me, balance is fundamental to being well on the journey.

You imagine, I graduated from ITA and started an internship at P&G when I was in my last year at ITA. So I was at a university with 600 men, because at that time there were no women studying aeronautical engineering, doing a thesis on aspherical combustion, and I go to P&G to work in marketing. So I was a little nerd who arrived with my scientific calculator trying to talk about marketing, communication, connecting with the consumer, something more creative with the agency. So it was very important that my colleagues, not only obviously P&G is a trainer of professionals, my colleagues welcomed me and awakened that human side that was already there, a little dormant during the five years of ITA, but it was there from my previous formation, from my home, my school. I studied at a modern school of hippies who formed a school, so I also brought that inside me. And that was very important. It was a huge challenge to connect with that part again and to respond to that, to work more in a team, not to study alone. Exams are alone, so that was very important. I thank my colleagues and the company that formed me.

I think, again, the discipline part. I was always very questioning but respectful of authority. That is good in the end. So I never stopped asking questions, being analytical. And at the beginning of my trajectory at P&G, people joked that I was the class leader, the union representative of the assistant managers. But the managers liked that because I brought to them, 'Hey, we think we need to do more of this, we're not happy with that,' but in a constructive way. And it was always very well seen. So I was always very questioning but always respecting authority, doing it in a constructive way. That helped me. Then I learned that not everything is a horizontal discussion to see who is right. There was a training at the beginning of my career, an advanced communication training, where we had to make a presentation, it was all filmed. I had a presentation where I had to convince someone of a recommendation that was obvious to me. And the guy playing my boss said, 'No, I don't want to do it.' I kept insisting, and he said, 'I don't want to do it, go do it.' We didn't do it. But after the filming, what happened? He was so new, he said, 'You irritated me, and I wanted to teach you a lesson that at the end of the day, I have the power. So it's no use being right; you need to bring me along with you.' And I learned the importance of bringing people with you. It's not just being right; you can be right and end up alone. That was a very important lesson that I use to this day. Now I use it more with my teams. First, I can't lose them and simply lead by authority. But also, I always try to remember how I felt when they are presenting to me. Because sometimes when I agree with something, they say 'Okay, I agree,' but are they really agreeing or just not wanting to go against my authority? Because I want a horizontal discussion, but are they really having a horizontal discussion with me?

I think within what you said about ensuring things come, I think one of the most important and difficult things to do is counter-cyclical energy management. It's a concept I learned from a coach, I think in American football, but it's easy to explain in Brazilian football. You understand: your team is winning 3-0, you go to the locker room, already won. What does the coach do? 'Careful, we lost a ball, you made a silly foul, could have been a penalty.' That's when you tighten. When you're losing 3-0, he says, 'Calm down, we'll come back, remember the comebacks that have happened, what the team has already achieved.' And it's very difficult because there is a tendency when things are bad, the leader often tightens, and when things are very good, he joins the celebration. I try not to do that. It's very difficult from both sides. It's very difficult when things are tough to do that, but when you manage, it's very comforting for the teams. That's where the solution comes from. But it's very difficult when everyone is celebrating and you have to tighten and say, 'You're never happy.' So that's something I practice a lot. It's difficult, but I practice a lot and I think it works quite well.

I am a big fan of the book 'The First 90 Days' by Michael Watkins. I recommend it to everyone. And whenever I change companies or roles, I read it again. I think it's very important to talk about the conversations, what order of questions to ask. I always do that. So it's a methodology I use a lot. I always seek to understand the local culture. I think it's important to understand the local culture to understand what is happening in the companies, but not necessarily adapt to everything. Many things you have to adapt to, but many things you also need to provoke change with subtlety and sensitivity. For example, I went to Mexico. I understood the Mexican better when I read Octavio Paz. He tells the story of how he was walking in San Francisco and saw baskets of crabs. There were two or three crabs covered and one open basket. He asked, 'Why are these covered and these open?' 'We are from the American coast, they start to climb and pull the others down. These from the European coast, same thing, one starts to climb and pulls the others down. But these here, why are they open?' 'Ah, these are from the Mexican coast. When one tries to climb, the others pull him down.' So you start to understand why when I talk to the organization and ask a question, no one raises their hand to speak. Because protagonism is not well seen in that culture. But you want to change that to develop leaders. So how do you provoke? You tell the story. Same thing now working with the Dutch. So it's important to understand the culture but also use it to provoke the change you think is necessary, but with care because obviously these are themes people grew up with. Everything in life has its pros, but you also point out the cons and try to find a middle ground.

First of all, innovation is fundamental to me because the only way to generate value in the long term, in my opinion, is innovation. Innovation generates growth, which generates productivity, which you reinvest in innovation. I think that's what companies that manage to do this for hundreds of years have. I always like to start with dreams. I really like a book called 'The Dream Manager' that talks about the importance of having dreams, knowing your team's dreams to connect. It says that people who don't have dreams for themselves won't have dreams in your company. I like to talk about dreams because I think they drive us. Dreams help us when things are difficult, when the path is complicated. I always like to start by saying, 'What is the dream we have here collectively?' Not a set of goals. Someone said, 'I have a goal, I have a dream.' So that's very important to start the conditions. And then from there, necessity is the mother of all invention, as Plato said. So after you have that dream, you say, 'Now how do I get there?' I think then you come to a model that is very important to me. I like to talk about trust. The book 'The Speed of Trust' by Stephen Covey, I like it a lot because it talks about extending trust to people, letting them experiment. But there is also a very high analytical part. You trust people differently than what we say in Brazil: 'trust is earned.' No, trust you first give. I assume I can trust you. With that, we gain speed, we gain connection. But there is also a very high analytical part. So we stay close. If it goes wrong, it's a pilot. If it goes wrong, we stop here. If it goes wrong, but we want to learn again, we go. And I think it's part of generating an environment where you allow people to make mistakes. But I always say small, fast, original mistakes, and that we learn from them. So I think that's what makes the wheel turn.

I think first, you bring the team together and say, 'I really believe in teams where people don't do the same thing but have a common goal.' So I always start with common goals. But only the goals that all of us have together, and that we won't reach if we all have different functions. Each function has its individual goal, people have them, but I always like to start with the teams: 'What are the common goals? What is the goal?' A soccer team has a common goal. Each one has to defend, do other things, mark statistics are different, but we have to score goals, otherwise we won't win. So I think that's where it starts. And then also show people that friction is good. 360 feedback, as long as it's constructive, is good because it's someone who makes us better. You need a personal trainer to help you be better, you need a teacher, and your colleagues can have that role. I really like the model of 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team' by Lencioni. One of the stages is the stage where it breaks. If the stick doesn't break, the team is not in high performance. He calls it artificial harmony. Exactly, you are in artificial harmony, you haven't yet gone where the magic happens. So I've had discussions with my team and said, 'This is too harmonious, we're not really talking.' And there are several dynamics I like to work on. Every quarter, I bring my team together, we talk about strategy, but we always do a team dynamic. For example, I did one that I like a lot: I said, 'Look, we're going to do a personal dynamic for each of us: start, stop, continue. I'll start. I'll leave the room, and you, please, in a group, tell me what I should start, what I should stop, what I should continue.' And then the team discusses without you in the room. Then I come back. You see everyone like, 'How are we going to tell him?' Then I present my start, I did the exercise while I was outside, and then I say, 'Now you comment.' 'Ah, we agree with this, we agree with that, we even like that you didn't put this, we calibrate.' I say, 'Thank you very much.' And what they did is never read; they tear it up at the end. It's from here forward. But the fact that the discussion is based on what you did, and they use what they did to calibrate what I did, but they never present that it was the pre-work. I understood. But the dynamic of thinking 'how do I say it' already generates a calibration. 'Daniel is very out of the box, you're going to say that to him? No, so let's say it this way.' It already generates precision in the feedback, even though it never appears. It was very funny because I said, 'I'm going to do this voluntarily.' There were about 14 people. 'Voluntary, whoever wants to do it.' Everyone did it. A company that had no tradition of 360 feedback, everyone who wanted to do it in the same meeting. You did all these exercises. The guys, we were going to do other things, but nothing, the people from our site doing this, I think it was the most important thing we did. I loved it. And there were people who received feedback that was complicated but thanked because you always know it's there but it had never come in a constructive way. I have experience in my life: the people who thanked me the most for feedback were the toughest ones I gave. People who told me, including bosses, 'Thank you, it was always a problem because I always received it from my boss, but now that you said it, I understood better and it helps me.' That says a lot about people too. But I always like to tell these stories to encourage more people to give feedback in a constructive way.

I think it's intellectual curiosity that I've always had. Again, I mentioned my values, my Jewish ancestry. It's a religion where, if you go to where the rabbis study, they discuss all the time. There is no right or wrong. We grow through horizontal discussion. I really like that. I think I grow a lot with that. And I think it's fantastic in my team. They challenge me. The best moments of my career are when the team wanted to do something, I said, 'You won't be able to do it.' They said, 'No, Daniel, we will.' And they go and do it. I say, 'I was wrong, congratulations to you.' And you see the happiness of the people. So I think it comes a lot from that. I always valued that a lot. And I think it's very Socratic, the story of asking good questions, since the Greeks. And I had an HR person who told me a lot when I was bringing too many solutions. She said, 'You're bringing too many solutions.' I said, 'Then you keep an eye on me.' And in meetings, I would look at her when I was about to give an answer, and she would signal, 'No, go back to questions.' So it's a lot of training because sometimes I do want to give the answer. Sometimes I give the answer and I regret it many times. But you really discipline yourself to ask good questions. And you see that most of the time, people know. They know. So it's very rewarding because after they see that, they learn, they don't forget it, it stays with them.

I think the first part of your question is important: to know yourself. And I think many times people don't know themselves. I see both extremes: people who think they are good at everything, the arrogant ones, they miss an opportunity. But I also get very worried when I see people who are very good at other things, you have a meeting with them and say, 'What are your strengths?' 'I don't know.' Many people don't have enough self-esteem. That is very bad. And I think it's important to build that self-esteem. So this system of knowing yourself is very important. After you know yourself, without a doubt, your strengths take you far. The difference you make, the impact you have, comes from your strengths. Your differential, your superpowers. People talk a lot about that. I have a very simple feedback rule: three strengths and one area to improve. If you start having difficulty finding three in a person and focus on one, you know you have to give a different feedback. But if you have a lot of difficulty finding where the person needs to improve, you know that someone is ready to promote. When you find someone, you have to focus on development opportunities. One important thing: either thinking about the next level, or when you have something that is a blocker. So if you have something that is a blocker, you say, 'You have many qualities, but this is a blocker in relationships with other areas, etc.' If you have an area that is a blocker, you have to focus on that because otherwise you won't be able to develop. But in general, that's not the rule. So I think it's always more about strengths.

We are usually good at what we like. It's rare to have a subject in school where you got your best grade but hated it. So I always tell people to start this conversation by thinking about what you like about your work, what you enjoy, and what you tolerate. Many people...

I like making recommendations based on data. I don't like having to decide without data. So I said, then what are you going to do in marketing? The right place is where you can influence a business. So I think you need to know what you like and what you do most easily. There's a study I really like that looked at people who studied to make money versus those who worked with what they loved. Ten years later, those who worked with what they loved earned 50% more. So I think it's more natural, you do better, you dedicate yourself more. If you like many things and have difficulty, that's where mentoring helps a lot. There are methodologies, vocational guidance for younger people, but also models like the StrengthsFinder. I think the most important thing is to ask others for feedback. Stay open-minded, listen to what they say about you. Sometimes people hear positive feedback and already want to know the negative. I think you should listen to what I'm telling you because that will make a difference.

I said before, I don't like work-life balance, I seek life balance. Family is one of my core values. So my time starts there. I think if you ask my daughters, they might not agree, but in general I make a point of always having dinner together, being there on weekends, having conversations, taking and picking them up. I sacrifice maybe my personal leisure to do things with my family. I've had moments in my career where it was more difficult. Maybe the hardest was when I lived in Mexico, my wife was pregnant, my mother-in-law had lung cancer. I had to leave my wife to be with her mother. I came back for the birth of my daughter, but then I had to go back. When my mother-in-law passed away, I couldn't be with my wife during that time, but thank God she understood. So you need understanding, it's a family project. A few years later, we were in Peru, my wife wanted to return to Brazil. We agreed on two assignments of six to eight years. Eight years passed, and P&G wanted me around the world. I told her we would go back even though there was no position in Brazil. She said, 'Are you going to leave the company after almost 20 years?' I said, 'I'm not leaving the company, we'll go back to Brazil.' And that's when I went to Natura. So this balance happens on both sides. That's why I say it's life balance. In the first moment, my wife gave me strength, and in the second moment I knew I had stretched the rope too far. So you need to have that sensitivity, and sometimes you push yourself too hard. You have to listen to your body and know when to do that. Thank God, knock on wood, it's not my case, but I'm always listening for signs.

I wouldn't say motivation, but for me, fear is my ally. I love courageous people, those who face fear, and I hate fearless people, those who don't know what they should be afraid of. Unfortunately, we had the Titan submarine accident. If you listen to the speeches of the company president, he was fearless. He did carbon fiber, did what no one does, went outside safety standards. So I'm deathly afraid of extremism. Fear is my greatest ally. It helps me make better plans. When I look at something, I think, where will I die? Where will this go wrong? I think about what I can do to make it not go wrong. Often we make great plans but forget contingency plans. Fear helps remind you that everything can go wrong. If the impact is big, we'll decide. So fear is a huge ally. I'm not ashamed to say I'm afraid. I say in meetings, 'I'm scared, I'm not comfortable making this decision yet.' People want me to decide, but I'm looking at the balance of fears. Sometimes the team doesn't like it because they want a decision, but I only have my compass to guide me. This reminds me of a story. I was always a person of phases. I decided to skydive. On the first jump, I was terrified. I asked the instructor, 'Aren't you afraid to jump? When did you stop being afraid?' He said, 'The day I stop being afraid will be the biggest risk of my life, because my fear makes me check the reserve parachute.' He said, 'If I can give you advice, don't pick an instructor who isn't afraid, because that one will miss something fatal.'

I think we go back to the story of your strengths. Know your strengths. In moments like that, I go back to mine. I also go back to what I said about countercyclical management. In moments of greater difficulty when the team is scared and fragile, looking to you and saying 'what do we do?', I think showing calmness and tranquility is important. I go back to the value of resilience, and I like to combine resilience with optimism — you bend but don't break, and you have optimism that it will work out. There are moments of crisis when you should just float, not try to swim. You float and when the team understands that, we do what we need to float. Eventually you have to throw some ballast overboard — let people go, cut investments. But you're not demanding a turnaround that people can't even discuss. So I think that tranquility and confidence in yourself, honestly in the team and in the future, is perhaps the best a leader can give in times like that — not false hope, but genuine belief.

I believe in intuition in decision-making. I always like to have more than intuition, but the truth is that many things I see in the moment, in my gut, I already feel. I grew up in marketing, and a lot of things literally give me chills and fill my eyes with water when I see them. But then I always try to understand why I had that sensation — positive or negative — because I need to verbalize it to the person to make sure we are amplifying the positive. And if I absolutely don't want to go down a path, I use a very rational explanation of why. So I believe a lot in intuition — I like the book 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell — but it's important not to stop there. Reflect, think, and then articulate. So I don't believe only in intuition.

In my area, I need to be close to the client. In the last two days I was in Porto Alegre seeing a client. I told my team, please get me out of the office. I'm really in a lot of meetings now. Since February I've also been on the global committee of AkzoNobel, which takes me into even more meetings and discussions. Those are important for the company, but push me further away from Latin America. So I told myself, my agenda has to be balanced between being with clients, being out, and being with my teams. I have open agendas because that's where things appear and fill my list of different things to do and opportunities. I think a lot about how I define my agenda. I always tell my assistant: 80% of my agenda should be with clients or with people on the team, and 20% corporate — which is important, but if you don't watch out, that 20% becomes 80%. Soon you're all corporate, and you lose the feel of the streets, the people, and the clients. And if you lose that, how will the corporate decisions work? It's the beginning of the end. I'm not at the 80% yet — I lost some ground in February — but at least it's 50-50, and I can bring it back. Delegation is also important. Moving up to corporate gives an opportunity for my people to occupy spaces I used to fill. I can't take that opportunity from them. So I leave some things with sadness — I won't attend the monthly product innovation meetings anymore, and it hurts, but I know I shouldn't be there. It's like having kids — there comes a time when you realize they are no longer yours. You have to reinvent yourself, and that gives you time to think about the next S-curve, the next growth curve. So it's healthy and implies reinvention.

I think everyone has their own definition of success. For me the two things are the same. What I seek in my career is, at the end of the day, to look back and say, 'Wow, it was worth it.' And increasingly the metric is not the products I launched — though I'm proud of them — but the people I've touched, promoted. I get very emotional when someone writes to me saying, 'I remembered you from 10, 20 years ago in a meeting where you said something.' That aligns with my purpose: to have a positive impact on the world and the people around me, to develop and be happy on the journey. So my career is part of that; work is part of who I am. I choose it every day, and my success is defined much more broadly than that.

Today I always ask, 'Why are you here? Why AkzoNobel?' For me it's important to understand the motivations that bring a person at that moment. I always like to use cases — tell me stories. I always interview with stories and say, 'Tell me two stories: one about an analysis you did that gave insights and led to a successful strategy, and another about how you led a team through influence, a cross-functional team, and it produced results.' So those are the questions I always ask. There's a tip for anyone being interviewed by me.

I think people who don't like being challenged. The accommodated ones — because I'm constantly challenging the status quo. Those people don't work out with me; they get irritated with me and I with them, and after a while it doesn't work. You have to have someone who wants to grow — not necessarily to higher positions, but to grow in a Y-career, to do things better, always looking for how to be more productive, more motivated each year, and how new technologies can help. So accommodated people don't work with me.

That's it — I keep agitating a bit too much. They send me away, and I keep coming. So many people, the higher you go in your career, want to schedule meetings with me to build relationships. They come from an area without much contact, I ask what they do, and I start talking about opportunities. They chat with me but don't take notes. Then three or six months later they come back, and I've noted everything — I go back and say, 'We talked about this, has it moved?' Many times they get annoyed because I note everything and follow up. I have the same habit — people joke that they want to delete my Evernote or Moleskine, but everything is in the cloud exactly.

First, I think you have all the skills, experience, and credentials. For me it's a matter of putting it on the agenda. Today there are very structured courses — IBGC, Inova, Dom Cabral, and Start is launching one now. Those institutions definitely help organize the content in the right way. But it's gained so much strength that now if you don't have a certification from one of those, it seems like you won't become a director. And between us, many of the directors I know don't have that certification or got it after they were already directors. So it has its value, but that's not the key. What I believe is about how you create a trust relationship in Brazil. I'd love to tell you it all goes through Red Hunter, but the truth is the percentage is still very low; it's still mostly by referral and within a very small group. The bigger challenge is how to connect with people to get the first opportunity. See, we're back to the same thing from university: we have that challenge. One mistake I see from some C-levels is thinking that just because you were announced as a director, you're ready — 'I'll retire and become a board member.' We took so long to become a director, and we think the switch is that simple. So the main point I'd ask anyone listening is to look at their network — how many directors do you know? How many investors? How many people can refer or appoint you? It's important to understand what they think and how they think to get that opportunity. For me, something that helped — though unplanned — was participating on boards of NGOs and promising startups with no remuneration. Because I was on boards with directors who were already on boards of large companies, that was an opportunity to get to know each other, build trust, and some invitations came through those directors. So it's a strategy of connection and dedication. And you have a major advantage if you have a learning and challenging posture. I see many executives wanting to enter a board to execute, to be an executive — and that's definitely not the path.

I'm weird because I'm a nautical engineer who grew up in consumer goods marketing. People think I should be an astronaut, and they find it very strange.

I've been through many. There's a long story I can tell in detail. I was in charge of laundry detergent at P&G. I was responsible for Ace, which positioned itself on whiteness. I had a competitor in Brazil with a brand that had already done everything for whiteness — street fairs, helicopters. So I had the idea to use Brazil's New Year's Eve, where everyone dresses in white, to create the biggest whiteness event in the world. We decided to make the world's largest clothesline in front of Sugarloaf Mountain facing Guanabara Bay. We needed 25 kilometers of clothesline, with several rules. Someone in the Netherlands had already done a clothesline. We decided to do it in Rio de Janeiro. We went to negotiate with the city hall: we'd solve a problem for them, what do you give us? They wanted something for tourists for the millennium New Year's Eve (1999 to 2000). So we did a show on January 2nd at Praça da Apoteose. The ticket was a used white shirt. We collected 55,000 used white clothes in Rio, washed them, and put them on a clothesline over 25 km long. On January 2nd, the show was Zeca Pagodinho, Ivete Sangalo (not very famous then), and Gilberto Gil. It was called 'Rio and I.' But then a typical summer rain came and soaked the stage. I was called backstage — everyone waiting to start, but it had rained so much only 7,000 people showed up despite many ticket exchanges. Behind the stage there were 30 people standing and one chair. They said, 'Daniel, you need to sit here.' Half said there was no condition to do the show — risk of electrical panel, people dying on stage — and the other half said there was no condition to send people home because there would be chaos and it would cost a lot. Famous dilemma — no right or wrong answer. Being a principle-based company, I explained to the executive who was there in the box. He asked, 'Is there a risk of death if we do the show?' I said yes. Then no show. I went back and said, 'There's no show. Let's discuss how to handle this.' The presenter sent the MC to tell the audience, who were not leaving. The MC tried to explain, but people stayed. Ivete Sangalo's fan club wouldn't leave, Gilberto Gil was there, the musicians said they'd do the show for free the following week. Finally Zeca Pagodinho came out and said, 'If God doesn't want it, who are we to go against his will?' Everyone turned their backs and left. The worst that happened was some people shouting at us — 'Ace's scam!' Everyone left. We rescheduled for January 9th, and a week later there were 40,000 people at Praça da Apoteose. It was a huge success. Great story.

Normally, given my history, it's something that isn't performing well, falling behind. That car in the race that's lagging — it has potential but isn't going. I like those situations. Typically, between strategy, team, and execution, we can turn the story around. As an engineer, I love building these stories with the pieces that are there. I rarely bring in people from outside, even more rarely people I've worked with before. I like being like a football coach whose team is falling in the table and there's no money to buy players. I like the challenge of climbing the table with a team no one expects to win. That's my place of power.

Being insecure about making a decision, but having the courage to put that on the table. That's a rare service.

I'm still learning how to integrate a large acquisition. We made a big acquisition in Colombia. We already have a big presence in decorative paints in the south of South America up to Bolivia. We bought a leading company in Colombia that goes from Ecuador to Guatemala — basically doubling our Latin American presence in people and revenue. So I'm learning that. It has great value for me as a professional, and it's been a beautiful experience. It's working out, but it has its difficulties. It's very interesting.

When people want to talk to me about where to grow and how to grow. The next step is how to talk to my boss. So I do a lot of role-playing that conversation. I don't give answers, but I always ask questions: 'How would you say it? Why wouldn't you talk to your boss? What's your fear?' So I end up being called a lot for that.

Financial restructuring. I've never been called to handle that. That's not my beach.

I mentioned a lot of books. I love reading about topics that interest me. Depending on the challenge or skill I want to expand, I listen to The Economist. I run while listening — they have audio, which is wonderful. I listen to the magazine when I run, and it helps me understand what's happening in politics, economy, science. I like that they go deep into topics I'm interested in, and I skip what doesn't interest me. It provokes a lot of my colleagues. For me, it's a major source of knowledge. I think The Economist is great because the reports are never signed by a specific journalist, which shows great editorial coherence. Of course, every magazine leans one way or another, but I like The Economist a lot for that aspect, as well as the variety of topics. The little summaries in the first pages already give a fantastic worldview. Listening to it while running gave me a good balance between my time and staying deep. Running time would otherwise be spent with family, so now I run and listen. It also distracts my head from running, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I have to do it. So I recommend it.

The first person that comes to mind is Kondzilla. I was at a JPO event in Rio and he gave a talk. His story and what he brings to communities and what's happening in Brazil is fundamental for everyone to connect with. Not just his story, but how he connects us. The second is a less known but cool story: Esther Carro, an architect from Jardim Colombo, part of the Paraisópolis complex. She got fed up with the government and did something about the landfill. She gathered the community and created a project called 'Fazer Indiano' that's growing. She's our partner in a project called 'Mulheres na Cor' where we bring women in vulnerable situations to be trained as decorative painters. Through our app 'Paz nas Coloridas' you can hire a painter — women in vulnerable situations that we reintegrate into the job market. She's now at Casa da Cor in São Paulo. She built an interesting small space that looks like a community home but with decency and good ideas. The third I would suggest is Frederico Pedreira, also a colleague from the JPO forum. He's a CEO now at Avianca Colombia for a long time. He's a general like me, but also a climber, high‑performance athlete who has lived in several countries. He's Portuguese, lives in France. He has many stories and I admire him a lot.

A while ago, during the pandemic, I watched a podcast with Habib Newton Bonder. He talked about the difference between joy and happiness. I had never thought about it. He says happiness is a state you have, but it's ephemeral; joy is the enthusiasm with which you tackle life. Since then, I never tell people 'happiness' on birthdays — I say 'health, joy.' So for me, happiness is living life with joy. Joy is the fuel. He has a concept: who is the most joyful person at a funeral? The one crying the most, because that person is the most engaged in that moment. The opposite of joy is depression — the person who can't get out of bed, can't deal with challenges. So I live that. And I think one thing that worries me — you mentioned generational conflict — is that life is getting easier for new generations, less barriers, less patience, less resilience. So there's a tendency to get depressed in adversity. I think it's important to activate joy, and joy often comes from overcoming barriers. So create small barriers and make people feel the happiness that comes from facing a challenge with joy and succeeding.

You can find me on LinkedIn: Daniel Gaiger Rocha Campos. Just ask for a little patience because sometimes I take a while to respond. On Instagram: DJ GR Campos. On Twitter: Campos. Projects? A lot is happening at AkzoNobel. This new challenge of being on the executive committee representing Latin America and developing countries — it's the first time a Latino sits on the executive committee of the company. So I'm very proud of the company for opening this opportunity, and of my team that got me there. It takes more time than I'd like, but it's part of it. We have a lot to do — bringing color to people's lives, which is the great purpose of AkzoNobel. That's what we seek to do.

Thank you, Vaspa. It's a pleasure to be here. I hope that whoever listens takes at least something away — that's what I always seek: to put a little grain of sand for others and give back everything I've received during my life. And congratulations to you for creating this space. It's a very cool space that helps people reflect on their next step and give good tips. Thank you.