Third Week as CEO for One Month
The third week just fininshed. A week full of new learning. Impressive how the time passes but we still have so much to learn. I believe that I will be 50 years old and still be learning so much. There're just so many things happening in the world and 24 hours per day don't seem to be enought.
The main highlights of the week were the trimestral results meetings called GAPs meetings and the trip to the north of Portugal to visit our colleagues.
The name "GAPs meetings" was given by the CEO for people to focus on the GAP (space or distance missing between two points) between their results and the budget, instead of focusing on the results itself. It's about comparing where we stand to where we want to be. I loved the concept!
The morning was spent with the Responsible of Prevention and Accidents, a recent department which goal is to educate and prevent accidents in the work context of Adecco's collaborators. Moreover, I was with a Controller from the Finance department, that does controlling of Outsourcing business area. During this time, I had a journalist that followed what is a day of a CEO for One Month. Then, I went to have lunch with the CEO and was able to talk a lot about my last two weeks and exchange thoughts about the group operations in Portugal. In the afternoon, I had a call with the HR Director of Adecco Spain, to talk about my Birkman Assessment results which gave me good inputs about my usual behavior, needs, motivations, and career interests. It's a very complete personality test and for me it was super accurate! Self-knowledge is one the main important things we should develop.
The morning I spent with the Director of Compliance and her team. In this department it's important to be technical and focus on being compliant, however, it can't stop the operations to continue and for that reason, it's important to have a focused team with a practical approach to problems.
This afternoon was all spent in the GAP meeting of Outsourcing business area. First, the controllers of this business area presentend the general numbers of the unit. Then, they were discussed and presented by each Area Manager regarding their specific sub-area.
One of the longest days I had in Adecco Portugal. It was the GAP meeting of the business areas: Temporary Work, Permanent Placement and Training. It started at 10AM and finished at 8PM. Long meeting but very well structured, allowing everyone to give their opinion, share strategies and best practices, and the outcomes were impressive.
Two GAP meetings: Spring Professionals in the morning and Big Accounts department (related with managing the big clients of Adecco Portugal).
*More about key learnings regarding the GAP meetings in the next Blog post*
In the afternoon I travelled with the CEO to the north of Portugal. This trip consisted of two days and a blog post about it will be posted! A lot of talking and walking with the CEO.
One week to go!