Everyone. Um uh OK.Thank you for having me in this session in the, in the Women Tech Global Conference, which is uh super big and with interesting sessions, um the session I proposed uh was uh or is Moonshot thinking we are going and it's about how we can change our organization in these challenging times that require us to re invent our companies.

So um just to let you know a bit from myself, I'm Anna Jimenez. I'm the transformation and culture director at GFT. I will explain a bit in a bit what we do at GFT and how we are transforming um And what we will cover is what is Moonshot thinking, how this Moonshot thinking can be applied to business and where to start and then how you can operate the, why the how and the what of a transformation.

So, first of all right, what is this m of thinking? Um This comes from the 19 uh sixties, right? In this um uh race for going to, to the stars for going to the space. And there was this speech from um John um Kenne Kennedy uh that he gave us the rice and university. And he said this, let me play this video so you can hear him too. But

why some say the moon, why choose this as our goal? We choose to go to the moon, we choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept one, we are unwilling to postpone.

So that, that's the MSHA thinking, this thought of doing something which is difficult, which is some seems unreachable, but you do it because it's necessary, right? Because this sentence that he says it's you are we are unwilling to postpone and even when it's hard, right? So this is like the summary of the Moonshot thinking, right? But then how that can be applied to business, right? What does motion, motion thinking have to do with business? And it has to do a lot. Um I don't know if you are familiar with this um acronym but after world war two, the world it say it became B A which means that it's volatile, it's uncertain, it's complex and it's ambiguous, right? That's, it's, it's been used in um socioeconomics and business for some decades and, and it means that what we are doing is difficult to do, right? In, in, in business and in organizations when running companies, we are dealing with a complex world. But then after COVID-19, um the acronym changed a bit and we are using now for the business. Um schools are using now new acronyms. The world is no longer volatile. It's brittle, right? Um It's more than uncertain. It's anxious, right? We are feeling anxious about all the changes, the fast changes that we are uh living and how to deal with them more than complex.

It's now the problems are nonlinear, which means that they are much more difficult to solve that you need to think from a different point of view and the reality, it's no longer ambiguous or not only it's incomprehensible, right? So it's really a very difficult world we are living in as a human being and also uh as, as people that are running companies or that belong part of organizations and companies. It's much more difficult now than ever, right? So where has, has the Moonshot thinking started to be used in business? So it started actually in Google. Google has a division called the X company, which is this special and a small division that dedicates um their efforts to solve huge problem which um sci fi solutions and with a breakthrough technology and they give these 10 tips for Moonshot takers, right? So aim for going beyond the 100% doing more than it's not the small increments, but doing something big fall in love with the problem. Uh make early contact with the reality. Really. That's what you are doing. So creativity with diverse themes. Tackle the monkey first. This is um it's quite funny. It says that that if you try to uh teach a monkey to recite chesa, some people would start for giving the space to the monkey and some. But the the the right thing to do is to start training the monkey.

This is what it means. Embrace not failure, but learning that comes from failure become a chaos pilot. Learn to love the first version of what you are doing that they won't be perfect. Shift your perspective and take the long view, right? These are the recommendations that they are uh doing for anyone that wants to innovate for with this perspective. And that's super cool. It's a company that is doing great things, very different things. But OK, I'm not Google, right? So I'm not solving the problems that you solve, but still I can learn to apply these principles of Moonshot thinking to what we are doing. So let me tell you in a couple of minutes. What we do at GFTGFT is an IT services company. We provide it solutions to our clients, uh digital transformation with um be cutts technologies, but we are also doing maintenance and just to give you an uh um an idea of the volume that we have in number of people. So uh we have more than 10,000 people, which means that we are not a super huge it company, but we are also not a start up of uh or a small one. We are a middle one. Uh we are all around the world and especially we were doing banking, but we also do insurance and industry in different services. Uh It's a very family owned company still, right?

Even if, when we are um listed in, in stock um marketing in Germany, it's a very family oriented company. And just also again to give you an idea of the distribution that we have this thou 10,000 people in all around different countries that you can see in the map here in Spain, which is where I'm located in Barcelona. We are a bit more than 2000 employees. So what was happening to us to GFT Spain back in 2018 that required this Moonshot thinking. So I I was telling you that we are very or we were very oriented to the banking sector. And on the left side, you can see all of them in the outer uh cycle, all the different um banks that we had in Spain in 20 in 26 right? All these many different banks, but they just start to consolidate right to merge one with the others. Um And then at the end, we have now a very small number of banks bigger but very um or much more or less companies right? And as we were working for the finance market, um most of, most of all, so this was impacting us, right? Because we were, we had less clients to, to, to sell our services. And we noticed that also in the decrease in our top two clients.

So we had the main goal to diversify in existing sectors, but also to go for a new sector that we were not uh reaching out before, right? So this was like uh our Moonshot, right? Our our um very big step to go for from where the, where we were to where we wanted to go. And when we started to think, OK, how we do that, where to start, right? How we, how we go from here where we are now uh to what we want to be in the future. And what we did was to um start a transformation program. And the first step in this and this is something that can be extrapolated to many different organizations is is to write a letter from the future. So we ask our board, our executive committee, what company do we want to be in the future? Right? So if, if you travel to the future and you see what, what we are in the future. Um So what is the company using and we see in different dimensions, right? Um I won't read uh all of them but in scope or services, the number of people, uh the geography the vertical, the client types, these types of questions were something that we ask what we want to be in the future.

And with this, we started this program, this transformation program that we call three years from now, it started in 2022. The last year was our first year. Now we are kind of in the middle of the second year and it will end end of 2024. And this will complete our transformation. And we have our claim that comes from the Olympic Games, which is Tios Adios Fortius, it means higher, uh stronger and faster. This is what we want to, to be with this diversification. And with these questions we asked to our uh board, we got the answers, right? So they define the first alone. They um thought about this and then they reason together, they came to an agreement and we define what we want to be at the end of 2024. So, OK, this was like um the solution or the vision from, from our board. But how you can scale that to more than 2000 people, right? Ho how would you put this idea into movement and you um become with that a reality? So what we did was also change our organization, how it was um done before, which was like very silo oriented in verticals. And we went more for something more organic. So we have our executive committee, our board, there are six people and they take care of the why of this mission and vision of the company. Then we have our strategy committee which is taking care of the transformation.

And then we have here in addition to the executive committee, all the heads of all the units which are 20 people and they take care of the how, how we are doing things, how we are transforming. Then we have the rest of the directors and managers we have, which are taking care of the, what, what are we doing? So we can transform, right? And then of course, to the rest of the employees, to all these more than 2000 people, right? So this is how we structure. Um And then I will give you some tips about each of them, right? So how you operate the why, right, the Y which is the six people in the board that uh they are taking care of the, why not the how and this is something that we were very mindful about, right? That they are giving the direction, but they are not telling how you get there, right? Uh Because this needs to be done by more people. So they each thing gets the co get the correct amount of management attention. So the keys for operating the Y after one year and a half of learning and, and seeing that how this works is first to create the sense of urgency to transform, right? And to a knowledge.

And this is very important that this generates entropy, right, that this generates chaos that not with nothing will be perfect at the beginning that we will fail. And this is um something that we know and we acknowledge then another big decision we took when we were doing this transformation program is that we were not creating like a separate team for doing all the innovation and then separated from the day to day. So we are doing, it's really the same people that it's doing like the operative um day to day business. And at the same time, the transformation because then it's, it's more painful, but it's uh in the long term, I think it's better because they can balance better and they can check against the reality, which was, it's one of the principles of the Moonshot thinking, right, to check against the reality.

And you can do this better if you are in the, at the same time doing the day to day, right? But they have this juggling of, of, of uh balancing between the operative and the transformative world. And then in related to the first one, if we know we are creating chaos, what the board is very clear about is that it's safe to fail. So it's OK to fail. We know that at some point we will fail and it's fine as long as it's controlled, right? That we are not creating some very big disruption when, when we are doing something and it's changing the way that we are working, maybe it fails. But if, if, if it's in a, in a controlled environment, we know what, what, what can happen, we know the risks, then it's fine, right? So these are the three P principles for the Y about the how, right? The how is this uh decisions and ideas and plans that the strategy committee puts in place to work? right? So from the company, we want to be, we define four pillars from the board of with the company objectives and then we define multiple O pr so pr s if you don't know or you are not familiar with the term, it means objective, key results.

So we are defining the objectives we want to achieve in a very, let's say more granular way and the key results that will prove to us that we are achieving this objective. So we are kind of being quite um detailed in this and this gave us a backlog of 96 okrs that we put in epic in Jira, right? For more governments. And that the way we are doing is is that for each of these o pr we have like three milestones, 2022 that was already passed 2023 2024. Each objective is sponsored by a member of the executive committee and its own by the Strategic Committee. But this person can uh create a working group with people from all the company, from all the levers to um make this objective, this result a reality, right? So, so this is uh what we are doing. So how these working groups uh work. So one thing that we um wanted to do also is to give autonomy to this team. So they work independently, they work also a lot of times asynchronously, right? Because they are also doing their day to day business. So a lot of the communication is asynchronous file sharing in teams they meet when necessary. But a lot of work is done asynchrony.

And then how we put in common, all the uh progress from the different groups is in the strategic Committee that we do a consistent monthly reporting. And this is also important because when you are dealing with a transformation and managing that um if you do not do not get everyone to report in the same way, they it's difficult to understand what you are doing. Then also a lot of work are synchronous and gathering every month and three kids here are applying radical candor which is challenge your pills but care personally take decisions based on data and focus on results. This is how we are operating the how and then about the what which is when we involve everyone. So what we are doing is doing these working groups leaded by the strategy committee. But we also loc the local groups take care of the offers the different business units, take care of the business and we are investing a lot of time in being transparent and communicate. So everyone knows what we are doing and everyone is on board and we are also doing trainings for our managers, which is important when you are transforming your company that you are investing in this. And three keys here is that give empowerment and accountability to these teams.

So each person participate, we support, we facilitate, but they are doing the work and they know that it's their responsibility, decentralize the information and communicate. So it's difficult, right? It's it's very tough to do this to transform, but we can do it and we are doing it.

It's one year and a half and, and we achieved that and just going back to the beginning of the presentation in the 19 sixties, we were going to the moon. Now we are going to the moon again after Apollo. Now it's Artemis, which is the goddess of the moon, the sister of Apollo. And this is another Moonshot thinking process and this is the first crew of, of the, of the Artemis program. And it, I'm very happy also to see that there is the first woman that will go to the moon is in this crew already. Um So thanks a lot for having me. It has been a pleasure to share what works for us and um enjoy the rest of the event.