The Impact of Family Values and Global Trends on Strategy

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan and along with Joe Krause, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Strategy Gap. Joining us today is Victor André Gamas Mayer. Victor is the managing partner for the Gamas Group, North America's largest customs brokerage and logistics company, which is also an 82 year old family business. With a background in global business, Victor provides strategic advisory services and risk analysis for international companies looking to invest in Mexico. He also leads the firm's business development, strategic planning, talent development, quality control, operations, and customer service departments.

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:59]:

He's a member of Mexico's Consejo Coordinator Impresario and the US Mexico Foundation's Advisory Council and has advised political campaigns in the US And Mexico. A dual citizen and border native from Nogales, Arizona, Victor holds a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, an MBA from Boston College, and a certificate in economics from the London School of Economics. He's a leader in international trade and logistics and is passionate about fostering cooperation between Mexico, the United States and abroad. Victor, welcome to the show.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:01:35]:

Well, thank you so much, Joe and Jonathan, for the invitation. I'm excited to be here and talk with your audience. And again, congratulations of all the achievements that you've had with this podcast. I'm honored to now be a guest on it.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:48]:

All right, thanks, Victor. Well, when we first connected, I certainly learned a lot and I'm looking forward for others to learn a bunch today as well. While we won't spend a ton of time discussing the logistics industry and, you know, the logistics of your company as well, I did want to establish a foundation for the conversation today, really by introducing the Gamas Group and the type of work that you do. So to kick things off, can you just give a quick overview of the organization and really the focus of the business?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:02:16]:

Yeah, of course. Well, as you mentioned, Gamas Group is a North American customs brokerage and logistics company. There's been a family company in my family, which is Gamas now, for 82 years. My great grandfather founded the company in Nogales, Sonora in 1942 as one of Mexico's first customs brokerage agencies. And we can now say that we are one of Mexico's five customs brokerage firms that has now gone on to the fourth generation Mexico has about 400500 customs brokerage firms in total. My dad is a customs broker in Mexico. We have a customs brokerage agency as well in the US and we help international companies import and export their products from North America on a daily basis. We move about 3 to 5% of Mexico's foreign trade.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:03:05]:

We also help our clients with their logistics needs in air freight, land freight, ocean freight and rail freight. We also have and manage over 1 million square feet of warehousing space across the border and inside of Mexico to help clients with their cross border cross dock necessities as well as their foreign trade zones and fulfillment services for e commerce companies or e commerce platforms. And finally, we have a consulting branch where we help our clients build their services from start to finish, that being startup manufacturing, sheltering manufacturing, consulting before government agencies, any strategies to improve the regulatory or their fiscal efforts and help international companies know how to best invest in Mexico or help Mexican companies best invest in other countries abroad.

Jonathan Morgan [00:04:00]:

Perfect. And certainly there's a ton to be learned in that space and I wish we could have enough time to dig into all the intricacies of that industry. But just really to kick things out from a pure conversation standpoint for today, one of the interesting things that we haven't had the chance to talk about on the podcast yet is really the impact of working for a family business. I think certainly some individuals listening may work for a family business. Others work for small nonprofits, to higher education, to large commercial entities. You certainly sit in a unique situation being a fourth generation family business. What is the impact that a family business has on how you think about strategy and how you think about culture?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:04:40]:

Yeah, it's a great question, Jonathan. Being a family business impacts the whole thread or the whole spine of your organization. This impacts anywhere between how you hire people, how you develop talent, how you develop your culture, how you serve your clients, and ultimately how you build your overall strategy for your growth of your organization. Being a family business for us means taking care of our employees. That's the most important part. And taking care of our providers and taking care of our clients. Consequently, when I asked my dad, who is our CEO, what his job is, very simply put, he says, well, my job is to take care of 800 families. And that's how we look at it.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:05:24]:

Every member of our company is a member of our family, every member of our client base is a member of our family, and every member of our provider base is a member of our family. And so that's how we define our values and our principles. Our number one value is that we are family company. We take care of each other, we put forward our values and we put our heart before anything else that we do. And we seek to love what we do above all else. We take care of our people. We look to always be integral and being honest and being strategy centric in the sense of putting forward our most practical needs before our audience. And essentially what we're trying to build is a company where everybody feels responsible for the end results of the company, that everybody feels responsible for how we treat our clients, and that everybody feels responsible about the overall strategic plan of the company looking forward.

Joe Krause [00:06:19]:

And that's something that a lot of our listeners probably struggle with, is that they have organizations that are maybe not family owned, probably the majority don't. And when they think about creating a strategic plan or setting course for the future, there isn't that clarity of kind of the real reason they they're there. So the fact that you're saying that it's all about taking care of our employees and the people that our customers, everybody, that is a clarity that a lot of organizations wish they had. So have you found that to be a benefit to you as you're creating your strategic plan where it's very easy to spot what aligns well with those values and what doesn't and it makes that process easier or does it sometimes restrict you in the sense that maybe you want to branch out and experiment, but it might take you away from those core principles? How have been able to balance that as you're building your plans for the future?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:07:04]:

Yeah, it's a, you know, a great point, Joe. We spend more time working in our office than in our household. If you think about it, our team members get to the office around 8am and leave around 6 or 7pm that gives them about 10 hours in the workplace. They get home at 6:30 or 7 and they have dinner with their families or maybe go out into the gym and they go to sleep around 10 or 11. And that gives them about four hours, five hours outside of the workplace. So we really have to build an office or a work culture that builds and develops our people to be better husbands, better wives, better brothers, better sisters, better sons, better daughters. And that's what we seek to do with the overall environment that we're building in our company, with the different training sessions that we have, but also with how we organize our office spaces and our desks allocations inside our offices. And obviously it's not always a fairy tale ending.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:08:07]:

Being a family business has its pros and its cons. The pros obviously are the culture side of it. It's cons is that we have many bad habits maybe compared to other companies that may be more professional or more have a better corporate government structure. And we are living in that transition right now where we need to obviously professionalize every process that we have, that we need to ensure that every process is upheld and that we need to ensure that we respect the overall principles of our company and not betray or shortcut anything just because we are a family. And so sure, being family comes with a lot of love, but sometimes you got to have that tough love as well. And that tough love as well is built on having a clear structure, being very transparent with our employees, being very transparent obviously as well with our clients and our providers. But having that results, KPI based structure within our strategic planning that we built personally in our company through a lot of use of technology and having that transparency before our team so that we know what they're doing, how they can do better and how we can help them achieve their results.

Jonathan Morgan [00:09:23]:

Yeah, I think for those listening, you know, they, they can't just turn their company into a family business. Right. It's, it's something that's either inherently true or not. But I appreciate your answer that you gave there because you really gave in both those pros and cons. People can think about what are the aspects that either I need to improve upon my business can look more like the culture aspects of family business, or hey, I'm doing great on these areas that Victor mentioned are potentially some negatives of family business. I need to keep leaning into those and ensuring that we grow. So I appreciate the advice you have there. Shifting gears a little bit to think about more the global nature of your organization.

Jonathan Morgan [00:09:58]:

I think beyond what the company does, you've been at the forefront of a lot of global conversations related to policies or your previous roles actually in government and both the US and Mexico sides, people may relate to some of that within their organizations. They might be global businesses, they might be doing trade globally, in which case this conversation is very relevant. But I think probably more often than not people are not in global businesses and they may not think about the global impact that these sorts of decisions may have on their domestic strategies and the things that they're doing kind of on a domestic basis. I'm going to kick things off here pretty broadly for this conversation. But you know, when you talk about global policy, global trends, you know, free trade negotiations, how should people think about their strategy in the concept of these Global businesses or global themes that may or may not actually impact their businesses directly.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:10:53]:

Yeah, it's very interesting to think about global businesses outside of a company that may not have that much of an impact or a relationship with global trends. But at the end of the day, we are all impacted by what's happening in the world one way or another. It's impacting the decisions that our policymakers are making, whether that's on a local, state or federal level. And it's impacting how our clients or our providers or our own businesses are making their strategies going forward. Global policy has an impact on development, it has an impact on education, it has an impact on trade, has an impact on economics, and it has an impact even on a health standpoint, as we saw in 2020 with the COVID 19 pandemic. So whether we like it or not, we are all related to what's happening in the world. Specifically in our business. We work with a lot of companies that are trading on a daily basis, and trade ultimately is impacted by policy, whether that's restrictions with imports or exports, whether it's with tariffs, whether it's with investment decisions that our other companies are making and how that's impacting how their providers are going to be investing in their manufacturing facilities abroad, and whether that's also impacting how security is impacting different communities in Mexico, principally.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:12:17]:

And one thing that we have to learn is that we have to be very in the know of the trends that are happening, whether that's keeping up with the news, keeping up with our different stock markets, keeping up with different collaborators abroad. And that could also not only teach us how our company can be impacted, but also learn how can we take the best practices that are going on in the world and implement them in our own company. One thing that we like to also always do, and me personally, is even though that we're a logistics or a customs brokerage firm, I like to learn about what's going on in other fields in other industries. So we read a lot about what's going on in the retail industry. We learn a lot about what's going on in the technology industry. We learn a lot about what's going on the food and beverage industry, what's going on in manufacturing industry, and how we can implement those strategies and those best practices to what we're doing here. An example that we have very close to home is that we read a lot about McDonald's and Starbucks. McDonald's and Starbucks have nothing to do on face with logistics and customs brokerage, although their Logistics structure is very vast.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:13:26]:

But we want to be, and we want to implement that franchise model and that quality assurance in every one of our branches and every one of our offices. We want to implement their talent development structures and their leadership structures in every one of our branches and every one of our, our service offerings. And so I think there's a lot of, a lot of areas in which different companies can learn about what's going on in the world in order to improve their structures, their processes and their strategies back home.

Joe Krause [00:13:57]:

It's interesting, you bring up McDonald's and Starbucks, a member in business school, learning about like alternative economic indicators on if we're going into a recessionary cycle or a boom. And it's like, are people eating out less? Are they eating less McDonald's and if they're not eating McDonald's, then what's going on? And McDonald's just went through that recently, like, oh, our food's too expensive. We need to get back to the five dollar value meal. So you see that happening in real time and people are coming back.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:14:19]:

Famous Big Mac indicator, right? How expensive is a Big Mac? And you can calculate if inflation is going on or if you're doing well with your own business, right?

Joe Krause [00:14:28]:

That's true. And Subway, you saw this recently, this week, where they had a emergency meeting, they go, our $5 foot long is now $14. How do we get it back down to 699? So you're seeing this play out pretty normally, but you mentioned there's a million things you could be looking at to be better at your organization and plan for. And, and then you weigh that against your direct business, which is very operationally focused. You have people that are relying upon you day by day, second by second to get their goods safely across the border and back and all those things. How have you managed to balance that, that strategic foresight as well as operational excellence with some of your managers where operational things sometimes take precedence. But you can't forget all the strategic items. But you just can't think about strategic item all day without the sacrifice of operations.

Joe Krause [00:15:11]:

So how have you created that balance with the people that work with you and for you?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:15:15]:

Yeah, it's a big challenge, a very big challenge, and one that doesn't need to be forgotten. We want to build the best directors and best managers possible. And we build that by making them responsible of their end result. There's no better KPI than your P and L and by making the director and the manager responsible of their P and L. That's how we make sure. That they are upholding to their responsibility for why we hired them to take care of their branch. We didn't just hire that manager or director because of their operational knowledge. Of course, that's a huge part of the job.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:15:53]:

But it's also important for them to know about their finances. It's also important for them to know about their upholding to the overall strategic plan of the quarter or of the year. And it's also important for them to be responsible about the upkeeping of their branch, of their office. And that includes their quality of their office space and the quality of their people. And so we do all of that with technology. The secret sauce of our business is that we have developed in house a suite of software where we have a tracking for every movement, whether that's a dollar or a container or a employee. And we have all that dashboard in which we can ensure that our managers and our directors are doing their job well. If there's a deviation from that, then we have the fundamentals to go on and ask for better results.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:16:52]:

And of course, if the results are not there, then it means that the person is not the right person. And before we make a decision on the individual and their future with the company, we have to be very honest with them. And I think this is where the family company aspect of our company comes in, where we ask our collaborator, well, do you want to make the step? And if the answer is yes, then we have to ask them, well, how can we help you take that step if the answer is no? If they don't want to take that step, well, this is not your job for them. And we're both doing a disservice to each other and thinking that our future is together. Right. Like any relationship. So the key to building a good business is giving the responsibility to the director and the manager. Because if not, then the CEO or myself as a managing partner, we take full responsibility about the P and on operations of all the different branches.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:17:48]:

We manage 50 branches, and it's simply impossible for one person to be managing micromanaging all 50 branches. And so that's why we need good directors and good managers.

Jonathan Morgan [00:17:58]:

Yeah, certainly a lot of what you said there resonates with other things that we talk about both on the podcast and at Achieve it as an organization is the core principles of execution. One of them is alignment. Right. The things that you're doing have to align to the goals. You touched a bit on that accountability, giving people ownership of their own P&L's, and they're responsible for driving that to success. And then I think one piece that's often overlooked is the visibility aspect. Are we being transparent with our results? Are we truly monitoring? Are we truly having conversations about those to ensure that we're being successful and tracking towards that success beyond just say it's the end of the year and oh no, we didn't make our goals. One thing I want to go back to that you mentioned that I honestly haven't heard anybody say directly is that you said the P and L is their measure and the best KPI they can have.

Jonathan Morgan [00:18:45]:

I think that's a great way to think about it. I do think it potentially introduces some conflict, right. If somebody is thinking about doing something a little bit more strategic, going out and doing something totally transformational, well, that short term that may have a little bit of impact on their P and L because it's going to take some upfront investment to then see those results in the future. How, as an organization or in your experience, how do you balance that? How do you give someone ownership of the P and L but also trust those investments that may not play out in the short term?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:19:15]:

So you have to be very clear, number one, with your job description that you put forward to your manager or your director. In our job descriptions, we explicitly say that the position of the manager and the director is the responsibility to take care of the clients, to take care of the compliance of their operations, and also to take care of the overall profitability of their business. And I think that's one thing that we've learned over most recent years when we've come to compare ourselves to a McDonald's or a Starbucks. Right. Well, the success of McDonald's and Starbucks is that their branch managers are responsible for their branches. And as a family company that grew very fast in the past 15 years, well, that kind of got lost in the mud. And so we're making sure that that's better implemented, taking the best practices of other companies and other industries to our own culture. Right.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:20:15]:

And we have to be very honest with our managers and directors where it's a relationship of trust to make sure. Well, we as a corporate government structure are providing with you as a branch, with the suite of platforms as operating system that is going to make your business be the best business possible. That's going to take care of your people and it's going to take care of your, of your clients. And there's only so much that we can do from the corporate government structure, but the rest is up to you. And part of that is empowering them to also make their own strategic plan and within the time lapse of the overall corporate government strategic plan, making sure there is a marriage between the two and knowing that that's how you want us as a corporate government, to evaluate your results. Well, let's do that. And if the timelines that the director or the manager says one year to make sure that they uphold their own strategic plan and the strategic plan of the corporate government, then we can evaluate your P and L correctly. Right.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:21:20]:

If that is not met and you're not upholding to your own strategic plan, you're not upholding to the corporate government strategic plan, and your P and L is still not doing well. Well, you're probably not the person for this job, and we have to be very honest with that conversation. But the key is empowering your manager and director with the results that they want to be held accountable for.

Joe Krause [00:21:44]:

Excellent. And that points back to the the previous point you made, which is keeping an eye on different global trends. And I'm thinking, you know, scenario planning is something that our clients talk about quite a bit. And sometimes you can get pretty in depth with scenario planning because there's so many different scenarios. But speaking completely off the cuff when it comes to your business, I'm assuming the US Presidential election is probably worth a scenario plan. The most recent presidential elections in Mexico. But then how far down the rabbit hole do you go? Do you Venezuela, what happens there? What happens in China? Like, how many scenarios are you actually effectively able to plan for before you're spending 90% of your day just thinking about scenarios and not operationally focused? So how have you managed the amount of scenarios and what scenarios actually get a plan?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:22:27]:

Yeah, that's a great question. So within our company we have, I guess, three main divisions. Division one is obviously all the financial area, where we have our fiscal reporting compliance and we have our accounting and our invoicing, et cetera, et cetera. We have the operational division where our managers and our team members are preparing documents or coordinating traffic, or are working in warehouses on a daily basis. And then we have our consulting offshoot where we not only help external clients, but internal clients as well, from a corporate government standpoint, where we have a team that is only looking for how we can improve our strategic plan on base of what's going on with overall trends in the economy, whether in Mexico, the United States and abroad. And so we're tracking on a daily basis what's going on in Asia, in North America, principally, and in Europe. That's where our major client base is located. And each one of these areas are teaching us on trends in terms of logistics, how different containers are performing in different ports of entry, on transportation, on how long different containers or cost evaluating in different routes that we're choosing for our clients.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:23:55]:

And we're also making sure that decisions that big power brokers such as, for example, Tesla, which had originally announced a big manufacturing plant, a gigafactory in Mexico, and all of a sudden they're backing away from that plan and how that is impacting the overall growth of the EV market and the EV manufacturing industry in Mexico and the potential for Chinese EV manufacturers to then come in and fill that vacuum in Mexico. So it's very important for us to know what each decision that is going on on a global standpoint is going to be impacting our commercial efforts so we can sell more. How it's impacting our operational efforts due to different regulatory systems that are going on across the world. Because customs is a very dynamic regulatory area that is impacting our clients on a daily basis. And it's very important for a consulting area to also inform our compliance team to make sure that we are in compliance with our labor practices, that we're in compliance with our fiscal efforts, and that we're in compliance with our overall operational efforts.

Jonathan Morgan [00:25:08]:

Yeah, great, great insights there. I think, you know, for you, obviously your organization, anything globally is a very acute thing that you have to have a P sign. You're constantly monitoring for somebody that's maybe in an organization that doesn't have a lot of direct global impact, right? Like they're not importing goods, they're not exporting goods. What's an easy way that they can start thinking about global trends? Like, where should they even start if this isn't something they've really thought about before?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:25:34]:

Start easily. I mean, I start off my morning every day watching cnbc, right? And that's a great way to start. It's a very easy way to look what's going on in the stock market and how different global trends are impacting large companies. Then I would go on to read the newspaper and I go directly to the economic section. If the economic section has an area that is talking about global trends, well, that's your way to go. But I think more than that is having the mindset. Having the mindset that your company is whether big or small, that it is capable of growing and expanding and growing and expanding may not mean if you have a location in Oklahoma, you're not maybe gonna open a location in Montreal, but maybe you can open A location in Texas. And having that global mindset can impact your viewpoint of the overall potential growth of your company.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:26:32]:

And having that mindset in terms of learning how other companies are managing their growth and expansion strategies, whether globally or nationally, can also lead to a direct impact into how you're organizing your teams, how you're leading your commercial efforts, and how you can implement a culture within your company to grow, whether it's five miles down the road or five countries over. Right. And it's all about having that acceptance and that confidence that your business is in a place that can take that next step.

Joe Krause [00:27:08]:

The CNBC is fantastic and everything else you mentioned, and Jonathan didn't ask me, but the Economist, I can't recommend it enough. I've been avid reader of the Economist probably for the last decade. And I mean, you'll learn about every nook and cranny of every economy in the world if you give it time. But the point I think you're making too is that you have to have consistency. You say mindset, that mindset has to then turn into something that you're doing it every day, where every single day you're reading the same outlets and all of a sudden then the dots start to connect and you know if you're reading listening to CNBC for two weeks and then you stop, it's not going to get you anywhere. So in your role as hiring managers and getting the best people possible, how do you test in the interview process for that overall curiosity to say, like, what are you interested in? And if you don't know something, are you the type of person that's going to go figure it out? Or are you just happy not knowing what questions or techniques have you employed to like really see if someone's curious? Because that's obviously that's one of the best things you can have. An employee is somebody who is not happy unless they find the answer out.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:28:05]:

Yeah, curiously, my first interview for a job was with an ex director of the CIA. It was one of the most difficult interviews that I've ever had because the interview, not once did he ask about my technical knowledge. It was all about can I trust you with the information that I have in my company? As the story goes on, I end up landing the job. And to this day he is one of my biggest mentors and friends and I have a deep appreciation for him for everything that he taught me to this day. And that's how I learned to manage my interviews as well. I learned that in that interview room for a reason. To a certain point, you've already been filtered because you are interested in the job, but also the people that have read your resumes have determined that you are capable to a certain point, of taking on the job. And so now me as a.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:28:59]:

In my level, what I have to do is can I trust you with the information and my time and my space and my company and my culture and my collaborators with your fit with our company. It's sometimes the people that have the most technical knowledge that are the worst fit for your company. And it's sometimes the people that have the least technical knowledge that are the best fit for your company. And it's an evaluation that you as a director have to take on that maybe it's the person and the values and the. And the mindset that that person has in order to be able to grow and to learn as a more value add to the overall growth of your company than the ability for that person that has maybe all the technical knowledge in the world, but the least disposition to learn and to grow. And so that's my biggest factor when I'm interviewing and meeting people for different jobs and especially for a managerial or a director position. But you have to make that evaluation to the lowest level of your organization. And whether that's a janitor or that's somebody that's going on to be a warehouse specialist in our company.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:30:13]:

Two, being the director of our logistics department. Right. Every single person has to have that thread and that common culture that we want to implement in our company.

Jonathan Morgan [00:30:26]:

Well, Victor, this has been great. I had at least five other questions that unfortunately I'm not going to be able to get to, but we'll just have to have another conversation in the future about that. But before we close out, final question. Obviously, you've given us a lot of great advice. You've given our listeners a lot of great advice. If you had to go back and give yourself one piece of advice when you were just starting your career, what would that advice be?

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:30:47]:

It's the best advice that I had ever received, and that is be you. Just be yourself. And as long as you're yourself and you're congruent with your values, with your principles, with your house, the easier things get down the road and the easier that you'll find your path and that you'll find your purpose, whether that's in a professional or your personal sense, there is no better advice than to just be yourself and let the rest take care of itself. And somebody or something will value your work and you'll find your groove. If you're trying to force things to happen, they never work out. So as the more you lean into who you are, the better and the more productive you end up being.

Jonathan Morgan [00:31:35]:

Perfect. Well, it's a great way to end the episode. Victor, we appreciate you joining the show and looking forward to connecting again soon.

Victor André Gamas Mayer [00:31:41]:

Thank you so much again for the invitation. It's a pleasure and a fun conversation as always, and looking forward to a future hopefully invitation from you guys. There's a lot to talk about still, but thank you very much, Jonathan and Joe for your time and congratulations again for your podcast.

Joe Krause [00:31:55]:

Thank you, sir.