Prefer to read this in Spanish? You can find the full Spanish version here
Don Manu Cobo. Legendary Basque language teacher at my school.
His classes usually started by calling one of us up to the blackboard to correct the homework we were supposedly meant to have done beforehand.
That day it was Luis F.G.'s turn. Diligently, he stepped up to the board to complete the task. Don Manu offered him an encouraging smile while Luis worked through it.
Once Luis was done, Don Manu stood up, gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder, and said: "Well done Luis. I wasn't expecting any less from you. I'm delighted to see that in this school, you are developing a sense of humour. It's a very important skill in life. Now, you can go ahead and wipe the board. And whenever you're ready, you can do it for real." The class erupted. Luis was less amused.
Fast forward to 2011. After ten years working in the UK and the US, I was being sent to Spain to take on my first role as Director of a division. A P&L and a team under my responsibility. I had made it. I was finally an executive — and on top of that, back in Spain after all those years abroad.
I was 33. DiCaprio on the bow of the Titanic and me — identical.
I was going to apply everything I had learned to the Higher Ed. division in Spain. I would finally prove what I was made of. Several senior leaders had recently left the Spanish business, and Rita, the president of Europe, had recruited me as part of the changing of the guard. I felt flattered and eager to discover what lay ahead.
It didn't take long. My first meeting with the finance director was to familiarise myself with the divisional P&L. With that sharp instinct of mine, I quickly spotted an error — net sales were showing in red. Negative. You can't have more returns than gross sales, so I flagged the inconsistency with a self-satisfied smile. Nothing gets past my razor-sharp intellect.
"No, there's no error. That's correct." I think it took me a few seconds to process that. Negative net sales? That would mean more product had been returned in a single year than had been sold in that same year. A healthy return ratio in the industry sat around 15%. They were telling me it was over 100%. My face said it all. I noticed the finance lead quietly sliding the tissues closer. "Now do it properly, Luis," I heard Manu Cobo say inside my head. Turns out Luis was right — the joke wasn't that funny after all.
The puzzle started to come together. The senior leadership exiting the company. The idea of bringing in outsiders to rebuild the organisation from the top. I had seen Spain's numbers as a whole, but not my division's — not before accepting the role. I didn't feel quite so sharp then. What a mess I had in front of me.
It was an intense year. Renewal and transformation. We turned the division upside down and rebuilt it from the ground up — distributors, sales teams, incentives, key people. What a year. What a "funny joke."
By year two, the division was back to positive net sales and approaching 10% profitability — which we hit in year three. A clean division, healthy clients, logical ratios. We had finally “done it for real”.
Looking back, that was my launchpad. Soon after, I was given more responsibility, more messes, more transformations, more challenges.
I ended up running Spain and Portugal, then Argentina and Central America, then the entire region. My career as a senior leader was built on that "funny joke."
If you're lucky, you too will face moments of genuine panic — where the mess looks unsolvable, where it feels like someone has played a cruel joke on you. Those are the defining moments. How you react and face those challenges will determine your future. Be ready for them.
Opportunities live inside thosee "jokes." Transformations often come from the need to fix messes that others couldn't — or wouldn't — fix.
A "bad joke" is a "great opportunity." When one lands on your desk, smile, grab the bull by the horns, and say: "Very funny, Luis. Now let's do it for real"
I'm listening,
Santi