Eladio Robles is the Global Supply Operations Head – Crop Protection at Syngenta in Basel, Switzerland. He was previously Syngenta’s Latin America Supply Operations Head, having lived in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Panama.

What have you learnt as a leader over the last 12 months in the COVID period?

To listen purposefully, even more than normal. Over the past two years, there have been so many things happening that it has been even more important to sit down and listen. It’s not only about the issues, opportunities, and things that they are bringing, but also their own context.

In my own team, during this two-year period, we had what we call two COVID babies, but we also had family challenges; we had people who lost relatives and people who are facing issues in their own families.

So, to listen purposefully has been key in making sure I was able to understand where people were, and how best to work with them and help them to go through the challenges that they were going through themselves - not only at work, but also in their personal lives.

How do you think you were as a listener before COVID?

I was okay – “What are you doing?”, “What did you do over the weekend?”, “What are your hobbies?”, but, during COVID, we learnt more about individuals. We were at meetings and interviews where there were children sitting on their laps, or they had to stop, or they had to shut down periods of work to take care of an elderly relative.

I had the opportunity to learn more about my team members because of the extreme conditions. This made me more aware of what they were going through as individuals, which I think at the end has helped us all.

You spent close to 20 years within agricultural sciences. Being someone that knows the industry very well, what would you say to candidates who are considering a move into this industry?

This was the fifth industry I worked in and it has definitely been the most rewarding; because what we do in Syngenta is to help farmers produce the food that we eat - what can be greater than that? We are working together with farmers to ensure that we do our best to help them, not only on their production but also in an efficient and sustinable way looking into the future.

I would find it very hard to find something else that would give me such a purpose when I wake up every morning. We get a kick every time we have a meal and we can relate to the food that we’re eating; we can immediately connect what we have done during the day with that meal on our plates, so that’s great.

In Syngenta, we work with small farmers and we work with industrial farmers. It is great to hear the stories when they can get the yields that they were looking for, when they can improve themselves, improve their families and the communities that they live in. It’s a fantastic industry to be in. In terms of the fundamental drivers of the business, the one thing that we all must do is eat; and the population keeps growing, so it’s a great place to be.

What are the biggest challenges affecting the agricultural landscape?

There are various challenges. Fertilizer is always a challenge, because in certain parts of the world, farmers need fertilizers, and it can difficult to access them.

Access to technology, because on one side of the scale, we have industrial farming operations that are big corporations, but we also have small farmers, so access to technology for those farmers can be challenging.

The biggest one of all is the weather. Farmers wake up - you have all the forecast that you can have and all the history and statistics that you can have, but the reality over the past five to ten years is that the weather keeps changing.

If you take Europe, we’ve had, over the past few years: warmer winters, warmer and drier springs, and drier summers. The farmers have to deal with that, so these are big challenges.

I am not joking when I tell you that I think farmers are heroes. Again, it gives a lot of purpose and meaning to the work that we do to be working in an industry that is trying to help them get the right tools to cope with those challenges, but in my opinion, the weather is definitely the biggest one of them all.

Is there possibility for AI to help significantly with predicting weather patterns?

It is possible - we have the largest coverage of hectares with technology tools, so we provide farmers access to satellite imaging and forecasting models on soil conditions and weather based on historical patterns and live measurements on site. We do that very actively, not only with big farmers, but also with small farmers.

The use of AI, in particular, in terms of what type of seed they need for the conditions that they’re going to be having in the land over the next few months or years, and also what type of protocols they can follow to improve on the yield of that particular seed on the conditions that we foresee the soil will have, is something that is already happening. It’s not science fiction, it’s a fact already.

You’ve lived and worked in a lot of different countries - Panama, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Switzerland now. How did you find this transition and do you have any advice for people who are making big geographical moves?

In my opinion, the first thing is to have clarity on what you intend to gain with the move. What is it that you’re looking for in terms of experience and what you can also contribute to the location or the team that you are going into.

Also, at the same level of importance for me is, if you have a family or a partner. It is important that it becomes a plan in the family unit and not your plan. It is really important that your partner and your family are also into the change, because it is a big change - you start from zero every time you move. Having that clarity on what you want to get as an individual, but also as a partner in a couple or as a family member, is something that should not be underestimated, because it is a significant change - but the benefits are also great.

At the same time, you have the opportunity to learn new languages, and the chance to really understand the culture of the different countries when you live there day-to-day; you learn when you talk to individuals and go to the local coffee shops; and go to the stores; doctors and to the supermarket. That’s an experience and learning that you don’t get by reading a book.

Also, in my own case with my family, it was great not only in terms of languages learnt, but also in terms of the exposure to different cultures, and the learning on how to manage and adapt to change.

And of course, the clarity of what you want to get has to align with what the company is looking for.

In terms of Syngenta and diversity, what can non-HR leaders do to promote diversity in their teams?

I think one of the advantages that we have in Syngenta, is that as an organisation which operates in over 90 countries is that our employee base reflects that. What I would recommend is to sit down with other line managers who have diverse teams, because it’s not only about the diversity of your membership, but how you make sure that you bring the value of that diversity into the day-to-day work in order to make it inclusive.

It is super interesting when you start tracking the performance of your team based on how you make the most of the cultural traits and experiences that diversity brings, and when you start working with that you start learning.

Talking with people who have diverse teams is the right thing, because there could be guides or frameworks that you can follow from Academia, but the experience of others who have been successful in leveraging that into value, not only for themselves and their teams, but also for the company, is very important. It’s in those conversations when you understand how to get value for the company, but also make people feel appreciated and valued.

How can leaders ensure that it’s a genuine change, rather than box-ticking?

For me, it’s about sitting down and understanding what it is that you have in your team, it could be different levels of experience, the place of origin, cultural background, education levels and various other factors. People have different filters, and all these filters can also add value. I don’t think it is something you can do by chance.

You have to sit down, and work with your team in a very transparent way to make sure that everybody understands what are the traits and other elements that each member of the team brings, and understand the potential that all those things combined can have and start using them in how we work as a team.

What are the things that we have that we can use to achieve our targets and our purpose? What are the things that we still need to get? I think it has to be a conscious exercise. There are many exercises you can do to help find those diverse qualities, but if you do it as a team, I think it is better.

In Syngenta when we do interviews, we have three or more interview teams, and we invite interviewers from other functions with other styles to participate in the interview process to help get a broader perspective of the candidate. We try to make sure that the interview teams are diverse also, so that when we do the review of the candidate, it is not my view as a hiring manager’s, but a collection of inputs from different people with different filters. For us, this process has proven to be very successful.

Amongst all this noise at the moment in Supply Chain, how can leaders create time to think and reflect, and how has this helped you in your leadership career?

I like the question, because you’re right, there’s a lot of noise around. For me, what has worked is a routine. I have a routine of how much time I want to invest every day working, how much time I want to invest exercising, how much time I want to invest with my family and loved ones. It sounds very cliché, but again, you have to sit down and plan, and most importantly, stick to that.

Personally, I’m a firm believer that in order to be affective with others, I have to be okay with myself. So, if I’m in balance, then I can be effective with others.

I have also seen in others what works; having a routine, making time for yourself, and making the time that you are going to spend with your teams. But again, it doesn’t happen by chance in my view, chance would only take you to a certain level.

Do you make commitments in terms of time off? Are you ever unplugged if you go on holiday?

We do, and I can tell you it’s hard, because there are so many ways in how you can be connected today, and COVID has multiplied the number of channels that you can have and the ability to be connected all the time.

We have made a list of commitments on the team of what we’re going to do when its holidays, when it’s weekends, and how we manage the time, and we go through a process of constantly checking what we’re doing, what is really important and what is not. Those are difficult decisions that had to be made, but it’s across the company that we do that.  

We understand each other because of that, and I sincerely think this is one of the reasons that we have been growing steadily over the past few years, because even with everything that we have faced, we know as a team, what we all see as important and we work on that, and then we take the time off when we need to do so.

How does your company work to retain high potential employees?

One thing that is very important in Syngenta, is that we all have what we call an individual development plan. It is in our hands what we are going to do with our careers. It’s something that we do by ourselves, and then we share, discuss and agree with our line managers on the things that we expect to get in the company in terms of career progression, learnings and all of that, and we are very open and transparent on that.

We have regular exercises where we revise and update that development plan, and we have dedicated times in my team when we go through that our team members aspire and we make sure that we’re delivering on what we have agreed them. We cannot do everything at once, but we give that transparency to the individuals; this is what we have agreed, this is how we’re going to achieve it, and this is how we’re going to track it.

So far, we have what I think is a very good retention rate. We had someone new join us and one of the reasons she said that she had joined is that she found it very interesting that the interviewers had been with the company ten or more years. This shows that we give a lot of opportunities to our people across different areas within the company.

What do you look for in a recruitment partner?

The first thing is that the partner invests time to understand our business and how we work. That, to me, is just the entry stakes, then the ability to bring us insights of what is happening outside. We know that we are not the only industry out there, so having the ability to give us insight of what is happening in the market, so that we can be clear on what our employee value propositions compare, but also that we do as best a job as we can in how we’re describing what we’re offering to the market.

Because it might be very clear to us, but we would appreciate a partner from outside making sure that we take into account what is happening outside, so that we can describe our opportunities in a way that the market understands what it is that we’re offering.

Thank you to Eladio for speaking to our Procurement and Supply Chain recruitment team in Switzerland, led by Neil Cope.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment or Syngenta.