Afonso Carvalho

An alumnus of the Executive MBA AESE, the CEO of the EGOR Group is committed to achieving the goal of leading his organization to the podium of the largest and most profitable company with 100% Portuguese capital. At the same time, it aims to ensure that its people improve the level of happiness, well-being, dedication, focus and commitment to the mission that, together, they have in hand.

What are the main milestones in your professional career that contributed to reaching the position of CEO of the EGOR Group?

I believe that over the last few years there has been a happy combination of several factors that have contributed decisively to the trajectory I have made, namely, the leaders and bosses that I have had and that have taught me a lot about what to do and what not to do, the colleagues that I have met along the way and from whom I have learned valuable lessons and that in a way have helped to shape my personality and the way I have been able to to be in organizations, the teams I had the opportunity to manage, develop and in the vast majority of cases to see grow inside and outside the organizations where I was, the training I was obtaining both reactively and proactively (e.g.: Executive MBA AESE), the search for information and knowledge of the sectors where I have developed my professional activities, the fact that I looked for a mentor when I took on my first top job, family balance and, not least, some luck for having been in the right places at the right time. For all these reasons, there are some very important milestones for me: the first was to have become Managing Director of a multinational company at the age of 33; secondly, having managed to finish the AESE Executive MBA when I was leading three more countries, in addition to Portugal, and a European business area; and finally, having recently achieved a great personal goal, which was to start teaching and return the learning and practical experience that I have accumulated so far to the students.

What were your main achievements?

When I accepted the challenge of leading Kelly Services, in 2011, the company did not have a turnover of €63M, had a profitability below 200K, did not occupy the Top 3 of the largest companies in Portugal, within its sector of activity. We were far from being a place of choice to work and little or nothing was done in terms of Social Responsibility. Having the privilege of leading and watching the growth of the company and that team that, in 2018, reached record sales of €170M, a profitability above €4M and, above all, for having become one of the Best Companies to Work for in Portugal, and for leaving a very interesting legacy of social responsibility are milestones that make me proud. Nowadays, at Egor, it is rewarding to see a group of highly competent and experienced people adapting to a new reality, a new dynamic and wearing the skin of a Challenger that has once again bitten the heels of the competition and is regaining the place it deserves to occupy in the market. Proof of this is that we managed to grow in 2020, in counter-cycle with the market and our competitors, which motivates us to do and want more.

Anyway, all these achievements are too ephemeral and as much as they feed our ego, for a brief moment, the truth is that in addition to seeing the numbers growing, the privilege of this journey and these achievements is very much about the fact that we have the opportunity to meet good and bad professionals, to make friends for life, of having travelled to countless countries, of having known, managed and learned from cultural realities different from ours and above all of being constantly learning something new, because the greatest wealth of working in the sector where I am is that it allows us to be in daily contact with countless people and countless and different business realities. The rest is ephemeral.

What are the main lessons that make you the leader you are today?

I firmly believe that everything is ephemeral so when we are, we are at 200%, that is, if I am here today I will do everything possible and impossible to make what I found much better and I know that this will only happen if I can inspire and lead the teams and, consequently, that these leaders do the same with their teams because nothing, But even nothing is built without people who are aligned, motivated and willing to go further. No less important is the reason, that is, the purpose with which we do things, why we do them and for what purpose and that, for me, is increasingly important.

What values do you govern yourself by and that you transmit to your teams?

Humility, transparency, dedication, focus on results and willingness to go further.

If you could go back in time, what would you do differently?

I have an interesting list with some things recorded to ensure that, at least, I don’t make the same mistakes again, but, jokingly, maybe I would go back to the eighth or ninth grade to be more attentive in math classes and so maybe I wouldn’t have so many difficulties (and neck pain) to take the advanced finance exams in the Executive MBA. Psychologist suffers in MBA…

Professionally, how do you see yourself in 3 years?

In 5 years, Egor will achieve a very interesting growth and I hope to be able to fulfill the goal of being the largest and most profitable company with 100% Portuguese capital. As or more important than what I mentioned earlier is that I hope to make my colleagues feel better and better in the company where they work and that the results are a reflection of the level of happiness, well-being, dedication, focus and commitment that I aspire to. By the way, if our clients and potential clients who are reading this interview want to contribute and further accelerate our growth, they are very welcome!