Juan Julián León, CEO at SeproTec Multilingual Solutions, is a professional with more than 17 years in the localization industry. As the CEO of SeproTec Multilingual Solutions, he has been able to successfully oversee and manage a business with locations all over the world, more than 300 employees, and a remarkably sound infrastructure thanks to his familiarity with the localization industry, direct involvement, and extensive understanding of the organization. Before taking this job, Juan Julián progressed through a variety of positions and divisions inside the business, including operations, sales, finance, and human resources.
An internationally renowned business in the translation, localization, and interpreting fields is SeproTec Multilingual Solutions. It started out as a tiny translation agency in the 1990s and grew quickly organically, becoming a significant industry standard. SeproTec is one of the top 30 language service providers in the world, with main offices in 11 countries.
Below are highlights of the interview conducted between Fortunes Time and Juan Julián León:
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
I am a professional with an entrepreneurial spirit, a vision of the future, an open and thoughtful character who enjoys business trips and the opportunity they bring to meet industry peers and other stakeholders in the sector and contrast opinions. According to my colleagues, I am a person with resilience, I have a good ability to adapt to changes and I am a multitasker.
I define myself as a family-oriented person, and I do really enjoy time with my children. I also love traveling, sailing, gastronomy, and the motoring world in general.
Describe your background and what did you do before you started/joined the company?
I hold a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management from the Complutense University of Madrid and a General Management Program Degree from the IESE Business School.
I got involved in the family project while taking my studies at the university, so I already have nearly 25 years of experience in the localization industry.
I worked closely with my father from the inception of the project. This allowed me to have direct responsibility over all the departments of the company and, therefore, a deep knowledge of the internal operations. I have grown professionally as the company has grown.
During recent years, I have headed up operations as crucial as the international expansion plan, the acquisition of the Polish firm Lidolang and the German firm tsd, as well as the creation of SHIP Global IP, an innovative initiative in the intellectual property industry.
As CEO of both SeproTec Multilingual Solutions and SHIP Global IP, I am proud to say that thanks to all the team members who have ever worked with us, we have built a solid company with an international presence in 11 countries, 8 main production centers, 400+ employees, and a substantially solid infrastructure.
Tell us about the inception of the company. How did it all start?
The company has its origins as a translation department of a group of family-owned professional services companies. It was at that time that I joined the company to help my father to further develop the recently created translation department, which initially specialized in patent translations into Spanish.
In order to establish a leader in the multilingual sector, the translation and interpreting department was transferred to the newly formed company SeproTec Multilingual Solutions in 2000.SeproTec is now one of the world’s 30 largest companies in the Multilingual Services sector, with operations diversified into a wide range of multilingual services in more than 120 languages, delivered from 8 main, strategically located production centers.
Which are the major services of the company and how do they enable the company to get ahead of the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
SeproTec offers tailor-made solutions that include practically every multilingual service a company could need: document translation, certified and sworn translation, industrial property (patent) translation, machine translation with or without posting, website localization, software and videogame localization, language revision, simultaneous, consecutive, whispered, and sign language interpreting, both on-site and remote, telephone interpreting, equipment rental, transcreation, transcription, testing, multimedia localization, subtitling, dubbing, validation management, DTP (desktop publishing), and writing technical documents in any language.
What are the most important aspects of a company’s culture? What principles do you believe in and how do you build this culture?
As previously mentioned, SeproTec was born as a family business, and therefore the corporate culture was heavily influenced by the vision, style, and values of the founder, who happened to be my father and mentor, binding employees to a common cause and fostering a loyal and stable workforce where talent was more easily retained. The landscape of our company has changed significantly over the past 10 years, becoming a truly international company with presence in 11 countries, 8 main production centers, and a diverse and multi-location workforce.
We are immersed in adapting our company culture to this new broader reality in terms of the workforce, but what will remain unchanged are the core values that have always bound our family, our business, and our employees.
Our core values; Reliability, Leadership, Innovation, Flexibility and Honesty reflect our philosophy and act as a guide to the way we do business.
What is the significance of innovative ideas in the company?
I firmly believe that the new ideas offered by the employees who work with our services or processes on a daily basis are enriching, to say the least. We have received valuable ideas regarding the development of new services or the establishment of new processes and procedures in their respective departments.
Innovative ideas are seriously evaluated within our organization and should be recognized and rewarded.
Give us your opinion on whether organizations rely more heavily on individual heroics or team processes?
In established companies, with scalable businesses, processes and systems are a must. Success depends on the involvement of most of the team members in the project, and having a corporate vision with a set path helps to set the mindset of the team.
From time to time, every organization must face tough challenges, and individual heroics can be a way to break through procrastination, albeit, sometimes in an unhealthy way from a communication point of view. Let’s leave individual heroics to entrepreneurship.
What are your responsibilities as the Founder/CEO of the company? What is the happiest part of your daily routine?
I am responsible for managing the company’s overall operations, making strategic corporate decisions for long term growth plans, driving profitability, managing the company’s organizational structure, and communicating with the wider audience and various stakeholders. Of course, there are many other tasks in which I am directly involved, such as being the company’s public face or setting the vision, tone, and culture of the organization.
I would say the happiest part of my daily routine is when I see the excitement of a team member sharing good news. Meetings to kick off new projects are also beneficial.I also enjoy the calm of a flight when I can catch up on my emails.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Take the time to gain a deep understanding of the sector, be passionate, surround yourself with experts in different fields, believe in, support and reward your team, listen, pay attention to the things that have been effective in the past and don’t be afraid to lookout for new paths to spearhead your leadership.
