I'm a CEO who's led teams in the US, Latin America, and Europe. One country's business culture stood out as the most sophisticated.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 50-year-old Marco Santos, the Global CEO of GFT Technologies, an IT solutions company headquartered in Germany. The following has been edited for length and clarity. I've worked in IT my entire career. In 2011, I joined GFT as a …