2023 Global Leaders in Consulting: Antonio García

Antonio García is the Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer of TXI, a boutique digital product innovation firm. Antonio leads teams across TXI's four core capabilities – design, product, delivery, and engineering – where he identifies trends and opportunities within the digital product space and helps deliver new products and services to market. More importantly, Antonio inspires clients to challenge the status quo and take calculated risks, while helping his team experiment with new innovative approaches and continuously evolving TXI's capabilities. In his spare time, he hosts The Dadwell Podcast, which explores the intersection of creativity and fatherhood.

What do you consider your greatest personal or professional achievement?

I was recently promoted to Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at TXI. It's especially exciting for me because it feels like a testament to our expertise in product innovation, which manifests as an entirely different approach to work — prioritizing research, prototyping and testing with users, and working as integrated cross-functional teams. The result is improved speed to value for the products TXI builds with clients, meaning we help organizations launch new solutions that are widely adopted and achieve meaningfully different outcomes. I have a strong vision for where this new chapter of my career will take me/us, and the potential for personal growth and learning is inestimable.

What advice would you give a professional just beginning a career in consulting?

Three tips come to mind for beginner consultants…

• Know how to do the work. Consultants who can balance strategy for tomorrow with delivering results for today are the ones who will stand out in a crowded marketplace.
• Identify a role model. In the beginning, you're likely modeling yourself after someone else you work with. Find the people who successfully bring clients around to new ideas.
• Let your curiosity show. Bring ideas and suggestions to your client without being prompted, and ensure you have a strong point-of-view and defensible rationale when you do so.

What have you loved most about your consulting career?

Consulting exposes you to so many different industries. That variety keeps the work exciting and fresh, and forces you to stay sharp. Oftentimes I find myself using what I learned while working with a healthcare client, for example, and applying that to a manufacturing project. That's the real value with consultants – you get a breadth of experience and different perspectives.

One of the other highlights of my career includes doubling the size of TXI's remarkable design team and developing a curriculum for product innovation.

What's the best advice—personal or professional—you've ever received?

I've always been inspired by really smart people who are intentionally curious. When faced with a problem, they could quickly and easily provide an answer. But instead, they continue to ask questions, which helps to develop an even more nuanced understanding of their client's problem. In my own work and the work we do at TXI, we're big fans of this type of Socratic questioning because it helps us more accurately identify the needs of end users and helps us better challenge assumptions.

What does being honored as a Global Leader mean to you?

Recognition on a global scale is exciting in and of itself. The focus on remote work has made me realize just how big (and at the same time, small) the world is. To be honored next to people globally makes me feel even better about the results we achieve for our clients.

I take the responsibility of leadership seriously. It feels good to know that I have the scale, backing, and support of my colleagues who relish in thinking about new ways to build and deliver digital products.