About
In a world where economies move on wheels, operational excellence is too often measured only by efficiency, performance, and profitability. Yet behind every successful operation lies something far more important: people. The transportation and logistics industry is the backbone of modern society, ensuring goods reach shelves, businesses stay connected, and communities remain supplied. It is also an industry where safety, responsibility, and leadership have a direct impact on human lives. Globally, road accidents remain a leading cause of death, and a meaningful share involve the commercial fleets that keep economies running.
Few leaders understand this reality as deeply as Jacques Greeff.
As Chief Operations Officer of Optix Group, a fleet safety, telematics, and video, safety managed, services business operating across Africa, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand. Jacques leads global operations and strategic growth. His work sits at the intersection of technology, operational excellence, and human safety, helping organisations use fleet safety, telematics, video intelligence, and data to improve performance while protecting the people who keep industries moving.
At Optix, his remit is simple to state and far harder to do, deliver a consistent, world-class standard of service across markets that could not be more different, without losing the local, on-the-ground execution that makes it work. His approach challenges a common misconception that technology alone delivers results. Most fleets, he’ll tell you, buy dashboards before they buy discipline; the technology arrives long before the habits that make it useful. Technology only becomes valuable when it is supported by the right behaviours, processes, and culture.
That conviction is not theoretical. Under his leadership, Optix’s 24/7 control tower was transformed from a cost centre into a profitable service and, more importantly, into something that intervenes in real time when a driver is in danger. In a single recent year, that operation caught more than 80,000 moments where a driver had fallen asleep at the wheel or faced serious harm. For Jacques, that figure is not a business metric. It is the entire point, the clearest possible answer to why the work matters.
This philosophy was forged over a career spanning nearly two decades. Before Optix, Jacques spent more than seven years at Unitrans, where he rose through a series of senior leadership roles to become Chief Excellence Officer. There he led large-scale initiatives in operational optimisation, digital transformation, sustainability, risk management, and centralised control systems, including the control tower operations that first proved to him how technology and data, in the right hands, could improve both performance and safety across complex environments. Unitrans is where the thinking was built. Optix is where he now puts it to work at global scale.
What distinguishes Jacques from many business leaders, however, is that he sees operational excellence as far more than systems and processes. For him, excellence begins with people. Throughout his career he has championed collaborative cultures, broken down organisational silos, and empowered individuals to take ownership of their roles. His conviction is that sustainable success comes only when organisations invest in their people as intentionally as they invest in technology.
This perspective extends well beyond the workplace. Jacques often speaks about leadership as a responsibility that begins long before the boardroom. As a devoted husband and proud father, he views his family as the foundation of both his personal and professional life, and the values that guide him at home are the same ones that guide him at work. Being present for the people who depend on you most, he believes, is not a footnote to a career; it is the foundation under it.
Equally central is his commitment to personal well-being. A passionate advocate for healthy living, Jacques treats physical health the way he treats operations, not as a vanity project, but as the engine that makes sustained performance possible. He has represented his country at world-championship level in two different disciplines, a reflection of the same discipline, consistency, and long-horizon commitment he brings to everything else. You cannot lead people well, run global teams, and stay sharp under pressure, he argues, if you neglect your own body and mind.
That same drive to develop people shows in his interest in coaching, human behaviour, and neuro-linguistic programming, and has established him as a respected international speaker, mentor, and certified professional coach. Through conferences, leadership events, and coaching engagements, he shares practical insight on operational excellence, innovation, and leadership transformation, translating complex business challenges into strategies people can actually act on. His contributions have been recognised through awards including the Accenture Rising Star Award, the SAPICS Best Speaker Award, and the Africa Supply Chain Excellence Award. Yet those who know him understand that accolades have never been the point. His focus has always been on creating impact that endures.
Beyond his executive role, Jacques continues to expand his influence through service and entrepreneurship. He serves as a Non-Executive Director at SA Harvest, one of South Africa’s leading food-rescue organisations, applying his operational and supply-chain expertise to the fight against food insecurity and the restoration of dignity to vulnerable communities. He is also the founder of Innovative Operational Excellence Solutions (IOXS), dedicated to helping businesses turn operational challenges into competitive advantage through integrated, people-centred solutions.
Across every chapter, the operator, the husband, the father, the advocate, a single thread emerges. Jacques Greeff believes the most effective systems are built by empowered people, that meaningful innovation begins with understanding human behaviour, and that true leadership is measured not only by business performance but by the positive impact created along the way.
As organisations worldwide navigate increasingly complex operational, technological, and societal challenges, leaders who can combine strategic vision with authentic human connection will shape what comes next. In a world that runs on wheels, and an industry measured in lives as much as in margins, Jacques Greeff exemplifies that balance and stands among the Global Business Leaders to Admire and Follow in 2026.
