What business school taught a change specialist about reinvention
A lot more than most, Sérgio Maria’s career has been about transition and transformation. In a working lifetime assisting common organizations navigate the upheavals of new technological innovation, he has also rethought his possess route alongside the way.
For more than a decade, the forty eight-calendar year-previous senior electronic executive, who life in São Paulo, has worked with organisations adapting to electronic disruption and innovation, to start with at Google and now with Brazilian media and amusement group Rede Globo. All the though, building the skills to put himself in others’ footwear, divine their business enterprise wants and connect how he can aid has been at the centre of his career.
In the course of 12 yrs at Google, Maria’s core do the job was making associations with publishers, which include newspapers, broadcasters and suppliers. “In 2011 in Brazil, the information field was very averse to Google,” he recollects. “I could not have a conversation with a newspaper CEO — they would not even react to my phone calls.”
The icy reception was comprehensible. At the time, electronic was decimating the common information field. Visitors were finding their information on the internet, advertisers were pursuing them and the print earnings product was having difficulties.
Against this backdrop, the Brazilian was tasked with finding parts wherever the competitor could grow to be a collaborator. He joined Google as a strategic associate supervisor and inevitably rose to grow to be director of international partnerships for Latin The usa and Brazil across broadcast, information and commerce.
“Google has the advertising and marketing income position that competes with all the other groups for advertising and marketing budgets . . . and that is how it is likely to do the job without end,” Maria acknowledges. “But I was in a group that was looking at the other facet — which is, how can we aid these companions acquire themselves, be more successful in the way they do their business enterprise and also make earnings?”
He also worked with journalists, detailing how to mine Google knowledge for investigative do the job he taught publishers how technological innovation could aid them realize users’ behaviour and he assisted optimise mobile merchandise. The international accumulation of these do the job grew into the Google Information Initiative, which supports journalism in the kind of a teaching centre and an innovation fund, for illustration.
Right after 12 yrs at Google, Maria was at a crossroads. If he stayed, the subsequent stage would be a transfer abroad, in a new position and culture. That did not healthy with his particular ideas, so he decided to take a career break, expend time with his household — he has 3 sons — and reflect on his subsequent transfer.
CV
2004-2005 Solution and expert services director, Oi Internet
2006-2007 Solution supervisor, Brasil Telecom Internet
2007-2011 Strategic associate supervisor, Google
2011-2016 Head of strategic partnerships, Latin The usa, Google
2016-2017 Director of international partnerships, Latin The usa, Google
2017-2019 Director of international partnerships: broadcast, information and commerce, Google
2019-existing Director of new business enterprise development, Rede Globo
Occupations, he claims, are a 3-phase journey. At the commencing, professionals’ skills tend to be more technological. Then they may well grow to be people today administrators, giving up a great deal of the useful do the job and building skills in primary groups and making a vision. The third is the executive amount, looking at businesses strategically in the long term.
Maria was all set to transition to the third phase. So in 2018, though at Google, he enrolled for the counsellors development programme, a company governance study course, at Fundação Dom Cabral business enterprise faculty in Brazil.
“It was correct for that minute in my career,” he claims. “It enable me devote some time to realize the strategic position of boards far better and how to then affect the administration team of the organisation.”
The programme, which he completed at FDC’s Belo Horizonte campus, prepares potential board associates. Along with educating the ideas of administration and governance, it explores how to implement this — for illustration, individuals put together for and direct mock meetings of administrators.
The return to formal finding out was “amazing”, Maria claims. His career break meant he was spared balancing household, do the job and research all through the study course, which was taught in two week-long blocks a several months aside. This allowed him to have interaction fully, he adds, a thing that individuals pondering about executive courses must be all set to do.
“People must be ready to stay offline and join to the people today on the study course and join to the study course by itself,” he claims. “It is envisioned that you take part a great deal and there is serious benefit in bringing your practical experience. It enriches the conversation and the useful exercise routines.”
This also signifies college students must share any troubles or parts for improvement with classmates. “Be existing, be truthful and be fearless,” Maria claims. “The more you are open, the more people today will be equipped to aid you and you will be equipped to aid [other] people today.”
A person of the rewards was making a solid community of like-minded peers, and Maria carries on to aid people today stay in touch as a class ambassador.
The programme has assisted in his position as director of new business enterprise development at Globo, which he began last June. “It’s not the particular technological factors that I use,” he claims, “It is a great deal more of a way of thinking adjust on how to glance at and tactic factors in the long run, looking at what is in the minds of executives and the board.”
Globo may well be Maria’s most significant problem however. As portion of its electronic transformation, the firm announced last calendar year that it was bringing some of its organizations with each other in one group, which include broadcast and cable tv businesses, its web-site and video clip on-demand support.
Along with the inside adjust, Maria is working on making this new media technological innovation business enterprise for advertisers. “The option is how to integrate all these mediums,” he claims, so that advertisers can connect their messages seamlessly across all of Globo’s channels. For illustration, he adds: “Can we glance at the journey when people today transfer out of Tv set and go to an application to continue consuming the content?”
This tactic and details would aid advertisers realize what concept works finest wherever and when. It also rewards individuals, he claims, in that adverts must really feel fewer jarring if chosen in these a way.
“We still provide interruption,” he claims. “But we will need to make interruption a great deal far better in a way that is linked to the content and to what is pertinent to people today.”
It was the scale of the problem that persuaded Maria to take the position at Globo. When the chief executive offered his vision for the business enterprise, 3 features clicked into put: the amount of transformation a realisation that Maria could use his teaching in electronic and speedy-going environments and finding a thing that he was excellent at and enthusiastic about.
“I mentioned, ‘OK, 3 or five yrs later, if I glance back again and we were equipped to put into practice the amount of transformation that the vision claims, I’m likely to be very proud of that.’ And which is a legacy I’m likely to go away. Chatting about a media group, it is truly a legacy that my young children are likely to know about.”
