What business school taught a change specialist about reinvention

More than most, Sérgio Maria’s occupation has been about changeover and transformation. In a operating lifestyle helping regular firms navigate the upheavals of new know-how, he has also rethought his individual route along the way.

For more than a ten years, the forty eight-12 months-old senior electronic executive, who life in São Paulo, has worked with organisations adapting to electronic disruption and innovation, initial at Google and now with Brazilian media and amusement group Rede Globo. All the even though, producing the techniques to place himself in others’ sneakers, divine their company requires and communicate how he can enable has been at the centre of his occupation.

All through twelve yrs at Google, Maria’s core work was creating relationships with publishers, including newspapers, broadcasters and vendors. “In 2011 in Brazil, the news sector was really averse to Google,” he remembers. “I could not have a dialogue with a newspaper CEO — they would not even answer to my phone calls.”

The icy reception was understandable. At the time, electronic was decimating the regular news sector. Audience were obtaining their news on-line, advertisers were next them and the print profits model was having difficulties.

Against this backdrop, the Brazilian was tasked with obtaining regions where by the competitor could develop into a collaborator. He joined Google as a strategic spouse manager and sooner or later rose to develop into director of world-wide partnerships for Latin America and Brazil across broadcast, news and commerce.

Sergio Maria - New Businesses Director of Rede Globo - São Paulo, Brazil
Prolonged-time period eyesight: The scale of the obstacle at Globo persuaded Sérgio Maria to get on his most current role © Ricardo Lisboa

“Google has the advertising income role that competes with all the other teams for advertising budgets . . . and that is how it is going to work eternally,” Maria acknowledges. “But I was in a group that was on the lookout at the other facet — which is, how can we enable these associates create themselves, be more economical in the way they do their company and also make profits?”

He also worked with journalists, outlining how to mine Google knowledge for investigative work he taught publishers how know-how could enable them understand users’ behaviour and he served optimise mobile items. The world-wide accumulation of these kinds of work grew into the Google Information Initiative, which supports journalism in the variety of a teaching centre and an innovation fund, for illustration.

After twelve yrs at Google, Maria was at a crossroads. If he stayed, the following step would be a shift abroad, in a new role and tradition. That did not fit with his personal plans, so he resolved to get a occupation crack, commit time with his household — he has a few sons — and replicate on his following shift.

CV

2004-2005 Product or service and solutions director, Oi Net

2006-2007 Product or service manager, Brasil Telecom Net

2007-2011 Strategic spouse manager, Google

2011-2016 Head of strategic partnerships, Latin America, Google

2016-2017 Director of world-wide partnerships, Latin America, Google

2017-2019 Director of world-wide partnerships: broadcast, news and commerce, Google

2019-present Director of new company advancement, Rede Globo

Occupations, he states, are a a few-phase journey. At the beginning, professionals’ techniques have a tendency to be more complex. Then they might develop into persons administrators, giving up a great deal of the realistic work and producing techniques in main groups and creating a eyesight. The 3rd is the executive stage, on the lookout at corporations strategically in the lengthy time period.

Maria was completely ready to changeover to the 3rd phase. So in 2018, even though at Google, he enrolled for the counsellors advancement programme, a company governance program, at Fundação Dom Cabral company school in Brazil.

“It was correct for that instant in my occupation,” he states. “It let me commit some time to understand the strategic role of boards superior and how to then affect the administration crew of the organisation.”

The programme, which he concluded at FDC’s Belo Horizonte campus, prepares long run board members. Together with instructing the rules of administration and governance, it explores how to utilize this — for illustration, contributors put together for and direct mock conferences of administrators.

The return to official discovering was “amazing”, Maria states. His occupation crack intended he was spared balancing household, work and examine during the program, which was taught in two week-lengthy blocks a handful of months aside. This allowed him to interact thoroughly, he provides, some thing that those people pondering about executive programs really should be completely ready to do.

“People really should be geared up to keep offline and hook up to the persons on the program and hook up to the program itself,” he states. “It is anticipated that you participate a lot and there is real value in bringing your practical experience. It enriches the dialogue and the realistic workouts.”

This also means college students really should share any issues or regions for improvement with classmates. “Be present, be sincere and be fearless,” Maria states. “The more you are open up, the more persons will be in a position to enable you and you will be in a position to enable [other] persons.”

One of the advantages was creating a powerful network of like-minded peers, and Maria proceeds to enable persons keep in contact as a class ambassador.

The programme has served in his role as director of new company advancement at Globo, which he started off last June. “It’s not the precise complex issues that I use,” he states, “It is a great deal more of a mentality alter on how to glimpse at and method issues in the lengthy run, on the lookout at what is in the minds of executives and the board.”

Globo might be Maria’s most significant obstacle but. As aspect of its electronic transformation, the firm announced last 12 months that it was bringing some of its firms with each other in just one group, including broadcast and cable tv corporations, its web-site and online video on-demand support.

Together with the internal alter, Maria is operating on creating this new media know-how company for advertisers. “The opportunity is how to integrate all these mediums,” he states, so that advertisers can communicate their messages seamlessly across all of Globo’s channels. For illustration, he provides: “Can we glimpse at the journey when persons shift out of Television set and go to an application to continue consuming the material?”

This method and facts would enable advertisers understand what message will work very best where by and when. It also advantages individuals, he states, in that adverts really should experience less jarring if chosen in these kinds of a way.

“We nevertheless provide interruption,” he states. “But we require to make interruption a great deal superior in a way that is linked to the material and to what is related to persons.”

It was the scale of the obstacle that persuaded Maria to get the role at Globo. When the main executive introduced his eyesight for the company, a few aspects clicked into place: the stage of transformation a realisation that Maria could use his teaching in electronic and speedy-transferring environments and obtaining some thing that he was good at and fired up about.

“I mentioned, ‘OK, a few or 5 yrs later on, if I glimpse back and we were in a position to carry out the stage of transformation that the eyesight states, I’m going to be really very pleased of that.’ And which is a legacy I’m going to go away. Chatting about a media group, it’s essentially a legacy that my young ones are going to know about.”