Breakfast with CEO Cycle. Talk with Pedro Rezende – President and Partner of Kearney

Posted by The Lisbon MBA on 15 Nov, 2020 12:18 pm

Pedro Rezende, President and Partner of Kearney with a group of students of The Lisbon MBA Executive

From left to right: Ana Júlia Almeida (student), Carlos Albuquerque (student), Dora Cerqueira (student), Maria José Amich (Executive Director), Maria da Glória Ribeiro (Founder and Managing Partner Amrop), Pedro Rezende (President and Partner Kearney), Diogo Lopes (student), Diane Daudin-Clavaud (student), Pedro Castanheira (student), Bruno Cruz (student), Paula Lourenço (Careers and Corporate Relations Director), João Fontes (student) and Ricardo Pacheco (student).

 

 

Last Friday, we had the privilege to have with us Pedro Rezende, President and Partner of Kearney, a leading global management consulting firm. Pedro joined us for a breakfast session with some of the Executive MBA students who had the chance to deepen their knowledge in the consultancy business and get inspired by Pedro’s career journey.

 

Starting as an industrial mechanical engineer, Pedro Rezende later did an MBA at INSEAD that, in his words, was the accelerator he needed for a career change. In his view, it is still highly favourable to do an MBA, namely for those who don’t have a business degree as it will propel a career move in the management side of business. Yet, for those who already have a business degree it’s still important as it is a program that strengthens the development of leadership skills and enables one to refresh knowledge, hone expertise, deepen the understanding of what makes businesses successful and overall enhances professional and personal development. Maria da Glória added that even after an MBA, ‘you still have to prove yourself, however, after passing this trial period, the chances of a career boost are higher’.

 

Pedro Rezende has made a set of bold decisions that enabled him to have broad and complex experiences, not only in consultancy and management in companies such as EDP, Sonae Capital, The Boston Consulting Group, but also as an entrepreneur as founder and CEO of Hyperion Energy Investment.

 

He advises students that ‘if you’re too conservative, you will stay in a place probably, not because you’re happy, but because you’re comfortable’. When asked about what made him change paths along the way, Pedro said he always has a three-year career plan in mind, where commitment to excel is a base line for his decision-making process. Whilst some of the choices made in his career journey were taken as they came because ‘sometimes you choose, sometimes life happens’, he recommended students to ‘have a mentor’. He shared that for every major decision, he always had a mentor who played a significant role in his choices, reinforcing the importance of lifelong mentoring. When asked how difficult it is to move from consultancy to a business, he answered that it’s quite easy and added that the biggest difference for which one must be prepared is to move from ‘paper to P&L’.

 

When students challenged him on how businesses can grow, he said that legacy people, processes and systems are a step in the way of major transformations and the way to overcome it is to create a more dynamic culture and to flatten the organization structure, allowing to decide faster and act quicker, therefore converting businesses to become more competitive.

 

As the world stronger economies, such as EUA and China, are mastering the international markets, Pedro Rezende thinks that Europe reindustrialisation is essential to relaunch EU’s economy and businesses. As for timing, he suggested that it might happen when we are facing crisis and stated that ‘we should all be prepared for crisis as in crisis everything accelerates’.

 

In a quick glimpse into the future, Pedro Rezende believes that health, tourism and technology will probably be the sectors that have a more solid future in Portugal.

 

As the conversation moved towards the end, for the Executive MBA students who would like to succeed in management or consultancy, he pointed out that it’s essential to have solid analytical skills, ability to take decisions based on data, a great deal of rigorousness, both critical and strategical thinking and a teamwork mindset.

 

To conclude this learning and inspirational session, both Pedro and Maria da Glória encouraged students to compete with themselves and not to ‘grow at the cost of others’.

 

Thank you Pedro Rezende for the valuable knowledge and insights that will better prepare The Lisbon MBA students to their career paths.

 

 

Breakfasts with CEOs is an initiative by The Lisbon MBA Católica|Nova’s Career Management Center in partnership with Amrop Portugal, where our students get the opportunity to interact and be inspired by C-Level executives that share their leadership journey and insights.