Some people just have the knack. While others get photographed in public in a wrinkled suit or chewing on something bulky, these blessed individuals always manage to look as if they were toasting a brilliant and lucrative deal with a flute of the finest Champagne or saying something unbelievably intelligent. Mário Garnero, one of Brazil’s, most visible and influential personalities, has the knack. No matter where one looks, the praise is voluble, positive, almost larger than life: visionary, canny, affable, prescient, clever, successful.
Dilma Rousseff and Mário Garnero: public and private cooperation
Garnero has been lauded, honoured, awarded, rewarded, and otherwise lionised. But the man himself, while always appearing in the right places, manages to avoid the pitfalls of this literal cult of personality, and he has done so by abiding to strict and fundamental rules of behaviour, namely maintaining a modicum of modesty: “When I brought the first cell phone to Brazil with NEC, in the beginning we were contracted to produce 250,000 and we sold more than a million in the first year,” he recounts with a straight face. “This took a mixture of opportunity with a bit of courage to change and the willingness to burn some shoe leather.” In other words, to paraphrase Einstein on genius, he sticks to 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. The hard work producing results is always done.
In touch
Garnero also understands the need to cultivate people as allies. At a time when the word network applied strictly to large media conglomerates, he was rubbing elbows with the high, the mighty and the smart to gain their trust and support for his projects. It was a technique he most probably developed heading a law students’ association at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, where he studied law. A few years after graduating in 1961, he was able to get senator Robert Kennedy to visit Brazil. His approach to networking and negotiating is actually quite simple and has not changed to this date: application of liberal doses of good humour and charisma, without ever losing track of the set goal. By the mid-1970s, he had parlayed his juice with a number of international partners into the founding of Brasilinvest, a merchant bank in the traditional style that manages to meet the demands of public, private and foreign interests. At the same time, he created a think tank for Brazil, the Fórum das Américas, to discuss and debate issues related to democracy and the economy in the region.
Brasilinvest has long been a dynamic and not always uncontroversial element of Brazil’s economic life. But among Garnero’s most visible contributions to Brazil’s daily life was the part he played in implementing the project to have cars run on ethanol. The idea was born during the oil shocks of the 1970s, when the world economy’s addiction to oil suddenly became a dream for the supplier and a nightmare for the consumer. In 1975, the government had already implemented an alcohol programme involving Brazil’s oil company Petrobras as a buyer, setting a 22 percent ethanol mix as a standard, and subsidies to encourage the use of alcohol. As the director for Industrial Relations of Volkswagen Brazil and later president of the National Association of Automotive Vehicle Manufacturers, Garnero was in a unique position to convince VW, Ford, Fiat and General Motors in Brazil to ethanol cars. The programme has evolved enormously with modern sensor and computer technology, and it has been one of the major elements in Brazil’s energy independence, hence its economic stability. Meanwhile, too, Brazil became one of the top-ten oil producers in the world, which has contributed to its current outstanding position.
The new world order
Fast forward to 2011. For himself and the companies he has been involved in Garnero has steered a reality-based course, alternately contributing to, and benefiting from, the nation’s economic growth. On the way, he has seen a great deal. He accepts readily that the continent as a whole is 15 to 20 years behind owing to the “ideological disputes” of the past that have left public administration a shambles in many cases. But other Latin American countries are poised to follow the Brazilian lead. Even Colombia, which is still immersed in violence fuelled by the drug trade and the old ideological disagreements, is making progress. The change is not only about ideals. According to Garnero, the national and international objectives have shifted very quickly in most countries. “The new reality of globalisation is that on several continents we will have a different approach to the common thought of what is important today,” he points out. “Twenty-five years ago, the most important issues in Brazil were how to fight inf lation and how to fight inequalities; today you see that 52–54 percent of the population is in the middle class and the challenge is no longer just to fight the poverty war.”
Change, however, must always be viewed from a systemic standpoint. In the past, social and political tweaking in Latin America were often viewed with a jaundiced eye by Washington and rewarded with nefarious involvement. The world, however, shifted ever since the end of the Soviet Block, and this in turn, is demanding change from the free-marketeers, as it were. Cooperation is the name of today’s game, not competition says Garnero. He sees a world of “equals in diversity” with respect for emerging powers who will be counted ever higher on the ranking of the world’s leading economies. “To use the best of each country” would be an ideal way for cooperation to move forward to the advantage of all. Europe and the USA will always be a source of technology, of highly skilled people, of political tradition, he suggests. “It would be more relevant for these countries to participate in globalisation on political terms rather than economic ones, as they have done until now.”
Garnero chums with popular former president, Inácio Lula da Silva
Brazil’s position in the global system depends on its political stability and, of course, economic stability. The latter is guaranteed at this point by the country’s foreign reserves and the high level of exports. In fact, even during the recession of 2009/2010, the nation fared substantially better than in the industrialised world. According to Garnero, the reason was that Brazil, China and India had adopted an anti-cyclical policy at the exact moment when the world economy was turning sour. The currently high real is not an obstacle to the country’s exports, he says, rather “it is a stimulus for technical evolution and the importation of technologically advanced equipment that is giving Brazil the ability to produce 200 billion dollars’ worth of exports this year”. His evidence is the steadily increasing rate of exports over the past five years. For outsiders, the idea of investing work and cash in Brazil may appear daunting. What the country shares with its three companions in the BRIC group is the key importance of personal relationships in doing business. For cultures in which the bottom line is the only determining factor in a business transaction, it is (still) sometimes hard to comprehend that there are intangible benefits in working with partners sharing an implicit trust and mutual respect. Garnero has encouraging words for anyone wishing to leverage Brazil’s potential: “It is a country that accepts foreign capital and likes and respects foreigners who come to visit,” he explains. “There is great opportunity to collaborate instead of work alone, and the opportunities to work together are extremely rewarding for capital investment.”
The Garnero Doctrine
“Human inertia is greater than the inertia of fifty thousand tons of iron ore.” The statement by a man used to getting things going is not just hyperbole. After all, to get the iron out of the rock takes hard work, intuition and leadership qualities. The human potential is great, but getting support for ideas and convincing others of their worth is also a core necessity for business success. “There are many people with great ideas, vision, intelligence, and knowledge who imagine extraordinary ideas,” Garnero points out, “but they don’t have the time or the ability to put their ideas into action within the context of the daily hand to hand combat”. By the same token, he is willing to take the time to let ideas mature if they have to. Asked about the “visionary” label always affixed to his name, he replies: “Part of being a visionary is knowing when the time is right to implement new ideas.” Another crucial aspect of Garnero’s approach to business is the need to involve, and account for, society at large and the local community. This also informs his philanthropic pursuits, which have grown considerably since his beginnings. “Business,” he said in an interview in 2010 with Leaders magazine, “is not a force detracting from the society but, on the contrary, … is creating opportunities for the society to become better off”.
Article by Robert La Bua
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