Xavier Marcet is above all a humanist and a great defender of the Renaissance. Strategy and innovation consultant, president of Lead to Change and the Barcelona Drucker Society, and professor at the Barcelona School of Management (BSM-UPF). Born in Terrassa, he works between Barcelona and Boston. He started as a history professor at the UAB and then dedicated himself to management at the UPC and Esade.
From the age of 18 to 28, he traveled often to Italy to study the Renaissance. His credo is "grow by making others grow" and his purpose is to deploy humanist management. "To lead is to put swing and build a legacy," he assures. His legacy will be decided by others, but in the meantime, he hopes to continue slow-cooking rice, walking through the mountains of Sant Llorenç del Munt, and watching the people he loves grow.
--- You decided to dedicate yourself to consulting.
--- I discovered that I enjoyed having several projects at once. I was general director of Localret and there were many projects that attracted me. I wanted to learn from different organizations and consulting was the way. I had professional experience, a certain maturity, and was over 40 years old.
--- 20 years have passed since that decision. What is your day-to-day like today?
--- Very intense. My management style is an open and collectivized agenda, and I am at the service of the people at Lead to Change. Everyone has access to my time. This past year, I have been asked to give 150 conferences, and this represents a great opportunity. Before giving a conference, you need to understand the organization and meet very interesting people. I spend half my time traveling, especially to Boston.
--- What can we learn from Boston and what can be learned from Barcelona?
--- Barcelona can learn a lot, if it doesn't copy anything. Cutting and pasting doesn't work. They are two very inspiring ecosystems with a very high density of opportunities per square meter. They have highly talented profiles and money willing to take risks. When I travel to Boston, I do business there, and it's on the way back that I think about what I've seen and consider how we would do it here. I have always tried to be very inspired and not copy anything. Boston could learn from our European model, which is more balanced and has a more important social and environmental component. Although Boston is the most European city in the United States, even morphologically, because it is a city and not a space where people live among many shopping centers.
Barcelona can learn a lot, if it doesn't copy anything. Cutting and pasting doesn't work. Barcelona can be one of Europe's biohealth capitals.--- What opportunities and threats does the Catalan capital have?
--- Barcelona is a city with great international appeal and still retains something of what had been the industrial capital of Spain. It has great potential if it does things well. I believe Barcelona can be one of the bioscience capitals in Europe. It is an entrepreneurial benchmark and our challenge should not only be to attract startups, but to make them grow. We have to help create corporations that provide a lot of added value and that are also larger. One of the problems of Europe, Catalonia or Barcelona is size. Small is beautiful can be good for other things, but we need companies with significant size.
--- It is the time for humanist management.
--- Humanist management is the aim of achieving an organization's results in accordance with a purpose and taking people into account. That is, not delivering results at any cost. We are living in a moment that will require a great balance between people and technology.
--- It is "the Renaissance" of people.
--- We reclaim the humanist logic, recalling the Renaissance that put people at the center. We need a new Renaissance in a moment of technology overdose where we have to emphasize the role of people in organizations.
--- Do we need to humanize companies more?
--- To humanize more means to understand value creation with people. This sometimes confuses us because technology has great disruptive potential and poses innovation factors that tend to democratize. Before, it seemed that having the Internet gave you a great competitive advantage, but then everyone had the Internet. Therefore, people make the difference and with new data technologies, IOT, Big Data or AI the same will happen. Companies are communities of people.
We reclaim the humanist logic, recalling the Renaissance that put people at the center. We need a new Renaissance in a moment of technology overdose--- We need new leaderships.
--- To lead means to move towards a vision and manage complexity. One leads by example and not by word. One must try to get everyone to bring out their best version and combine responsibility and inspiration. This is leading: a positive influence oriented towards the future. Leadership is very important if it refers to a noble purpose. There can be harmful leaderships, if the purpose is harmful. It is very important to link leadership with purpose.
--- What does a good leader need in the 21st century?
--- Not to be too attached to oneself, to have ambition and maintain humility, which is the ability to always continue learning from others. A good leader must above all be someone who is clear that leading is serving and not serving oneself, and that when you are very high up in an organization, people do not work for you, but you work for them.
To lead is to move towards a vision, to have a positive influence oriented towards the future and to refer to a noble purpose. In companies there must be chains of inspiration and learning--- What is a Chief Learning Officer (CLO)?
--- The Chief Learning Officer is a program inspired by the memoirs of a former CEO of General Electric. We try to make every leader feel responsible for the learning of their people, and this means that they also have to learn. In companies, there shouldn't just be chains of command, but chains of inspiration and learning.
--- The editor Jordi Nadal assures that "you have the perfect dose of a Dry Martini with the solid forcefulness of Peter Drucker and the wonderful perfume of Josep Pla". Paraphrasing the titles of your latest books: How do we dodge mediocrity? And how do we militate in authenticity?
--- Dodging mediocrity is a vindication of authenticity as the backbone of life. It is the attempt to save those memorable people you have met in companies and whom you cannot forget. It is the attempt to vindicate the company as a space of humanity.
--- What is the key to growing by making others grow?
--- Growing by making others grow is one step further: defining the way of doing and leading in an inclusive way with clients, the community, shareholders, and society. It is the counterpoint to management that is very arrogant and only thinks about results. 21st-century companies have to grow by making others grow.
Dodging mediocrity is a vindication of authenticity as the backbone of life. Growing by making others grow is one step further: defining the way of doing and leading in an inclusive way--- Peter Drucker used to say that "culture eats strategy for breakfast."
--- Peter Drucker was a great observer of people. He used to say that you can make plans and powerpoints, but if you don't change deep-seated inertias... Culture will end up eating strategy for breakfast.
--- A good breakfast!
--- Management is adaptation and creating value in a world that moves and where real changes are those that have to do with people.
--- What is the change?
--- Change is people in transition, which includes elements of culture. Culture is what you do when people, and especially bosses, don't see you.
--- Is this extrapolable from companies to cities?
--- At the city level it is more difficult, even though sometimes we can talk about the culture of Barcelona or Silicon Valley. The culture of Barcelona has Mediterranean elements, such as, for example, doing things with greater balance. This is very European. We have to reclaim societies that are not torn apart.
We need societies that have much more corporate and technological ambition, but that do not lose the model of social balance. If Barcelona can contribute something to the world, it is this...--- Do we have a torn society?
--- You can create a university with a great technological aristocracy, but then it can become increasingly socially torn, like what is happening in California. We need societies that have much more corporate and technological ambition, but that do not lose the model of social balance. If Barcelona can contribute something to the world, it is this… Creating wealth and maintaining the social model. However, if you only want to maintain the social model without creating wealth or helping those who create wealth, then this is not sustainable.
--- You often speak of purpose and legacy… What is your purpose and what would you like your legacy to be?
---My legacy will be decided by others. My purpose is to help deploy humanist management at a time when we will have to face the construction of a new social balance between people and technology. I want to work for companies that are capable of delivering results without taking people out of the center. It is also a personal synthesis of my fascination with Italy and this is how I can return to humanist management and the philosophy I lived very intensely as a young man. This goes far beyond a wonderful wave of art in Europe and has much to do with the need to reclaim the centrality of people. Delivering results and taking care of people is a synthesis and should not be a trade-off. I would also like to continue cooking rice dishes and walking through the mountains of Sant Llorenç del Munt. That would make me very happy. Learning to ask is a lifelong job and there is one very important thing, which is to master pretensions.
SEVEN OF LIFE
- Reference: Paco Solé-Parellada
- Book: Any book by Josep Pla
- Movie: Any John Ford movie.
- Song: I left my heart in San Francisco by Tony Benett
- Favorite spot: The bar of the Mercat de la Independència in Terrassa
- Life motto: Grow by helping others grow
- Dream: See those I love grow