Before arriving at business school, Manny Maceda had never heard of management consultancy, much less thought of it as a viable career option. But a 10-week summer internship with a then small firm cradling big ambitions opened his eyes to the possibilities.
And now, 30-plus years down the road, he is still with the same organisation, having risen through the ranks to become worldwide managing partner of Bain & Company and oversee the operations of 60 offices and 10,000 employees who advise clients in every key industry.
“When I joined, there were just two offices — in Boston and San Francisco,” Maceda says. “But that first summer, from literally the very first case, I liked the place and thought I could be pretty good at this job. They put me to work on a real client engagement where I had to make presentations to a healthcare company specialising in kidney dialysis about whether they should franchise the business. Later, as you get to analyse more cases and companies, you come to see there is a science to management and a sophisticated kind of pattern recognition.”
Times may have changed, but those basic principles still apply. So, in his current role, Maceda is in large part doing for the firm what they do for clients. Essentially, that boils down to devising strategies for growth, identifying new product and industry sectors and, simultaneously, reinventing the business.
“One framework we use is the ‘firm of the future’, based on an embrace of technology and a clear definition of the talent needed in mission-critical roles,” he says. “With a high level of disruption going on in the world, you need to understand what your company is good at, accept the ecosystem when going into any market in concert with others, and be good at partnerships. Everyone is facing new challenges, but you can learn from history and from different industries and then translate that into action and outcomes.”
In most sectors, he notes, it is important to move away from the old strategic bias of focusing on core activities. What’s needed instead is the parallel development of second and third engines of growth, along with different capital structures for different parts of the business and, where appropriate, for specific types of risk.
And while ever more advanced analytical tools may be able to predict situations and help organisations build agility and flexibility, the value of personal relationships, both internal and external, should never be underestimated.
“In a talent-based business, maybe the most important part of my job is to give leadership and inspiration,” he says. “In doing that, there are three main objectives: to develop skills that can add value; to build teams and client relations; and to communicate in a way that engenders trust.”
Maceda started learning about such qualities when still comparatively young. He grew up in Manila as the oldest of five brothers. Their father was a public servant who went into elective politics in the 1970s, at city and then national level, in opposition to then President Marcos. That ended, though, after notification of an arrest order, with a hurried escape by freighter to Hong Kong and subsequent asylum in the United States.
“My dad left with no assets, and showed up in New York with just the clothes on his back,” Maceda says. “However, in his mid-40s, he studied for and passed the New York bar exam and I give him kudos for that. Six months into his time in the US, he flew back to Hong Kong, and with my brothers I flew there to meet him. Because he was denied entry, we were given 30 minutes in a lounge at Kai Tak airport. A year later, though, I was able to transfer credits and went to join him in the US.”
At the time, Maceda was studying civil engineering at the University of the Philippines, with thoughts of going into business. By then too, his mother, a very faith-driven person, had taken over the running of her family’s motion picture business, a role she was pressed into at short notice when her father passed away. However, Maceda saw his immediate future outside the Philippines and, with his father’s encouragement, was accepted by the Illinois Institute of Technology to do a BS in chemical engineering, which he duly completed in 1984.
“I didn’t have a lot of choice. It was the best school I could apply to after the deadline for transfers. They gave me a very good scholarship package, but I also did a lot of work on the side as a tutor in physics and chemistry and doing Fortran and Cobol programming.”
On graduating, he won a coveted spot in the engineering plastics group at E.I. Du Pont de Nemours before switching to refinery process engineering at Unocal and then starting the two-year MS in management at the MIT Sloan School of Management which, crucially, opened the door to a full-time position at Bain in 1988.
Over the years, San Francisco-based Maceda has worked with clients in everything from financial services to telecoms, energy and transportation. He came to specialise in large-scale corporate transformations and, most recently, has supported projects with a global computing company, a major e-commerce player, and a leading hotel chain.
“I’m probably strongest with advising on technology, retail and consumer products,” he says. “But you work your way up and handle a bigger scope of projects as you build relations with people higher up each client’s organisation.”
Outside work, Maceda and his wife support a foundation which promotes education and other causes in the Philippines. And he is a committed fan and long-time season-ticket holder for the Golden State Warriors basketball team.
“I’m an admirer of their coach Steve Kerr, who is a good leader with an effective strategy and organisational model for that team, but also takes positions on social issues.”
