Temos que lutar para ter mulheres em cargos de poder, diz Luiza Trajano | FECHAMENTO DE MERCADO

Thank you. Thank you very much. A pleasure as well.

Well, it's an award that I don't even like to talk much about awards, because I think you earn an award with daily work, but it's the ninth year of a reputation award, so it's a very important thing because you can't do it alone either. It depends on your values, your purpose, with the people you are with. So it's not an award you win just because you are good, right? A reputation award depends on values that cross with purpose, with places, with friends, with those you lead, with leadership. So it's an award that I think carries a lot of responsibility, to tell you the truth, because I am a woman in the midst of, so to speak, representing women in an award that is for men and women too, and reputation is a very serious thing, right? I say it's a tightrope. You can fall on one side or the other.

I've always had a group of women, I've always worked on this. What I think has changed a lot is the management style. A management that was totally mechanical became an organic management since 1995, which I've been saying for a while, but today, post-pandemic, it's much stronger. And women are very prepared for this type of organic management. Not that men don't know how, but it's a management that isn't so mechanical, isn't so process-driven, you have to be changing all the time, you have to be innovating, you have to be aligned with the team, we are very prepared. So I think it was a struggle, right? It hasn't even been 100 years since women started voting and for less than 100 years she needed her husband's consent to vote. So, it was a lot of struggle. I think we've entered another cycle now, which is a cycle of seeking to be more with men, nothing against it, but in positions of power, in leadership, and we only have 18% of women in politics, which is still very little, which gives a lot of reputation, right? I think getting involved in politics is very... So, we have a struggle now to have more women, both white and Black, in higher positions of power, because you know, we are having wars. No war, as my friend Sônia says, has a woman's face. You can see that behind it there isn't a woman. So I think this union of the feminine with the masculine is very important. But we still have a long way to go. I don't say this because I was born into a family of entrepreneurs, my family started a company over 60 years ago and it was already run by women. So I was somewhat privileged in that. But it's a struggle that now has to be for another struggle. Now it's not just for us to be leaders, it's to have more power, to be in top, higher positions.

It's because I think people learned to stay at home, learned to have quality of life, because they were forced to. Suddenly, those who used to be out all day were forced to stay inside and saw that today, health, well-being, and mental health are very important, right? So, I think the pandemic, which brought so many sad things, so much death, made people stop and look more at themselves. And also the spirit of community, which I think unconsciously they don't know, but they developed in citizenship. Today, Brazil is much more loved after the pandemic as a Brazilian, as a Brazilian citizen. Well, I always have been, right? I'm a person who carries Brazil here, look. So, we sing the national anthem every Monday for 30 years, all 40,000 employees in the company, but I think it's very good to be a protagonist of your country.

No, I don't think there will be a setback with fewer women. I think it's a matter of uniting masculine with feminine, because if it's only masculine, it's very difficult to get out of this world situation. And I notice, I who am a woman who is always in the midst of men, I was always invited, I was the only one on the board, the only one of this, that today, thank God, I'm not the only one. I see that this balance, Gabriel, between the feminine and the masculine, in stressful situations, like today, I think what we are experiencing differently is a war. Because we've always had it and for over two years we've had high interest rates, which for small and medium businesses is terrible. So, we've always had that, but now there's a new thing that I haven't experienced and most executives haven't experienced. There's a war that, although thankfully we are not in the war, we suffer all this influence from the war. Just now, you were talking about the price of oil. I mean, when oil rises, it disrupts the entire economy you mentioned, from logistics to everything. So it's a serious moment.

I think there are more countries involved, right? Before we had two countries and it was very serious, everyone was rooting for it to end, but it was two countries. Now you have more countries involved and you don't know what will happen, but I believe they will have the sense to stop this war, because it's a very serious thing. No one wants a world war. So, just as you think, I think there has to be a setback as quickly as possible. Now, this is a feminine view, right? A feminine view that is super important, of course, in business.

Well, first of all, I thank all the company I've had, both women and men, to get here and have a family that pays in cash, an obligation. So, a family that has always been very strong in these values that also generate reputation, telling the truth, transparency. I'm also from the countryside and we are very, very simple, not simplistic in the way we manage. I think that helped a lot. What I can tell you is that I have always believed that a company has a much bigger role than just itself. This has been since I was in Franca, in the countryside, saying that the company needs to be a protagonist of its country, because when the country does well, it does well. So, what I can say first as a businesswoman, is that it is very important for companies, I mean, there is no company, business owners, directors getting involved with diversity, with social inequality, with employment. I saw so many people here at CNN, I'm happy because a developing country lives on two things, income and credit. And income only comes from employment, there is no money left over here to put into the economy. So, when I saw so many people here, people, working like this, I said: 'How good, I love generating jobs, I'm generating income, and income brings the economy.' So, I think we all have an obligation to know that we still have a very unequal country and the more equality, if not for the purpose, it brings better results for your businesses.

Look, of course you... I am not a person who is one thing here and another there, I am very mixed. Yes, yes. I am the same person at the company as I am at home, as I am with friends. But the thing we fought for the most is not to... to always change. Today we are a physical company that transformed into digital, but never lost its essential values. So, one thing that never changes in our company is our way of being, with a lot of truth, with a lot of transparency. In all situations, we are on the stock exchange, what happened, the first thing we did was the truth. So, today it's in the company's DNA. I confess that many times we grew a lot, right? A very large company suddenly and there were 3 years where we doubled in size. It worries you if you will maintain that because a pandemic still comes where most people worked outside, you had to hire. But today I tell you that I am aware that regardless of me and the thing, it's in the company's DNA, our values. We've been through so many crises, we never gave that up. I can say now as a person, how good it is when I feel younger and one of the things that keeps me going is that it's very connected to my purpose. So, I have a lot of purpose since I was a girl of equality in all senses, of looking at social inequality and knowing that it is my responsibility that came from slavery, almost 400 years of slavery, where people were left very, very abandoned, right? So, today it keeps me going, I feel, others say: 'Wow, you're even better now.' Then when I analyze, it's because this purpose, my backbone, along with many women, along with some men, is what gives me life, gives me energy. So I say, as a company it is indispensable and as a person it does us a lot of good.

First is by example. And the example doesn't mean you always get it right. The example is you apologizing, saying I was wrong and so on, but it's the example. An example of being coherent. If you ask any employee of any store how Magazine Luiza is, he will tell you what I am, what I'm telling you here, what he is. And another thing that I think is very important is to keep things clear. So, we have five non-negotiables and everyone signs these five non-negotiables every year together, the 40,000 leaders. And in these five, it's very clear that we cannot discriminate, that we cannot use the company, that profit is indispensable, but it has to be done with coherence. So, they are five non-negotiables of the 'complice'. Today the company has a 'complice' that makes it very clear. So everyone knows that if they do one of those five, they will be fired for just cause. And we renew it now on the 25th, we have a meeting with the 3,000 leaders who are renewed and they have to renew with everyone within 10 days. So you have to have, we don't have a big code, we have these five non-negotiables that if you do, you already know you won't stay in the company. Since we also have an educational process, we have education even on violence against women for men, because the company doesn't accept that. So we have leadership education, a manager to take over stays 6 months in a strong internship. We have a very strong training program, we have a lot, we have a school, a college of ours that we invest a lot in training, besides what the company gives in scholarships for those who want to study, up to 50, 60%, regardless of whether they stay in the company or not. Of course, they stay while they are in the company, but if they leave, it's not linked to that.

Interesting, Gabriel, because we are one of the few physical companies in the world that digitized and didn't lose the physical store. You can research that. So, when the pandemic started, we already had four laboratories, we were already selling, we were already a digital company with physical points and human warmth. Now, of course, when the pandemic came, the first thing, we were already selling 50% digitally and had physical stores, we were already selling when the pandemic hit, what I thought was very cool is that we didn't take that into account and we started in a way where we created the 'Parceiro Magalu' (Magalu Partner), if you were at your house, you could be an employee, in 15 days we made the products you wanted to sell. So we reached 600,000 people selling, which was a big leap and helped a lot of people. I saw, look, with this I managed to inform myself, I managed to do this. And if we had stayed still, the market grew. The leap the digital market took during the pandemic was also very big. So, I think this ability we have of not thinking we were doing well. We already had much more than the market, our common market, I'm not talking about a technology market, but we said no and we did it and our team did even better, which was creating this 'Parceiro Magalu' in 15 days and night, we created those people from their homes, anyone could sell, be a seller for Magazine Luiza. And today, for example, looking at Magazine Luiza's balance sheet, we have physical retail, digital retail, marketplace, we even have cloud services, a credit company, Luiza Crédito, you need to be all of this today to truly compete in the retail sector. You identified that after the pandemic we need all of this to be really competitive with what's coming from competition from outside the country.

For a long time we were a store, almost 40 years, that sold appliances. Then we decided to be an ecosystem, there is no right or wrong. There are companies that will survive continuing to do what they want. So we thought that because of everything we were already digitized, we wanted to be an ecosystem. So we bought companies like Estante Virtual, Kabum, Netshoes, at the time we wanted to complement our range, not just sell appliances and furniture. And we made other purchases of technology companies, companies to deliver quickly. So we adapted quickly to that. And now we managed to show this physically now in a new location that was the old Livraria Cultura, which is right here near the CNN newsroom, we joked, and it's the physical. So when there's a bookstore, there's stuff and there's entertainment. So, it's a store, it's a reinvention of the department store, respecting the culture, the Livraria Cultura, where children used to go. So you will find a lot from Livraria Cultura, the renovated theater, the digital at the same time, the pinacotheca, so it's the old with the new, it's the digital physical digital. So we managed to put this in the physical aspect now, but we have been an ecosystem for a long time. It was a company decision, I can't say it was the best, because I think anyone who works well, I can only tell you that digital is a reality, that physical is coming back with a new format.

I'm fighting, I'm one of those who go, speak, everyone puts me in the headlines and I argue with the economists who say it can't, but I'm believing it will, I've been waiting for this for a year.