About
Mario Villarejo
Twenty-five years of change, first from inside the business, then alongside leadership teams.
Leaders and teams at adidas · Roche · Allianz · ASML · Merck KGaA · European Space Agency. Some directly, some through international partner firms. 30+ countries.
Change usually stalls at the top. Mario saw it from the inside, running change programmes.
First, running change from the inside. Then, training in applied behavioural science, Gestalt OD and systems coaching, to work on how the team at the top works together.
At Epicor: International Director, Business Transformation, and Director PMO EMEA & APAC. Mario led Epicor's side of a 28-country ERP programme at Merck, alongside Merck's own programme director.
Those years taught him what no project handbook covers. Change rarely fails because the strategy is wrong, or the system. It fails because the team meant to lead it keeps working the old way. Same habits. Same walls between areas. Same things left unsaid.
Since then, leaders and teams in 30+ countries, in English, French and Spanish. Some directly, some through international partner firms. Among them adidas, Roche, Allianz, ASML, Merck KGaA and the European Space Agency.
Who does the work
Mario Villarejo · Founder of MVP
The person in the first conversation is the person who does the work.
When the change has to reach middle management, other countries or large groups, we scale it through MVP, with hand-picked collaborators when the work needs them. Same way of working. More hands.
Partner practices
Artgym. FGI. Kaospilot.
Improv actor. Boxer. Triathlete. Life-long learner. Based in Spain.
The training behind the work
- ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC)
- NTL Organization Development
- ORSC, Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching
- Leadership Circle
- Strozzi somatic leadership
- Gestalt OD, IGOLD advanced practitioner programme
- Associate consultant, Kaospilot
- Artgym certified practitioner
Applied behavioural science, used live.
Perspectives
Five short theses on why execution stalls at the top. From running change on the inside, and from working with the teams that lead it.
- 01
Twenty-eight countries, one ERP programme.
Mario led Epicor's side of an ERP programme across 28 countries at Merck, alongside Merck's own programme director. The system was rarely what stalled. The team around it was. Country after country, the technology was ready, the budget was signed off, and the people at the top still decided the old way. A new system does not change how a leadership team settles a conflict. It simply runs the old habits on new software. If the team at the top does not change how it works together, the go-live date is the least of your problems.
- 02
Why leadership programmes don't move the business.
They build one good leader at a time, then send that leader back into the same team, the same meetings and the same unwritten rules. Real change does not live inside any one leader. It lives between them: in how the CEO and the team settle competing priorities, say what goes unsaid and hold each other to account. Train individuals and you get better individuals. Nothing else moves. If results are the point, the work starts at the top.
- 03
The sponsor trap.
When every hard call lands back on the CEO, the team has stopped leading the change. It is reporting on it. Nobody decides this. It grows one reasonable escalation at a time, until the sponsor is the only place a decision can be made and everyone else has learnt that waiting is the safest move. A stronger sponsor does not fix it. A team that holds one order of priorities, and settles its own conflicts without going upstairs, does.
- 04
Polite agreement at the table. Quiet resistance in the corridor.
Everyone nods in the meeting. One level down, nothing moves. Polite agreement is the most expensive habit a leadership team can have, because it looks like alignment. The objections do not disappear. They move to the corridor, to the side conversation, to the teams below, who read the gap at the top and copy it. It is better to hear the disagreement at the table, while it can still change the decision.
- 05
The first 100 days.
A new CEO is expected to show momentum. The team was inherited. Both have to happen at once, and the temptation is to choose one. Push for results alone and the team complies on the surface. Spend months building the team first and the board runs out of patience. The first 100 days are the moment the new way of working is cheapest to set, before the old patterns close around the new leader. After that, every habit costs more to change.
A leadership team that owns growth and transformation together.
Contact
Start a conversation.
Where is the pattern at the top slowing the business down?
A first conversation starts from that question.
No proposal or deck on the call.
One 25-minute conversation: the situation, the pattern behind it, and whether Mario is the right person for it.
- You write.
- You get a date for the call within two working days.
- If there is a fit, a short written proposal follows.
Conversations in English, French or Spanish, across Europe and beyond.