From Expat Life to Executive Impact: A Conversation with Alberto Borghesi from NOKIA

With 35 years as an expat and a career spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Alberto Borghesi, Global Head of People Operations & Innovation at Nokia, has led transformation at the intersection of strategy, culture, and people. His message is direct: organizations don't fail because of poor strategy, they fail because of poor execution. And execution is always, ultimately, a people problem. 

In the conversation below, he talks about what leading across cultures really teaches you, why most organizations still get culture wrong, and what the next five years will demand from leaders who want to stay relevant. 

🌍 35 Years Abroad: The School No MBA Can Replicate 

For Alberto, the defining force in his career was never a role, a company, or a methodology. It was geography and the people he encountered along the way. "The great differentiator has been living abroad and experiencing first hand a multitude of cultures. I have been an expat for 35 years." 

Moving across geographies was never just a career move. It was a mindset shift. Each country offered a new lens through which to understand leadership, decision-making, and what it actually means to get things done. The more unfamiliar the context, the faster the learning. 

"Growth comes from taking ownership, being curious and open to new experiences, learning from anything and anybody. The more diverse the context, the faster you learn and the better you lead." 

🗺️ One Size Doesn't Fit All - And Leaders Who Ignore This Lose Credibility Fast 

Ask Alberto what working across three continents taught him about leading change, and the answer comes without hesitation: "One size doesn't fit all. This is absolutely the real truth." 

What works in Europe breaks down in the Middle East or Africa, not because the strategy is wrong, but because local context, hierarchy, and decision dynamics are ignored. The principle he has built his approach around is demanding but simple: adapt the how, stay consistent on the what. 

"Successful change comes from adapting the 'how', the methodology, while staying consistent on the 'what', the strategic change. Leaders who don't adjust and adapt their approach lose credibility fast."

⚙️ Transformation Is No Longer a Project, It's a Daily Capability 

Alberto sees a fundamental shift underway in how organizations think about change, away from the classic two-to-three-year transformation program and toward something far more embedded in daily operations. "It's no longer a two-three-year initiative. It's an everyday capability." 

The most resilient organizations, in his view, have stopped waiting for external consultants to define their next move. Instead, they have built internal engines for change: leadership teams and dedicated agents who treat adaptability as a core competency, not a project phase. "The focus moved to speed, adaptability, and execution discipline, not frameworks or slide decks." 

🪞 Culture Is Not a Communication Campaign 

When it comes to the most common mistake in organizational transformation, Alberto is unsparing: "These companies treat culture as a communication topic, not as a behavior reset." 

The pattern is familiar: a values refresh, a new internal campaign, a leadership town hall. And then nothing changes. Because none of it touches the real driver of culture: how leaders actually behave day to day. Messaging without behavior change is decoration. 

"They launch values and campaigns but don't change leadership expectations or decision-making processes. If leaders behave the same way, nothing changes."  The fix requires only one thing but it is the hardest thing to sustain: "Culture shifts only when everybody walks the talk and embraces it." 

👥 Processes Scale Performance. People Create It. 

The evidence, Alberto argues, is built into the data of every major transformation he has led or observed. The numbers are striking: “60% to 90% of the strategy plans fail, and it is because of execution, or better, the lack of it.” 

"In every transformation I led, the real accelerators or blockers were leadership behavior and team capability, not the process design." 

Strategy, in his view, is ultimately a sum of processes. Processes can be designed, optimized, and scaled. But the people who implement them, their judgment, their commitment, their capability, that is where performance is actually born or buried. 

"Processes scale performance; people create it." 

🔭 What Will Define Winning Organizations in the Next 5 Years 

When asked what separates organizations that will thrive from those that will fall behind, Alberto identifies four non-negotiables: a clear North Star, speed of execution, quality of leadership at every level, and adaptability to AI, to new ways of thinking, to whatever comes next. 

"Structure and strategy will matter less than the ability to adapt fast and execute consistently." It is a deliberately unsentimental view and one that puts the burden squarely on leadership rather than on tools, frameworks, or market conditions. 

💡 The Advice That Distills 35 Years Into One Paragraph 

For leaders navigating people and organizational transformation today, Alberto does not reach for a model or a matrix. He reaches for seven principles, each earned through years of working in environments where failure was visible and accountability was non-negotiable. 

"Be clear on outcomes, stay close to the business, simplify to drive execution, hold leaders accountable for behavior, stay personal and empathetic, move fast to build momentum and remember that execution is the differentiator." 

💡 Final Takeaway

In a business world obsessed with strategy decks and transformation frameworks, Alberto Borghesi is a reminder that the hardest work is the simplest to articulate: get the right people, model the right behaviors, and execute relentlessly. Everything else follows. 

🎫 Meet Alberto Borghesi at Bucharest Tech Week 2026 

Whether you are leading a transformation, struggling with strategy execution, or trying to build a culture that actually moves, Alberto brings something rare: real experience from real environments, with no shortcuts and no corporate jargon. 

📍 Join him live at HR Masters Summit on June 17 at Nord Events Center by GlobalWorth.