Independence is at the heart of the Germano de Sousa Group’s success and strength
From modest beginnings to national leader
When Germano de Sousa started out as a medical doctor, working in a hospital in Portugal half a century ago, he would painstakingly carry out blood glucose tests by hand, mixing fluids in a glass vial. Because the entire process was done by hand, the hospital could only perform tests for around five patients per day. Today, the medical laboratory group that bears Professor Germano’s name is capable of carrying out tests for 15,000 patients across Portugal each and every day. It’s a sign not just of the pace of innovation within the healthcare sector over the past 50 years, but also of how much the Germano de Sousa Group has grown during that time.
The origins of the group date back to 1975, when Germano, a doctor in a public hospital at the time, established a private laboratory for clinical pathology (the diagnosis of diseases through analysing bodily fluids, tissues and other samples). “Fifty years ago, medical doctors were very badly paid in the public hospitals,” Germano explains, “so everybody was driven to have something private to have a dignified wage at the end of the month. That was the landscape in Portugal back then.”
Foreign financial groups wanted, at all costs, to buy our medium-sized laboratory.
Over the following two decades, Germano’s laboratory business grew steadily. Meanwhile, his two children, Maria-José and José-Germano, decided to follow in their father’s footsteps, both becoming clinical pathologists too. As José-Germano recalls, the affinity began early for him. “As a child, I would go to the laboratory to play. It was like a playground,” he says. “I was always fascinated by looking through the microscope.” Similarly, for his sister, Maria-José, the path felt like it came naturally. “I felt it in my DNA,” she says. “I felt: I want a microscope, I want to diagnose, I want to be in the same field as my father.” The siblings also had their father as their role model. He “taught us by example,” says Maria-José, and was “a beacon” for her and her brother.
As children, they watched and admired his work ethic, his care for patients as a doctor, the esteem that he was held in by his peers, and all of this, too, contributed to their desire to join the field.
Things began to change for the business and the family in the late nineties, however, when Germano was faced with a high-stakes dilemma. “Foreign financial groups wanted, at all costs, to buy our medium-sized laboratory,” he recalls. The question for him was whether to sell up to one of these groups, which would then merge his lab business with others to maximise profits, or to keep the business in the family’s hands and fight back. In the end, he called on his children to join him in leading the company and to help him in the battle.
José-Germano and Maria-José de Sousa
Sustaining growth through family values
“When we joined our father, we defined our topmost strategy,” Maria-José recalls. “We didn’t want to sell to any of the international groups, and we wanted to be as big as the fused laboratories without being fused or bought.” This wasn’t simply about scale, however. For the de Sousa family, there was also an ethical reason to remain independent, because they believed that they would prioritise and take care of patients better than the larger groups. “We said to ourselves, ‘Let’s do what we believe in, let’s serve the patients and the doctors, and let’s do our laboratory medicine the way that we believe it must be done’,” says José-Germano. At the same time, they felt an almost philosophical aversion to the idea of acquisition. “If we sold, yes, we would have had a lot of financial power, a huge amount of money in the bank,” says Maria-José. “But what is that compared with creating value every day?”
The next generation must know the culture of the family. They must understand what we have done, our history.
A quarter of a century later, it’s undeniable that the family has achieved its goals of remaining independent, growing in scale, serving patients and doctors, and creating value. Today, the Germano de Sousa Group is the largest medical laboratory group in Portugal, with more than 1,700 staff members and more than 530 collection points serving the entire country. “We are 100% Portuguese and 100% owned by our family,” says José-Germano. “Today we’re proud to be known as the Laboratory of Portugal.”
Despite this pride, it’s clear the de Sousa family isn’t simply sitting back and admiring their collective achievement. They are hard workers – and there is hard work to do. For one, the group is constantly being put under pressure to lower its prices. At the same time, the pace of change in healthcare is showing no signs of slowing down. “If we don’t innovate, we die,” says José-Germano, who adds that the group is preparing for a future that is increasingly focused on predictive diagnosis, preventative treatments and precision therapies, from detecting cancer before it becomes cancer to spotting Alzheimer’s early enough to “freeze” the disease’s progress.
The entrance atrium of the Germano de Sousa Group’s headquarters in Lisbon, with Germano’s collection of artefacts on display.
Decision-making and generational continuity
Luckily, as a family business, the Germano de Sousa Group is able to make decisions and adapt to the changing landscape rapidly. “This is one of the real strengths of being a family business: the capacity to adapt and adjust to situations,” says Maria-José. “Our board of executives is very small: there are just four of us. That’s why decisions are very rapid.” The group and the family’s independence has also helped it to keep its values and goals front and centre, keeping the patients’ wellbeing in focus and maintaining integrity and ethics above all. Finally, staying private has meant that the family can take a far more long-term view. As José-Germano puts it, “We don’t think in terms of quarters. We think in terms of generations.”
Beyond the here and now, the family is also beginning to prepare the ground for the third generation. Maria-José has two twin sons aged 21, who are both currently studying at university; one is on the path to becoming a doctor, while the other is reading Law. Both, she believes, will end up working for the family business, if that’s what they want. The son who is training to be a doctor has a particularly keen sense of responsibility to do so. “I know he feels the values and the weight of the family company and wants to at least maintain the status and the role that we have in society,” says Maria-José. “I think he and his cousins will do even better than us.”
We have to keep track of our values and goals, and pass them on to the next generation, precisely because that’s what makes us strong.
Meanwhile, José-Germano has four children, who are heading in a wide range of directions. One of his daughters is an artist, another is hoping to study communications and marketing, while one of his sons is at business school. Maria-José believes that this breadth of interests in the next generation will be a source of strength for them when they come to take over the company. “Having different fields of action, it’s an added value to our company,” she says. Before they join the company, however, José-Germano is keen that his children gain experience outside the group first, and then bring their newfound skills and knowledge back in.
Preparing the next generation for leadership
There is a structured plan in place for how the integration will take place. The next generation will all join what is known as the “family council” and then, when they turn 25, each will be invited to become “somewhat closer to the centre of decision-making,” as Maria-José puts it. Here, they will start to see firsthand how discussions are navigated and decisions are agreed upon. “Finding agreement can be a difficult process, and you have to have the people skills and tools to transform it into an easy process,” she explains. “You have to find the places where you agree, and you can’t simply impose your ideas.” It’s part of the process of growing up and becoming more mature. “They have to go through that. We all went through that too.”
Germano de Sousa is a passionate historian of his field and even wrote a book chronicling the history of Portuguese medicine. He has a personal collection of historical microscopes and other laboratory equipment, many of which are on display today in the group’s headquarters.
Before any of the formal protocol is put in place, however, the children need to become steeped in the company’s heritage and values, and to understand the importance it places on independence. “The next generation must know the culture of the family,” says José-Germano. “They must understand what we have done, our history. And they must respect everything that is our legacy, including things you can’t describe.” This isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia, but a crucial way of ensuring future stability and success. As Maria-José explains, “We have to keep track of our values and goals, and pass them on to the next generation, precisely because that’s what makes us strong.”
This year is an important milestone for the company. It marks not only 50 years since Germano established his original laboratory, but also 25 years since Maria-José and José-Germano joined their father and struck out on a path of success through independence. In the autumn, to mark the historic year, the de Sousa family is opening a new museum within the company’s headquarters in Lisbon, which will display Germano’s rare collection of artefacts from the history of Portuguese medicine. It’s also a moment that demands a degree of reflection. “You don’t have any certainties, when you begin building the future,” says Maria-José. “A legacy project is always bigger than you realise when you’re building it. We didn’t know it, but we were building it.”
Reflecting on the journey they’ve been on together as a family, Maria-José also believes that the group’s growth has been motivated by a deeply personal emotion. “Looking back, I really interpret what we’ve done as a sign of the admiration that we share towards our father,” she says. “We’ve transformed this family company that he started into something that really shows his value.”
