Gerdau Mind the Gap Case Study: Immersive Leadership Development in Heavy Industry (via Point - Facilitação Criativa)

[IMAGE 1, hero] Alt text: “Participants of Gerdau’s Mind the Gap program in an immersive industrial-leadership development session, with materials and simulation dashboards visible in an executive workshop environment” Filename suggested: case-gerdau-mind-the-gap-hero.jpg

TL;DR: Mind the Gap was a leadership development program for Gerdau, produced by Point - Facilitação Criativa, with Ivan Prado as facilitator. The program tackled a common symptom in the steel industry: the gap between operational management (technical-industrial profile) and consolidated executive vision, hampering the succession pipeline for strategic positions. It combined immersive simulation, executive content, and integrative practice in a format internally recognized as a benchmark structuring program.

Gerdau is one of the largest steel companies in Brazil and worldwide. Like many established Brazilian heavy industries, Gerdau builds its leadership pipeline primarily from operations: managers promoted based on technical and operational excellence who progressively take on positions with broader financial and strategic scope.

Client and Challenge

The typical operational symptom in steel (and heavy industry generally) is asymmetry of capabilities between senior operational and executive levels. The excellent plant manager who deeply knows production capacity, operational efficiency, quality, and industrial safety frequently takes on executive directorship without analogous tooling for strategic financial decisions, competitive positioning, portfolio management.

Gerdau was not the first nor the last company in the sector to face this challenge. What differentiates Mind the Gap is how Gerdau, in partnership with Point - Facilitação Criativa, decided to address the gap: an immersive program with careful creative production, not traditional corporate training.

About Point - Facilitação Criativa

Point - Facilitação Criativa was a Brazilian company focused on producing immersive corporate-development programs for large clients (Gerdau, Yara, Vetor, Storm, PPT Academy, Youcom, among others). The firm combined creative production (narrative, visual identity, scenic format) with executive-facilitation methodology.

Ivan Prado served as facilitator on several Point programs, including Mind the Gap (Gerdau) and Innovation Journey (Yara), and had a close relationship with the Point team as partner-in-formation before the firm closed by founders’ priorities. SkilLab has explicit authorization to use Point cases as portfolio proof.

The division of labor within the program was clear: Point produced the program (concept, identity, flow, materials, operations); Ivan Prado facilitated sessions with expertise in corporate simulation and executive-learning dynamics.

Approach: Produced Immersion

The structural differentiator of Mind the Gap was not the leadership-development content (broadly known in the literature) nor the corporate simulation itself (several consolidated options exist on the market, including in the Celemi portfolio). The differentiator was the creative production around the program.

The immersion created a narrative environment distinct from the participants’ office routine. The visual identity reinforced the program concept. Operations combined plenary sessions, simulation, team work, individual reflection moments. Participants left each day having lived an intellectually demanding and emotionally dense experience.

For a steel-industry audience with a predominantly technical-industrial profile, that difference matters. Programs that try to bring conventional MBA format to this audience frequently collide with cultural expectations; programs with strong creative production create space for the productive discomfort necessary to executive development.

Content and Structure

Mind the Gap content pillars (and those of similar programs) typically combine three fronts.

Front 1: integrated business view. For operational managers moving to executive leadership, the central transition is from local optimization (my plant, my area) to global optimization (the company as a whole). Executive management simulations help live this transition in a safe environment.

Front 2: applied financial reading. Executive decisions in steel demand fluency in capital intensity, long cycles, investment decisions. The financial literacy that suffices for operational management does not suffice for directorship. Apples & Oranges or similar simulations can enter as modules depending on the configuration.

Front 3: decision-making under ambiguity. Executive decisions rarely have the operational clarity of shop-floor decisions. The program needs to expose participants to multiple ambiguous scenarios and calibrate the skill of deciding with partial information.

Facilitation ties the three pillars together so each participant leaves with a personal map of their own gaps and what practice they will continue after the program.

Result and Internal Recognition

Mind the Gap consolidated as an internal Gerdau benchmark for structuring leadership-pipeline programs. Specific quantitative details (number of participants who progressed to executive positions, comparative indicators pre and post program, retention) are subject to confirmation with Gerdau and Point before specific external publication of these numbers.

The strong signal of effectiveness, for programs like this, is continuity. Leadership-pipeline initiatives that become single HR events decay rapidly. Initiatives that consolidate as recurring company cycles, with successive editions, indicate the company has internally validated ROI.

What We Learned from the Project

Three structural learnings.

First: partnership between creative production and executive facilitation works. Programs that try to concentrate everything in a single firm (production + facilitation + methodology) frequently deliver mediocre across all fronts. Division between who produces (Point) and who facilitates (Ivan Prado / SkilLab) gave better results on each axis.

Second: heavy industry requires careful creative production. Traditional leadership-development formats frequently fail to engage technical-industrial audiences. Point’s production created visual and narrative language that respected the profile without sounding patronizing.

Third: the gap between senior operational and executive is a translation problem, not an intelligence problem. Program participants were, in their majority, exceptional professionals in their areas. What was missing was not cognitive capacity, it was structured exposure to the tools and vocabulary of the next level. Well-designed programs provide that exposure in dense and respectful format.

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To understand how we integrate business games and executive simulations into broader development programs, explore our corporate gamification practice. For other Point or direct SkilLab cases, see the cases section or read our post with 20 Brazilian examples. For the technical discussion on when each type of business game serves which executive objective, read the post on business games for strategy and leadership.

Mind the Gap remains, even after Point’s closure, one of the cleanest references of immersive leadership development for Brazilian heavy industry. The combination of careful creative production, executive facilitation, and a client committed to internal pipeline generated a program that many sector companies seek to emulate.

By Ivan Prado · Founder, SkilLab · May 10, 2026