This is my fifth consecutive project for the last year

New position: Exclusive partner for Bulgaria

Company: Rewardly

Introduce yourself in a few sentences and brief highlights from your career development so far.

I am Maria Stoeva and I have been living at the intersection of HR, people development, and strategic transformation for more than 10 years. I am no longer just working in this field, but since last year I have been building an ecosystem of companies that drive it forward.

This ecosystem is called SISTEMMA – a strategic hub for organizational development and business success. Together with it are initiatives like DisruptHR Sofia, the HR One digitalization platform, the series of masterclasses Excellevate, and since yesterday it includes Rewardly.

The most important thing for me in terms of career is that I learn continuously and every day – I have four higher education degrees from leading European universities, two specializations, and carriages full of read books, and I continue. I believe that my mission is to make complex things understandable, and the necessary ones – applicable, as my aspiration is to provide the most current and best that I am capable of. I learn the most from the people around me – they are the great ecosystem that influences each other, supports each other, and helps everyone in it to develop.

Thanks to all this, I like, even love my career path. And the other day, in response to my daughter, I realized that I give the most important thing – a good example to my children, and what are our career successes if not for that – to be an example for our most valuable people and to be happy and fulfilled ourselves.

What motivates you to accept this new role and what are your main goals in the position?

This is the fifth project I am taking on just in the last year and despite this I never hesitated for a moment. I am not saying that I am not worried about potential overload and I am particularly careful about my personal time and quality rest, but I simply could not refuse – I have realized the need for such a decision for a little over five years.

I have met with hundreds of employers and in a large part of our conversations, they have asked me questions like: “How do I make a decision about salary increases when the market literally changes from month to month?”; “What should we compare ourselves to – a PDF from last autumn?”; “How do I justify a realistic budget for people when the headquarters do not believe me about what is happening in Bulgaria?”.

Rewardly is exactly this missing until now tool – live, filtered data in real time by any criteria. Nothing is blind. Everything is logical, visualized, reasoned, easy and accessible. And my goal is clear: to help employers in Bulgaria to make bold and fair decisions that are otherwise postponed for various reasons.

 

What professional or personal qualities do you think will help you succeed in your new position?

First of all – the ability to build phenomenal teams. I believe in the people with whom we embark together on this path forward, and I know that success is never a solo performance.

After that, my ability to be open to innovation. I am not afraid to hear “it can be better,” because that’s how real improvements happen. I am organizing an event to present rewardly not so much to present it (that will happen anyway), but more to get feedback and constructive opinions from people whose opinions matter to me.

And last but not least – it helps me a lot the long-standing trust I have built in the market. People who have worked with me know that if I say something is 10 out of 10, it means it is 10 out of 10. I do things with consistency and with very high quality, thanks to which I enjoy trust. I build on it and grow upwards.

 

What challenges do you expect to face and how do you approach change management?

The truth is that the only thing I worry about is the overload from working on many initiatives simultaneously. Years of excessive overload in a corporation have created many problems for me – I am still recovering, literally. That’s why I am particularly careful with my time and I am still building habits to put myself first – to take care of my sleep, movement, food, and rest, and only then – to start working. And also for this reason, from the very beginning, I start with a flying team. I believe that together with smart, creative, responsible, and independent people, we can achieve great successes. 

As for change management – we live in a VUCA world and the challenges are not what we expect. But I know how I will face them – with logic, with dialogue, and with a large dose of creativity.

I am one of those people who not only are not afraid of changes, but love them and take advantage of them. I teach this to the people I train and mentor – to embrace changes as their greatest opportunities and catalysts.

 

What is your approach to teamwork and building a strong internal culture?

For me, the team is not a collection of positions, but a shared rhythm. I believe that culture is built with small gestures, with a lot of trust, with constant transparency and with deep respect for the person opposite.

I know the people I work with as people. I do not work with them equally – I adapt to the needs, specifics, dreams, possibilities, and values of each. I take their needs into account and support them in and out of work.

I am happy that in every direction I work with small but highly expert teams of good and honest people with great potential and ambitions.

For me, culture does not happen in a mission stuck on the wall, but in the way we interact every day. Do we tell each other everything and on time, do we respect different opinions, do we allow ourselves mistakes, do we celebrate our successes together, do we encourage experimentation, do we care about results...  

 

What would you like people to say about you in the company after a few months?

I want what is said at the moment to remain just so – that it is easy and pleasant to work with me, that I know where I am going, that I keep my word. My constant goal is very simple – to sleep peacefully. I want it to stay that way.  That is enough for me.