The 3G Way: An introduction to the management style of the trio who's taken over some of the most important icons of American capitalism

Homem de Mello, a Brazilian writer, produced a short summary of the management system used by Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira at 3G Capital and at the companies they control.

The system's elements are stated directly: recruit young high-potential people, frequently from outside the industry, and promote them faster than any conventional career path allows; set targets that are deliberately beyond what appears achievable; tie a large share of compensation to those targets and offer partner-level equity to the top performers; measure everything and publish internal rankings; apply zero-based budgeting, in which every cost is justified from nothing each year rather than adjusted from the prior year; maintain absolute cost discipline including at executive level, which is symbolic as much as financial; and apply the same system unchanged to each acquired company.

The book is short and functions as a summary rather than a history or an analysis. Correa's Dream Big covers the same subject at length with reporting and access, and is the fuller treatment.

The reference has not verified the specific claims and figures in this account. The system's costs, which have become visible at Kraft Heinz and at Anheuser-Busch InBev in reduced brand investment, innovation and retention, are not examined here. Read it as a compressed statement of the method and seek the assessment of its results elsewhere.