# Transcript: Second life begins after fifty

## Description

Together, we'll also take a look into the new and fast-paced world that Jitka has entered. She will share with us what works for her in this world in terms of leadership, management, and building company culture, as well as what it’s like to be the number two in the market. We will also explore her other plans and visions.



Who is Jitka Dvořáková?



Jitka Dvořáková began her ten-year tenure in 1990 as general manager for the Czech Republic and Slovakia at a Japanese company manufacturing Panasonic products. She later moved to Philips, where she became the first woman in the company’s history to hold a position in European management, serving as general manager for Central and Eastern Europe.Since 2000, her name has been associated with e-commerce, specifically with Mall and CZC.cz, which have been united under Mallgroup for the past five years. She worked at both companies simultaneously, as CEO of CZC and also led Mallgroup’s commercial activities in Slovenia and Croatia for two years as regional director.

## Transcript

**[00:00:00]** www.hradeckesluzby.cz

**[00:00:30]** www.hradeckesluzby.cz

**[00:00:42]** My name is Honza Mašek.

**[00:00:44]** Welcome to everyone who came to Brain & Breakfast today.

**[00:00:48]** Welcome to everyone watching us live.

**[00:00:51]** Greetings to many.

**[00:00:53]** Companies, libraries, schools, coworking centers,

**[00:00:58]** where we broadcast breakfast live.

**[00:01:01]** The goal of the breakfast is to bring people closer,

**[00:01:04]** to open interesting, sometimes controversial topics,

**[00:01:08]** and discuss them.

**[00:01:10]** I don't think it will be different today,

**[00:01:14]** because these discussions usually are,

**[00:01:18]** and we want them to be interactive,

**[00:01:20]** so I ask all of you, whether here in the hall,

**[00:01:22]** or those watching us live,

**[00:01:25]** to take a mobile phone,

**[00:01:27]** or some smart device,

**[00:01:29]** and go to www.slajdu.com

**[00:01:33]** hashtag Brain,

**[00:01:36]** or if you are watching on rb.edu,

**[00:01:40]** you can vote directly under the broadcast

**[00:01:44]** on the first question, whether this is your first breakfast,

**[00:01:48]** or not.

**[00:01:50]** This is to get you started,

**[00:01:52]** during the discussion,

**[00:01:54]** and during the lecture there will be more questions,

**[00:01:57]** and after the lecture, there will be a discussion,

**[00:01:59]** which means when you vote,

**[00:02:01]** definitely, if you have any questions

**[00:02:03]** for our guest today,

**[00:02:05]** you can ask them.

**[00:02:08]** So.

**[00:02:10]** Let's see who is here for the first time.

**[00:02:12]** No, I've been here before, so 73 hundred people

**[00:02:15]** have already attended breakfast.

**[00:02:17]** So. Today I would like to

**[00:02:21]** welcome a dear guest,

**[00:02:23]** Ms. Jitka Dvořáková.

**[00:02:25]** Hello, Jitka.

**[00:02:27]** Welcome everyone.

**[00:02:29]** Come on, take a seat.

**[00:02:31]** For those who don't know you,

**[00:02:35]** you are currently living CZC.

**[00:02:39]** You've gone through a small transformation

**[00:02:42]** from a comfortable corporate saddle

**[00:02:45]** to something a bit faster-paced.

**[00:02:48]** And actually, your whole story and life

**[00:02:50]** is woven, I would say,

**[00:02:53]** with a lot of courage and many things

**[00:02:55]** that can inspire.

**[00:02:57]** I came across you because,

**[00:02:59]** when I started talking to people in the e-commerce world,

**[00:03:02]** where you are now,

**[00:03:05]** they often mentioned your name.

**[00:03:07]** That you are someone who inspired and pushed them forward.

**[00:03:09]** That stuck in my mind,

**[00:03:12]** so I wanted to invite you

**[00:03:15]** to hear your story.

**[00:03:17]** So it's yours now, I'm stepping away

**[00:03:19]** and enjoy it.

**[00:03:22]** We'll see each other again soon for questions.

**[00:03:24]** Thank you, take care for now.

**[00:03:26]** Jitka, it's all yours.

**[00:03:28]** Thank you. Good morning everyone.

**[00:03:30]** Well, if you have a good morning,

**[00:03:32]** because I'm a night owl and my good morning starts after nine.

**[00:03:34]** But don't worry, I've been practicing all week,

**[00:03:37]** so I can manage.

**[00:03:39]** I was pleasantly surprised

**[00:03:41]** by how I got through Prague,

**[00:03:43]** starting to change my habits.

**[00:03:45]** A special good morning goes to my colleagues at Malaria,

**[00:03:47]** if they got up early and are already there.

**[00:03:50]** I was thinking about why I'm here.

**[00:03:55]** Maybe it's because I'm at the end,

**[00:03:58]** so I have everything from start to finish.

**[00:04:01]** Yes, it's basically an invitation

**[00:04:04]** to reflect, but on the other hand,

**[00:04:10]** I'm here mainly to tell you,

**[00:04:12]** that you don't have to achieve everything by 50,

**[00:04:14]** because there's still plenty of time.

**[00:04:17]** It's really hard to talk,

**[00:04:19]** when you don't have specific questions or a set topic,

**[00:04:22]** and it feels like hell,

**[00:04:24]** when you have to talk about yourself.

**[00:04:28]** The most common question I get,

**[00:04:31]** is how an old-fashioned blonde

**[00:04:34]** runs an IT company.

**[00:04:36]** For years, I've answered,

**[00:04:38]** that it doesn't matter at all,

**[00:04:40]** whether I understand computers or not,

**[00:04:42]** because I have 300 people there

**[00:04:44]** who do understand them, so I don't have to.

**[00:04:46]** But finally, as you can see in this picture,

**[00:04:50]** I found the reason what I have in common with IT.

**[00:04:55]** Before I get to the big fifty,

**[00:04:59]** you have to allow me three slides,

**[00:05:01]** to go back to the very beginning,

**[00:05:03]** to what actually started my career.

**[00:05:06]** And the older I got,

**[00:05:08]** the more I realized,

**[00:05:10]** that it was all my mom's fault.

**[00:05:12]** It was a sentence that shaped my adult life,

**[00:05:15]** and when I was 25 years old,

**[00:05:17]** and I came to tell my mom,

**[00:05:19]** that I wanted to get married,

**[00:05:21]** the response was,

**[00:05:24]** hopefully little kids aren't watching,

**[00:05:27]** and the answer was, well, that's screwed.

**[00:05:30]** What she meant to say was,

**[00:05:32]** that all the energy I had put

**[00:05:34]** into studying, languages, and expertise,

**[00:05:36]** and traveling and everything,

**[00:05:38]** would now be useless,

**[00:05:41]** because I'd be running after little kids,

**[00:05:44]** and focusing on family.

**[00:05:46]** And I thought then,

**[00:05:48]** that's not necessary at all,

**[00:05:50]** You can manage everything

**[00:05:52]** and it can work.

**[00:05:54]** What I always say is

**[00:05:56]** that it requires almost prime minister-level planning,

**[00:05:58]** and I think some of you moms

**[00:06:01]** will confirm that for me,

**[00:06:03]** that I had those pages in my planner,

**[00:06:05]** because back then there was no technology yet,

**[00:06:07]** completely full and overlapping meetings,

**[00:06:09]** activities with clubs,

**[00:06:11]** and at the beginning even

**[00:06:13]** returning home for breastfeeding.

**[00:06:15]** Maruška, you definitely experienced this.

**[00:06:17]** So it really takes that,

**[00:06:19]** but it's nothing bad,

**[00:06:21]** I never really regretted it,

**[00:06:23]** because it can simply be done.

**[00:06:25]** When I was fifty,

**[00:06:27]** and that was some time ago when I reflected,

**[00:06:29]** I basically realized

**[00:06:31]** that my whole life I was trying to prove to my mom

**[00:06:33]** that you can combine a career,

**[00:06:35]** an ambitious career,

**[00:06:37]** with good family care.

**[00:06:39]** Unfortunately,

**[00:06:41]** there was no praise.

**[00:06:43]** The only thing my mom said in this regard

**[00:06:45]** was that I'm just a man in a skirt,

**[00:06:47]** and I simply can't agree with that,

**[00:06:49]** because I'm a completely normal woman,

**[00:06:51]** who still cries every time

**[00:06:53]** at Grandma Božena Němcová.

**[00:06:59]** Now I would go through,

**[00:07:01]** it's not long,

**[00:07:03]** because I also came to my professional path,

**[00:07:05]** because I haven't experienced many positions

**[00:07:07]** in business over that time.

**[00:07:11]** I even have to say,

**[00:07:13]** that until 50 years old, only two positions,

**[00:07:15]** but after 50, in the last 10 years, three,

**[00:07:17]** so the acceleration is visible

**[00:07:19]** even in this sense.

**[00:07:21]** I got my very first job through connections,

**[00:07:23]** because I studied foreign trade,

**[00:07:25]** but due to my political profile,

**[00:07:27]** I couldn't fully perform it,

**[00:07:29]** so I eventually got

**[00:07:31]** into a foreign trade company

**[00:07:33]** named Tuzex with a little help.

**[00:07:35]** Probably no one remembers that much.

**[00:07:37]** And there I just sat somewhere

**[00:07:39]** locked in an office,

**[00:07:41]** because I basically wasn't sufficiently cleared

**[00:07:43]** to be able

**[00:07:45]** to work directly

**[00:07:47]** with foreign partners.

**[00:07:49]** And after the revolution, it actually brought me

**[00:07:51]** my first position,

**[00:07:53]** because a representative of a Swiss company,

**[00:07:55]** which imported Japanese electronics to the Czech Republic,

**[00:07:57]** asked who the diligent woman was who always sent him everything

**[00:07:59]** on time and was

**[00:08:01]** the first

**[00:08:03]** offer.

**[00:08:05]** The second position

**[00:08:07]** was basically

**[00:08:09]** more of a natural continuation,

**[00:08:11]** because the Swiss company

**[00:08:13]** imported Panasonic to the Czech Republic

**[00:08:15]** especially, and after the revolution,

**[00:08:17]** when the political and economic

**[00:08:19]** conditions improved here, the

**[00:08:21]** Japanese decided to come directly.

**[00:08:23]** They sent to our office,

**[00:08:25]** where I worked with my three colleagues,

**[00:08:27]** a Japanese man who sat with us

**[00:08:29]** for three months, constantly writing something,

**[00:08:31]** not asking much.

**[00:08:33]** After three months, the Japanese delegation accepted

**[00:08:37]** and they asked me to go

**[00:08:39]** interpret for the lawyers, that a company

**[00:08:41]** was going to be established.

**[00:08:43]** And there I was a bit shocked because

**[00:08:45]** when the lawyer asked,

**[00:08:47]** who would be the statutory representative of the new

**[00:08:49]** company, Mr. Ito

**[00:08:51]** from Tokyo said, well, here is Jitka.

**[00:08:53]** Unfortunately, that same day three colleagues told me

**[00:08:57]** that they couldn't agree among themselves

**[00:08:59]** on who would get the position, and this

**[00:09:01]** was a big disappointment for them. When I asked my Japanese boss years later

**[00:09:03]** why he actually did that, because

**[00:09:05]** I think we all know the situation of women

**[00:09:07]** in Japan, he told me,

**[00:09:09]** I studied in America and I learned there

**[00:09:11]** that women

**[00:09:13]** are much stronger in

**[00:09:15]** execution, reliable,

**[00:09:17]** and I hoped

**[00:09:19]** they wouldn't interfere too much with

**[00:09:21]** strategy. So that was

**[00:09:23]** how I got my first

**[00:09:25]** director position and at the same time

**[00:09:27]** it was the first job where I

**[00:09:29]** stayed for ten years.

**[00:09:31]** Then came a chance encounter on the street, when I

**[00:09:33]** met a colleague from university long ago, he asked me how I was.

**[00:09:35]** I said fine, but

**[00:09:37]** it wasn't the same anymore, I wasn't enjoying it

**[00:09:39]** and he called me the next day, asking if I

**[00:09:43]** maybe something could be there.

**[00:09:45]** And that was another ten years.

**[00:09:47]** Then came

**[00:09:49]** also a woman and turning fifty

**[00:09:51]** and a phone call

**[00:09:53]** from Ondřej Fric.

**[00:10:00]** who offered me a job at MOL.

**[00:10:04]** I honestly had no idea what MOL was, I have to say.

**[00:10:08]** But anyway, things started to pick up there a bit,

**[00:10:12]** and basically I got my last position

**[00:10:16]** thanks to meeting Josef Matejka, the founder of CZC,

**[00:10:20]** at Počítačové hory, and he gave me the offer.

**[00:10:24]** What I want to say here is that

**[00:10:29]** maybe I didn't even have to be here today.

**[00:10:31]** If I had to go through any selection process,

**[00:10:35]** apply somewhere,

**[00:10:37]** and God forbid pass some assessment,

**[00:10:39]** I might still be sitting locked in an office today,

**[00:10:42]** but I was lucky that the jobs came to me gradually,

**[00:10:46]** and I never had to really fight for any of them.

**[00:10:51]** And there's one more thing, which isn't exactly advice,

**[00:10:55]** besides the fact that I never looked for a job,

**[00:10:57]** I also never negotiated my salary.

**[00:11:01]** I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's right or wrong,

**[00:11:05]** but my philosophy was always,

**[00:11:08]** I went after the content of the work.

**[00:11:09]** And if the salary offer at least covered

**[00:11:13]** paying my bills,

**[00:11:16]** I told myself, I'll go for it,

**[00:11:18]** and different possibilities could happen.

**[00:11:21]** I would show what I can do, and either I would be able to do it,

**[00:11:24]** and hope the company would appreciate it and give me the right reward.

**[00:11:29]** Or I wouldn't be able to do it, and that would be okay.

**[00:11:31]** Or I would be able to do it and the company wouldn't appreciate it,

**[00:11:33]** and then it's not the right place for me and I'd have to look elsewhere.

**[00:11:37]** I have to say, this approach worked incredibly well for me all my life,

**[00:11:41]** because the company always came to me saying, you do this well, we'd like to give you a raise.

**[00:11:45]** And then, of course, once it didn't happen.

**[00:11:48]** And it turned out that never negotiating my salary

**[00:11:52]** and not knowing how to do it was actually a disadvantage.

**[00:11:56]** Now that I've gone through five positions,

**[00:11:59]** I'd also like to say something about leaving jobs,

**[00:12:01]** because we all leave for different reasons.

**[00:12:05]** I left Panasonic after ten years,

**[00:12:07]** because I felt I no longer had added value.

**[00:12:11]** Because I had become very narrowly focused,

**[00:12:14]** I already do things almost out of routine, I can't look at them from the outside

**[00:12:18]** and I can't bring anything new to it.

**[00:12:21]** For the Japanese, it was a disappointment,

**[00:12:23]** because their culture is a bit different and there, people,

**[00:12:26]** at least my generation, when they joined a company,

**[00:12:28]** always called it a lifetime commitment

**[00:12:32]** and basically started and ended their career there.

**[00:12:35]** And I felt like I just wasn't moving forward anymore.

**[00:12:41]** At Philips, after ten years, I canceled my position

**[00:12:44]** during the emerging crisis in 2008,

**[00:12:48]** when we were doing a big reorganization,

**[00:12:50]** and I hoped the company would offer me something else.

**[00:12:55]** However, all the offers were outside Europe,

**[00:12:57]** and I was already at an age, especially with my children,

**[00:13:00]** that moving the whole family was out of the question,

**[00:13:03]** and I didn't want to move alone,

**[00:13:06]** so basically after ten years, we agreed to part ways.

**[00:13:11]** I left MOL quite emotionally.

**[00:13:16]** It was very uncharacteristic for me; many things there troubled me.

**[00:13:20]** Then the first acquisition, when MOL acquired its African group on Sprs.

**[00:13:27]** And then one Monday, it clicked in my head and I said to myself, no more.

**[00:13:32]** And before I changed my mind,

**[00:13:34]** I went straight to say I wanted to quit because it no longer made me happy.

**[00:13:38]** At CZC, I feel at home.

**[00:13:40]** I'm still there.

**[00:13:42]** But of course, one has certain limits set inside,

**[00:13:46]** and for the last ten years, I've been telling myself

**[00:13:49]** that no one will force me to do things that don't make sense to me internally.

**[00:13:54]** Whenever people ask me why only now, why not always like this,

**[00:13:57]** I wasn't sure until I was fifty if I knew.

**[00:14:00]** I always tried even things I didn't like,

**[00:14:03]** and I tried to do them as best as I could,

**[00:14:07]** to basically learn something new if possible.

**[00:14:10]** And I think after fifty, I do know,

**[00:14:12]** so if I were forced to stand in front of my team

**[00:14:16]** and say we have to do this, but I didn't believe it inside,

**[00:14:20]** that would probably be the reason.

**[00:14:24]** And now we come to the period I want to talk about with you today.

**[00:14:31]** I downplay it, but basically, it was kind of like that.

**[00:14:36]** I don't downplay it that much.

**[00:14:37]** At the beginning, I just made some kind of plan,

**[00:14:40]** to prove to my mom that it was simply possible,

**[00:14:42]** and then I was checking it off.

**[00:14:45]** And I have to say, until I was fifty, it actually seemed perfect.

**[00:14:49]** Today, when I look at it, it was fine,

**[00:14:52]** there were lots of nice things, but overall, a bit boring.

**[00:15:01]** Then basically the fifties came and things started to change.

**[00:15:07]** My mom stopped skiing when she was 45,

**[00:15:11]** and back then I thought, about time.

**[00:15:15]** It was complicated, she was scared, we were worried about her,

**[00:15:17]** I was thinking, Jesus, it's really necessary now.

**[00:15:20]** And that basically gave me the impression,

**[00:15:23]** that after fifty, nothing really happens anymore.

**[00:15:27]** The person just sits somewhere and now mainly has to make sure,

**[00:15:30]** to somehow get through to retirement.

**[00:15:35]** I have to say, if someone told me today at 61,

**[00:15:38]** that I shouldn't ski anymore, I'd probably hit them with a pole,

**[00:15:43]** because I just can't imagine it at all.

**[00:15:47]** I really turned my professional career around,

**[00:15:51]** because I left the world of international corporations

**[00:15:55]** and went to the company MOL, about which I knew nothing,

**[00:16:00]** and I was embarrassed to admit that.

**[00:16:02]** I didn't know anything about online or e-commerce either.

**[00:16:08]** It even felt like I was making a career step backward,

**[00:16:11]** but I wanted to stay in Prague and didn't want to travel as much,

**[00:16:14]** like I did before.

**[00:16:16]** What interested me most back then was,

**[00:16:19]** that at 50, you probably can't just go to the market and say,

**[00:16:22]** someone give me a chance, I want to learn something new.

**[00:16:26]** That's really difficult because you're boxed in,

**[00:16:28]** most of the offers you get

**[00:16:30]** are in the field you are long known to know.

**[00:16:36]** And of course, what's a bit difficult about it,

**[00:16:39]** is the stress from the age.

**[00:16:42]** You come into something completely new, that you don't understand,

**[00:16:45]** you have some reputation, but it's actually useless,

**[00:16:48]** because you're worse off than all the colleagues you're joining.

**[00:16:55]** The stress after starting at MOL came after just six weeks,

**[00:16:59]** when I really had no idea what was going on.

**[00:17:02]** I was thinking, Dvořačka, what are you doing here, this is just a terrible embarrassment.

**[00:17:06]** It was the moment when I started looking for how I could add value,

**[00:17:10]** before learning the rest.

**[00:17:12]** So back then, there were some open positions,

**[00:17:14]** so I launched some hiring in the sales department,

**[00:17:18]** but those nights with Google were really tough,

**[00:17:20]** because I came to the first meeting

**[00:17:23]** and I was basically the only woman there.

**[00:17:26]** It was a holding management meeting, and it went in bare sentences

**[00:17:31]** and abbreviations that meant nothing to me.

**[00:17:34]** How did our PPC perform last week, how is SEO doing,

**[00:17:38]** how are we doing with conversion,

**[00:17:41]** and I had no idea what was being talked about.

**[00:17:43]** So rather than admit it, I spent whole nights trying to google it.

**[00:17:47]** The only thing I didn’t quite get were the bare sentences,

**[00:17:50]** so I asked a friendly finance colleague after the meeting and said,

**[00:17:55]** does it always go like this, that someone just says a bare sentence

**[00:17:59]** with a verb and a number?

**[00:18:00]** He started laughing and said, not at all.

**[00:18:03]** But until now, it was all men here.

**[00:18:06]** So last week we didn’t do so well, damn it.

**[00:18:10]** And now I just came in and they didn’t know how to handle it,

**[00:18:13]** they didn’t last long.

**[00:18:15]** So I had to adapt more, but it was pretty funny back then.

**[00:18:22]** One thing I learned is humility, that even at fifty,

**[00:18:26]** you can come into an environment that is completely unfamiliar to you.

**[00:18:30]** And back then I thought, oh my god, why did I want to learn something.

**[00:18:34]** Now it’s just embarrassing.

**[00:18:35]** But what I learned most is respect for youth.

**[00:18:39]** Now people tend, when you talk about a problem,

**[00:18:43]** and you say it can’t be done,

**[00:18:45]** then somewhere in the back a 23-year-old rookie speaks up,

**[00:18:49]** who actually works part-time while still in college,

**[00:18:52]** and says, well, actually it can be done?

**[00:18:55]** And now you tend to say, look,

**[00:18:58]** I was doing this long ago when you were still in diapers,

**[00:19:01]** so don’t tell me anything here.

**[00:19:04]** But today I just don’t say that sentence anymore,

**[00:19:06]** because you realize that when you say it can’t be done,

**[00:19:11]** it’s maybe because you tried several times and it didn’t work,

**[00:19:15]** or maybe you tried only once and it didn’t work

**[00:19:18]** And you already have it in your head that it won't work.

**[00:19:20]** But the young people look at it completely differently

**[00:19:23]** and they managed to convince me.

**[00:19:26]** And I have huge respect for that, I learned to listen to them

**[00:19:30]** and I have to say that to this day I keep learning from them

**[00:19:34]** and I feel really good among them.

**[00:19:37]** So, when the work came,

**[00:19:40]** the whole dynamic of my life changed,

**[00:19:43]** including my personal life, because right after turning fifty,

**[00:19:47]** after the not entirely voluntary departure from Philips,

**[00:19:52]** there was also the departure of all three men from my household.

**[00:19:57]** In two cases, it was the planned departure of my sons to their own lives,

**[00:20:00]** in the third case, it was the unplanned departure of my husband with a friend.

**[00:20:06]** And it basically hinted at something between suicide and disaster.

**[00:20:12]** I have many great friends who comforted me and tried to encourage me

**[00:20:17]** and took care of my mental well-being, but I have an even better older son,

**[00:20:22]** who simply came and said, you know what, Mom, stop feeling sorry for yourself.

**[00:20:28]** He said it for the first time then, and since then he had to say it many times,

**[00:20:32]** but it definitely helps me. So if you remember that checklist from before,

**[00:20:36]** the Croatian Riviera was replaced by China, the Rainforest, and Colombia,

**[00:20:41]** and I basically call it the trio of helicopter, horse, and braid,

**[00:20:49]** meaning that after fifty, I sat in a helicopter for the first time,

**[00:20:56]** sat in a plane as a co-pilot for the first time, rode a horse for the first time,

**[00:21:00]** and rode it up to three thousand meters in the Colombian mountains,

**[00:21:05]** and for the first time in my life, I had hair long enough to tie it in a ponytail.

**[00:21:09]** And all of this happened after fifty,

**[00:21:13]** which I thought was the age when nothing more would happen in life.

**[00:21:16]** That was the biggest first.

**[00:21:21]** I also partially became Slovenian,

**[00:21:25]** because just before turning sixty, I took on another job

**[00:21:28]** and half-moved to Ljubljana to help with the organization

**[00:21:33]** we have in Southern Europe.

**[00:21:37]** Now I would like to talk a bit about leadership itself.

**[00:21:41]** I built my leadership for 20 years

**[00:21:46]** based on some empirical knowledge

**[00:21:49]** and on my intuition, because I am an extrovert,

**[00:21:52]** I need people, I really enjoy being among people.

**[00:21:57]** Then I was invited to a conference

**[00:22:00]** organized by Petr Ludvík about leadership.

**[00:22:06]** And I wanted to focus a bit on leadership by comparing,

**[00:22:11]** what the difference is. I was touching on the phrase,

**[00:22:14]** that I will run the state like a company, which of course is nonsense,

**[00:22:18]** and we will get to that. But I wanted to compare,

**[00:22:21]** the difference between a leader who runs a state,

**[00:22:24]** and a leader who runs a company, and what the rules are.

**[00:22:27]** And a leader who knows how to lead must first and foremost be able to build a team.

**[00:22:33]** At least in my opinion.

**[00:22:35]** And here I like to give the example of Jürgen Klopp,

**[00:22:38]** because I see that the audience here is mostly women,

**[00:22:42]** and maybe we agree that Liverpool is among the best football teams

**[00:22:46]** in the world. And Jürgen Klopp built that team from players

**[00:22:51]** who were not individual stars, but team-oriented,

**[00:22:56]** and he made an excellent team out of them.

**[00:22:58]** You need to be able to listen to the people around you,

**[00:23:01]** if you want to be a good leader.

**[00:23:03]** And I encountered this with Jana Moravová,

**[00:23:06]** who basically changed the leadership style at Mountfield,

**[00:23:09]** when she took over after the founding father,

**[00:23:11]** Ivan Drbohlav.

**[00:23:13]** A leader must be able to recognize the right ideas and make decisions about them.

**[00:23:18]** And especially take responsibility, which I admired

**[00:23:22]** in Tony Blair regarding the Iraq war,

**[00:23:25]** that he was able to accept that responsibility.

**[00:23:28]** In other words, it doesn't matter if it's a company or a state,

**[00:23:31]** but the rules apply exactly the same.

**[00:23:33]** And then we also need a leader who can lead the team, company,

**[00:23:37]** or state out of a crisis.

**[00:23:40]** Such a person must above all be credible.

**[00:23:43]** They must be able to make tough decisions and bear responsibility

**[00:23:46]** for those tough decisions.

**[00:23:48]** For me, a credible leader has always been,

**[00:23:51]** or especially recently, Angela Merkel.

**[00:23:54]** I'm not a feminist, but I have to say,

**[00:23:56]** at the start of the pandemic crisis, I liked to watch

**[00:23:59]** her ten-minute evening TV addresses,

**[00:24:02]** because she was able to say, we don't know what will happen,

**[00:24:06]** but we will tell you the truth,

**[00:24:08]** we will share the information.

**[00:24:10]** Please, kindly give us your trust.

**[00:24:13]** Another person who has always been an inspiration to me in this regard,

**[00:24:16]** was Tony Shea, the founder of Zappos,

**[00:24:19]** who was able to convince his team so well

**[00:24:22]** about his vision that not only did they move with him,

**[00:24:25]** when he relocated across half of America,

**[00:24:27]** but they also worked for several months without pay,

**[00:24:30]** because they knew he would get the company out of the crisis, and he did.

**[00:24:34]** And Vincent Churchill is a person for me,

**[00:24:37]** who knows how to make the tough decision,

**[00:24:41]** he was able to decide to send thousands of soldiers to their deaths

**[00:24:44]** in order to win the entire war.

**[00:24:46]** Then I have the example of Pope Ratzinger,

**[00:24:49]** who apparently through some self-reflection understood

**[00:24:54]** that he was not the type of leader who could lead the Church out of crisis.

**[00:25:00]** He was only the second pope in history

**[00:25:06]** who is Pope Francis, whom he believed

**[00:25:09]** could help the Church.

**[00:25:15]** Now, building leadership,

**[00:25:20]** when you look at it and compare it,

**[00:25:24]** and consider the conclusions I presented at the conference,

**[00:25:28]** the state is definitely not a company and cannot be managed like a company,

**[00:25:31]** but for a leader, whether a CEO or a prime minister,

**[00:25:35]** the same rules must apply.

**[00:25:38]** On the other hand, if you want to become the right leader,

**[00:25:41]** you don't have to be the best.

**[00:25:43]** You don't have to be the best economist, the best from the Ministry of Industry,

**[00:25:49]** or the best marketer,

**[00:25:51]** but you must be able to assemble a team that you will listen to

**[00:25:54]** and trust.

**[00:25:56]** And you will take responsibility for them, even if it's not directly your fault.

**[00:26:00]** And for that, I think when someone is looking for their dream job,

**[00:26:03]** they could basically consider it a bit like a campaign

**[00:26:07]** and look not only at which direction, or which organization they are joining,

**[00:26:11]** but also who is at its head.

**[00:26:16]** So, the first question for you,

**[00:26:21]** who work in your organizations,

**[00:26:24]** is your boss more of a captain or a helmsman?

**[00:26:28]** And now we will approach leadership from a slightly different angle.

**[00:26:33]** The pandemic came, and it seemed to me,

**[00:26:36]** that so many things are changing, that we work from home

**[00:26:39]** and that the leadership style simply needs to change,

**[00:26:43]** that the management style needs to change, and it seemed appropriate to me

**[00:26:48]** that I could enrich myself a bit with theory

**[00:26:51]** and not just base everything on my own empirical experience,

**[00:26:55]** because of course I have never lived through a pandemic in my life.

**[00:27:00]** So I looked, and these are not my findings now,

**[00:27:03]** this is really theory about the types of leaders that have existed and exist.

**[00:27:07]** The first is the heroic type.

**[00:27:11]** This is the strong visionary, a person with a clear idea,

**[00:27:16]** like Steve Jobs,

**[00:27:19]** or maybe in our conditions, Tomáš Čupr.

**[00:27:24]** Sometime in the late 1990s, another type of leader appeared,

**[00:27:29]** the servant leader, which basically translates to caretaker in our language.

**[00:27:35]** This is the leader who, besides running the company,

**[00:27:39]** takes care that everyone is satisfied, that they have happy homes and families,

**[00:27:44]** and all their needs met.

**[00:27:46]** There are more examples mostly from the political sphere,

**[00:27:50]** but looking at us, the only one who came to mind,

**[00:27:54]** though it was a long time ago, is Tomáš Baťa,

**[00:27:57]** who besides maintaining the vision for his company,

**[00:28:00]** was probably the first to also care

**[00:28:03]** about his employees.

**[00:28:07]** The third type, which basically emerged or started being labeled around 2014,

**[00:28:11]** is the hosting type of leader, which I personally find most likable

**[00:28:15]** because of its style and approach, but probably because

**[00:28:20]** I can't be the first type.

**[00:28:24]** And the second type has the disadvantage

**[00:28:27]** that the person in the leadership position totally burns out and wears themselves down,

**[00:28:30]** because they try to handle everything.

**[00:28:34]** The question is, today it is said that the heroic type of leader

**[00:28:39]** is basically outdated, and we ask why.

**[00:28:43]** I think you can't say it's outdated,

**[00:28:47]** because there will always be masks in our society.

**[00:28:50]** There always will be, but the problem with this type is

**[00:28:53]** that it requires a very difficult and unusual combination of competencies,

**[00:28:56]** in the sense of a strong vision, a clear idea, visionary skills,

**[00:29:01]** and some managerial abilities.

**[00:29:06]** We all know that was one of the things,

**[00:29:10]** where Steve Jobs somewhat failed. That's the first point.

**[00:29:15]** The second is basically that the dynamics of the times have changed.

**[00:29:19]** Today everything is incredibly fast, you can't do it alone,

**[00:29:22]** today you need a team that supports you,

**[00:29:25]** that you draw from and collaborate with,

**[00:29:28]** and then finally there's also the risk,

**[00:29:31]** when that person suddenly isn't there.

**[00:29:34]** Just like at Apple.

**[00:29:36]** For me, the heroic leader was also Petr Kellner.

**[00:29:39]** And when the whole company's strategy

**[00:29:42]** strongly depends on one person,

**[00:29:45]** then if that person is gone,

**[00:29:48]** the whole company can get into trouble.

**[00:29:51]** Although I have to say, what I admire about those heroic leaders

**[00:29:54]** and what I myself have never managed,

**[00:29:57]** is the courage not to seek consensus.

**[00:30:00]** I'm simply convinced about it, so I'll go ahead and you can all be against me.

**[00:30:05]** But only they can afford that.

**[00:30:09]** So. And we have no answers. Do we?

**[00:30:14]** Let's wait.

**[00:30:20]** Ah.

**[00:30:23]** So a nice answer. That of course pleased me.

**[00:30:28]** Let's return to the current type of host leadership

**[00:30:33]** and why I actually like it.

**[00:30:35]** Because it has several roles and positions.

**[00:30:40]** I'll go through them quickly and I put them here in English,

**[00:30:43]** so I don't forget, I remind you that I'm not the author of this theory,

**[00:30:47]** I borrowed it from more qualified people.

**[00:30:50]** A host leader is someone who basically invites their colleagues to things,

**[00:30:56]** who initiates, kickstarts them, who connects people,

**[00:31:00]** who of course participates, but not necessarily always in the leading role,

**[00:31:06]** and who creates the space for problems to be solved,

**[00:31:10]** but at the same time watches certain boundaries that they must guard with their responsibility,

**[00:31:15]** so they are not crossed.

**[00:31:16]** And because it's called situational leadership,

**[00:31:20]** there are several positions or stances.

**[00:31:24]** The first is called 'on stage'.

**[00:31:27]** This is the moment when the leader must decide,

**[00:31:30]** because it's their responsibility, there's no consensus,

**[00:31:33]** we have several options, but we must choose one.

**[00:31:36]** The second one is among the people.

**[00:31:39]** That means he is simply there among the others,

**[00:31:42]** discussing at their level, giving space to his team.

**[00:31:47]** The third, called the so-called balcony,

**[00:31:51]** is when the team works, knows what to do,

**[00:31:55]** but the leader is simply in the observer position,

**[00:31:59]** I'm here, you see me, if you need me, come to me.

**[00:32:02]** And the last one is the most relaxed,

**[00:32:05]** called the kitchen, where you are the host,

**[00:32:08]** you invite the whole team, you have a party,

**[00:32:11]** but the people know what to do at the party, they know how to have fun,

**[00:32:14]** and you can calmly afford to go to the kitchen,

**[00:32:17]** prepare a shot or make more sandwiches.

**[00:32:22]** I built my leadership on trust and rank,

**[00:32:27]** I hope on fairness, but I'm probably not the one to judge that,

**[00:32:31]** credibility and especially consistency, because I think,

**[00:32:35]** that is a trait we women often have,

**[00:32:39]** that we can follow things through and that's why we are valuable partners to men.

**[00:32:44]** But of course, it developed over time.

**[00:32:48]** At the beginning, during my first time at Panasonic,

**[00:32:52]** when I was around thirty, I actually fought for leadership

**[00:32:56]** in two ways.

**[00:32:58]** One was a brake on the team,

**[00:33:01]** and the other was bluffing. I'll explain that right away.

**[00:33:04]** I caused the brake when the company was not big yet,

**[00:33:07]** there were about twenty of us, and I simply decided

**[00:33:10]** that I would be a good director only if I could

**[00:33:13]** replace every single person in the company.

**[00:33:16]** So I slowed the company down for half a year by

**[00:33:19]** not doing what I was supposed to, not making decisions,

**[00:33:22]** but I was an accountant for a while, a service worker for a while,

**[00:33:26]** a regional salesperson for a while.

**[00:33:28]** I just wanted to be able to replace those people, and I have to say,

**[00:33:32]** that gave me the most for my future life of all.

**[00:33:36]** Yes, I know, for half a year I was the brake,

**[00:33:39]** but it really helped me understand

**[00:33:42]** what that department means for the company, what potential it has,

**[00:33:45]** where possible mistakes are, like when I found out

**[00:33:48]** that the accountant is the most meticulous person in the world

**[00:33:52]** and with the same zeal looks for missing ten cents

**[00:33:55]** like ten million.

**[00:33:57]** And that's why the company needs a controller, because they simply tell them,

**[00:34:01]** forget about those ten cents, let's look for the ten million.

**[00:34:04]** And the bluffing was caused by the fact that I was

**[00:34:07]** thirty, a woman, after the revolution and the distribution of consumer electronics,

**[00:34:13]** and now we had, I don't know, how many stores and chains,

**[00:34:17]** all middle-aged men who understood it,

**[00:34:20]** and whenever there was a price discussion, they told me,

**[00:34:23]** Ivaň Mořáková, that TV is way too expensive,

**[00:34:26]** because it doesn't have this type of picture and that.

**[00:34:28]** I always looked like a deer in headlights and said,

**[00:34:31]** this won't work because I can't assert myself.

**[00:34:34]** Back then, to import any device to us,

**[00:34:37]** it had to be submitted to the Electrotechnical Institute,

**[00:34:41]** and along with the sample of the device came

**[00:34:45]** a service manual, a booklet about this thick.

**[00:34:49]** And I always took that booklet with the device,

**[00:34:51]** went three pages from the end, found

**[00:34:54]** three parameters, I had no idea what they meant,

**[00:34:57]** but I memorized them.

**[00:34:59]** And when it came to price discussions, Mrs. Dvořáková,

**[00:35:02]** that TV can't be that expensive because, and I said,

**[00:35:04]** I think it can, because it has these three parameters.

**[00:35:08]** So that was the moment when you say,

**[00:35:11]** oh my god, we’re not going into this discussion anymore,

**[00:35:13]** because she knows way more detail than we do,

**[00:35:16]** and of course they didn't realize she didn't, but I have to say,

**[00:35:18]** it really helped me back then.

**[00:35:20]** At Philips, my path to leadership was

**[00:35:24]** a bit different, because the organization, I had

**[00:35:29]** at the start as a marketer for Central and Eastern Europe,

**[00:35:33]** the organization worked so that something was decided in Amsterdam,

**[00:35:36]** sent to the headquarters in Vienna for Central and Eastern Europe,

**[00:35:39]** and then it went to all those salespeople,

**[00:35:42]** who were on the front line, who were in front of those salespeople,

**[00:35:46]** and their task was to sell more for a better margin,

**[00:35:49]** and they just had these smart talks from Amsterdam,

**[00:35:52]** and of course it didn't work.

**[00:35:54]** Basically, I turned it around, I went to him and asked,

**[00:35:57]** what do you need to be able to sell more.

**[00:36:00]** Where you need to have the price lower and where, on the contrary, we can increase it,

**[00:36:04]** to compensate for it.

**[00:36:06]** And I started pushing back, and of course then came,

**[00:36:09]** but you can't. You can't tell us here in Amsterdam what to do.

**[00:36:12]** And I said, I understand that I can't completely.

**[00:36:15]** I believe communication should go both ways,

**[00:36:18]** but you have been going only one way for five years.

**[00:36:20]** So now I have to take a step back for a while to balance it out.

**[00:36:24]** At MOL it was a slightly different type.

**[00:36:28]** There I had my first clash with the visionary Ondra Fritz.

**[00:36:32]** A very strong personality who just throws out ideas

**[00:36:36]** and not all of them have to be great.

**[00:36:39]** The problem with visionaries is that they are successful,

**[00:36:43]** they achieve what they want, they have a fantastic vision,

**[00:36:48]** and at some point they start thinking they know everything

**[00:36:51]** and understand everything completely.

**[00:36:53]** We always worked so that ten ideas came up

**[00:36:56]** and I would say idea number one and four are great

**[00:36:59]** and we can probably implement those.

**[00:37:01]** We agreed on that quickly, but then the work was to explain

**[00:37:04]** that we better not do the other six.

**[00:37:06]** Not because they aren't great, but because we don't have the capacity.

**[00:37:11]** Another problem with visionaries is that when they come up with something,

**[00:37:15]** they already consider it done.

**[00:37:17]** It's finished because they already invented it.

**[00:37:20]** And it doesn't always happen that you find out if the organization has so far

**[00:37:24]** actually followed through, and what's even worse,

**[00:37:27]** is that they can come up with another subsequent idea

**[00:37:31]** that maybe contradicts the previous one, and then you realize

**[00:37:34]** that the team hasn't even finished running with the first idea,

**[00:37:38]** and now there's a new one, and you get into a situation

**[00:37:42]** that to me feels a bit like rugby, where the ball is thrown one way

**[00:37:46]** and then everyone rushes there, and then they rush the other way again.

**[00:37:49]** So I took it as my goal to act as a buffer there

**[00:37:53]** and filter some things so the team could move forward.

**[00:37:59]** At CZC it was amazing that the company, which was previously led

**[00:38:04]** by its founder and worked to meet the market demand

**[00:38:08]** for IT and computer technology,

**[00:38:13]** had a very good human foundation but a beautiful environment,

**[00:38:17]** where things like company culture could be built from the start,

**[00:38:21]** like the brand, like the vision and purpose of the company.

**[00:38:26]** With the help of those people, with the help of those teams who were there

**[00:38:30]** and were prepared and enthusiastic, it naturally works

**[00:38:34]** in such an organization, there is always give and take.

**[00:38:39]** We are now all within the MOL group, it's a combination

**[00:38:42]** of those previous two experiences.

**[00:38:47]** I could probably reap what I either did well

**[00:38:50]** or did poorly, but I am still learning

**[00:38:53]** and thanks to the young people around me,

**[00:38:56]** all at least 20 years younger, I keep

**[00:39:00]** learning more from them.

**[00:39:02]** So, we have another question here, how is your team composed

**[00:39:10]** and of course we will get to how the team is formed. I have understood in my life

**[00:39:14]** that there are two ways to build your team.

**[00:39:18]** The first is, if you have enough money, you are a large organization

**[00:39:21]** that is successful, you can simply build the team

**[00:39:27]** from the strongest experts in each area.

**[00:39:31]** The way this team works is not simple,

**[00:39:35]** because the leader is more or less in the role of a coordinator,

**[00:39:38]** who ensures that the people at least basically work together,

**[00:39:45]** because they are strong personalities and there is a considerable risk

**[00:39:49]** that they will create silos, because they want

**[00:39:54]** their division to be the best, to deliver

**[00:39:58]** the right performance, to prove they are experts in their place, and your task then is

**[00:40:00]** to somehow coordinate this so that it doesn't only work within silos,

**[00:40:06]** or so that they don't unintentionally harm each other. Then there is a second way, when

**[00:40:11]** maybe you don't have as much money, or you have a different idea and you relax

**[00:40:17]** on seniority or competencies and build it on the fact that people will be team players.

**[00:40:22]** That means that through team effort and mutual help and support among themselves,

**[00:40:30]** they might compensate for the lack of competencies and expertise.

**[00:40:36]** I think both ways are possible, both lead to results.

**[00:40:40]** What I believe is not possible, and I have encountered it and tried to avoid it,

**[00:40:44]** even by not hiring a senior person, is that it is not suitable to combine the two

**[00:40:50]** ways. That usually just doesn't work.

**[00:40:57]** What has always worked for me was to take a risk and give a chance to a person who has potential,

**[00:41:01]** but maybe is not yet ready for their role in the leadership team.

**[00:41:07]** But you put in some work, you act not as a coordinator but as a guide,

**[00:41:13]** a supporter, and it has always paid off for me,

**[00:41:19]** because the person appreciates the opportunity and tries even harder.

**[00:41:31]** As an example, I can mention Kamil Demut,

**[00:41:37]** who is the current boss at Cuk,

**[00:41:40]** a farm food retailer who became the marketing director at CZC at about 28 years old,

**[00:41:47]** and I never regretted it; he did a great job.

**[00:41:51]** I have the phrase 'boys from the village' here.

**[00:41:54]** I think I can say that because I am from Prague,

**[00:41:57]** and when I came to CZC, I was the only person from Prague.

**[00:42:00]** Everyone else was from outside Prague.

**[00:42:03]** I was amazed by their work ethic,

**[00:42:06]** their drive to succeed, and their determination.

**[00:42:09]** I think we in Prague are a bit Prague-centric,

**[00:42:13]** we've become a bit complacent or rely on the fact that we're good.

**[00:42:18]** This really got to me because even at times

**[00:42:21]** when I felt I had overloaded the team,

**[00:42:26]** I would say, 'Please, Honza, it doesn't all have to be done by Friday,'

**[00:42:30]** 'it can be done by Monday.'

**[00:42:33]** And instead of saying, 'Thanks, that's great,' he would say,

**[00:42:37]** 'What, do you think I can't handle it?'

**[00:42:40]** And then at two in the morning, emails would ping by my bedside,

**[00:42:43]** and the tasks would be done.

**[00:42:46]** Potential. Every person has some potential.

**[00:42:49]** And here, maybe male and female strategies differ a bit.

**[00:42:54]** Men can develop a strategy very well.

**[00:42:57]** They develop it once and then just apply it,

**[00:43:00]** and if it's good, I think they always capture 80% of the potential

**[00:43:04]** that exists in those people or in that area.

**[00:43:07]** Then, if you need the remaining 20%,

**[00:43:10]** it becomes very difficult and usually requires

**[00:43:13]** an individual approach to each member.

**[00:43:16]** One strategy is no longer enough. You have to know what the person likes,

**[00:43:19]** what difficulties and problems they have, and approach them individually.

**[00:43:23]** You have to decide whether you need that 20% or not,

**[00:43:27]** because it is obviously challenging.

**[00:43:30]** Diversity is still a topic on the agenda,

**[00:43:34]** but it is often simplified to male and female diversity.

**[00:43:38]** Yes, that's probably right, because we differ in many ways.

**[00:43:43]** Personally, I believe the best approach is a tandem.

**[00:43:47]** If a woman doesn't try to win on a man's field and vice versa,

**[00:43:51]** we have different qualities and complement each other wonderfully,

**[00:43:54]** just like a mother and father complement each other.

**[00:43:57]** If it's needed in the family, it's needed in the workplace too.

**[00:44:00]** But diversity is different too. Diversity is also about age,

**[00:44:04]** it's mental and profile-based, and it needs attention as well.

**[00:44:08]** Here I give the example of the Swiss doctor,

**[00:44:12]** psychologist, psychotherapist Carl Jung,

**[00:44:15]** who built his theory on a small circle

**[00:44:18]** measuring extroversion and introversion,

**[00:44:21]** and then developed it into colors,

**[00:44:24]** which show individual profiles, whether a person is

**[00:44:27]** directive and goal-oriented, or whether they are the one

**[00:44:30]** who supports others, or if they are process-oriented.

**[00:44:33]** It's quite nice when someone can build a team

**[00:44:36]** to include these competencies

**[00:44:39]** and mental profiles.

**[00:44:42]** And then you realize that if you pay some attention to this,

**[00:44:45]** it comes naturally. Just like last year,

**[00:44:48]** I was looking at the team during an offsite,

**[00:44:51]** when we were doing the annual review, and I found out

**[00:44:54]** that without filling out any color charts,

**[00:44:57]** you can clearly see the composition

**[00:45:00]** and distribution.

**[00:45:02]** Now let's take a look.

**[00:45:06]** Well. Probably companies don't have much money.

**[00:45:11]** But I believe it's definitely a good decision.

**[00:45:21]** Now, hosting leadership in practice.

**[00:45:24]** Leadership is changing, and the pandemic showed us

**[00:45:28]** the shift from transactional to transformational.

**[00:45:31]** It used to be simple: I'm the boss, I give a task, you do the task,

**[00:45:35]** we evaluate the task, reward for the task, and repeat.

**[00:45:39]** And I think the millennial generation taught us

**[00:45:42]** that this is no longer enough.

**[00:45:44]** They don't want just to get a task and complete it.

**[00:45:46]** They want to know the bigger picture.

**[00:45:48]** They want a very clear explanation of why the task is assigned.

**[00:45:51]** Basically, I say that whenever you get an email,

**[00:45:54]** 'send me table S,' don't just send it.

**[00:45:57]** Ask why. Everyone must tell you why they need it,

**[00:46:00]** because you can waste a lot of time on a task,

**[00:46:03]** which you might do poorly just because you didn't know the context.

**[00:46:07]** Young people today simply want to know,

**[00:46:09]** What is the broader context of the company.

**[00:46:11]** They want to identify with that vision.

**[00:46:13]** They want the vision to be more than just making money,

**[00:46:16]** but also to have some social importance.

**[00:46:19]** They want to receive feedback not just once a year

**[00:46:21]** in some annual review.

**[00:46:27]** That's a useful thing, especially during the time

**[00:46:29]** when we worked from home.

**[00:46:31]** And that's exactly the moment when leaders become

**[00:46:33]** captains and helmsmen,

**[00:46:35]** because they can't do without the team.

**[00:46:38]** Another important thing, which is sometimes forgotten,

**[00:46:41]** is the relationship between a superior and a subordinate.

**[00:46:44]** There is a certain social exchange,

**[00:46:47]** which we evaluate between ourselves and our friends.

**[00:46:50]** Whether I am constantly trying,

**[00:46:52]** always giving something and not getting anything back,

**[00:46:55]** whether my friend is just draining my energy.

**[00:46:58]** And it's exactly the same at work.

**[00:47:01]** Most managers try

**[00:47:04]** to get the most out of people,

**[00:47:06]** so they can fulfill their task.

**[00:47:08]** But if they don't add value to the people below them,

**[00:47:11]** if they don't show them the way,

**[00:47:13]** don't somehow advance and enrich them,

**[00:47:16]** it won't work.

**[00:47:18]** There simply has to be added value.

**[00:47:20]** So the person in the team has added value

**[00:47:23]** because they do the work I was responsible for,

**[00:47:26]** bringing results to the whole company.

**[00:47:28]** But if I don't add value for them,

**[00:47:31]** I say, please, just tell me,

**[00:47:34]** because otherwise the relationship will break down.

**[00:47:36]** Negative feedback.

**[00:47:38]** An important thing.

**[00:47:40]** It must exist and it's unpleasant for everyone.

**[00:47:42]** Neither at the beginning nor at the end.

**[00:47:44]** That's why I think it's very important

**[00:47:46]** how negative feedback is given.

**[00:47:49]** And it shouldn't be shouted out.

**[00:47:52]** You don't need to be nice,

**[00:47:54]** because then there's a risk

**[00:47:56]** that the person won't really take it to heart.

**[00:48:00]** You need to be basically calm.

**[00:48:02]** I remember in high school I liked the male teachers,

**[00:48:06]** because the female teacher who came into class in the morning

**[00:48:09]** and angrily slammed her ruler on the desk,

**[00:48:13]** I knew the kids had upset her at home that morning.

**[00:48:16]** Her husband did something, said he wouldn't watch the kids in the afternoon.

**[00:48:19]** The teachers could leave that behind the door

**[00:48:22]** and basically come in the same way every time.

**[00:48:25]** Negative feedback can also be met with misunderstanding.

**[00:48:29]** This was a long time ago, about 25 years.

**[00:48:31]** Among the sales assistants at Panasonic, we had a colleague

**[00:48:34]** who became a sales assistant

**[00:48:36]** because she didn't enjoy being a teacher.

**[00:48:39]** When someone makes a mistake, I like to explain it clearly.

**[00:48:42]** The only thing I don't like is when the mistake repeats.

**[00:48:45]** It happened, so I called the colleague and said,

**[00:48:49]** look, this mistake has happened twice already,

**[00:48:52]** please be careful,

**[00:48:55]** because if it happens a third time,

**[00:48:57]** we'll have to deal with it and it won't be pleasant.

**[00:49:00]** Yes, she didn't like it, she blushed a bit and left.

**[00:49:04]** Five minutes later, I went to the kitchen,

**[00:49:07]** where all the ladies gathered for a smoke or coffee,

**[00:49:12]** and I noticed this colleague had a beautiful suede skirt.

**[00:49:16]** I said, Andulka, you have a beautiful skirt today.

**[00:49:19]** I came back with the coffee and she rushed into my office,

**[00:49:22]** slammed the door and said, you can't do this.

**[00:49:25]** I said, what, I can't do that?

**[00:49:27]** You almost fired me first,

**[00:49:29]** and now you want to talk about a skirt?

**[00:49:32]** I looked at her and said, you're mixing two completely different things.

**[00:49:43]** And it definitely doesn't mean I can't notice

**[00:49:46]** that you have a nice skirt.

**[00:49:48]** It's just this idea,

**[00:49:50]** like when I do something wrong,

**[00:49:53]** you yell at me and let's solve it,

**[00:49:56]** and it will be tense.

**[00:49:58]** And I never really liked that

**[00:50:00]** When I give negative feedback, I don't say it sarcastically with a laugh, but with a smile

**[00:50:06]** and in a kind way, so the person realizes it's not like someone slammed my hand in the door this morning,

**[00:50:12]** but that I really mean it.

**[00:50:15]** And of course, performance evaluation comes with that too.

**[00:50:20]** Basically, when we dealt with how things changed in the world during the pandemic,

**[00:50:26]** there's a kind of ranking where competency requirements also change.

**[00:50:32]** On the right side are the hardcore competencies.

**[00:50:36]** You can see how the order changed during the pandemic year.

**[00:50:40]** What I focus on are the soft skills I evaluate in the management team,

**[00:50:45]** and what made me happy was that when the top five were presented,

**[00:50:51]** I had all those competencies there for years, since 2015,

**[00:50:59]** even though I made them up myself back then, so that made me happy.

**[00:51:03]** I also added result orientation, and the only thing I really missed there,

**[00:51:07]** and I think it's important, is persuasiveness.

**[00:51:10]** Especially now, when we couldn't come to the table, the other table, and slam it,

**[00:51:17]** saying you have to do it this way, persuasiveness over the wire

**[00:51:21]** or online was really important.

**[00:51:24]** So now I get to the fast and slow life.

**[00:51:33]** For those of you who don't work online, I dared to compare after the previous 25 years,

**[00:51:39]** which I didn't spend online, how things are assessed there.

**[00:51:45]** And the first contradiction I found is simply the dynamic

**[00:51:49]** versus my personal perfectionism.

**[00:51:51]** You have to completely forget about it because things move incredibly fast.

**[00:51:56]** Sometimes you're put in a situation where you really can't finish something and have to move on.

**[00:52:02]** At first, it really bothered me, I struggled a lot with it,

**[00:52:05]** but you have to learn it.

**[00:52:08]** What is green and good about it, because I consider the dynamic a good thing,

**[00:52:13]** and that's why I enjoy it so much, is that it's a field that grows long-term.

**[00:52:19]** There aren't many like that because everywhere else faces some kind of curve,

**[00:52:24]** related to the economic situation, but online, since it's a new field,

**[00:52:29]** is still growing and the pandemic helped it.

**[00:52:32]** What can be a disadvantage, precisely because it's a new field,

**[00:52:36]** is that many e-commerce organizations still have the founder in them,

**[00:52:43]** who hasn't passed it on, what I call the owner breathing down your neck,

**[00:52:47]** which can be complicated because they really have the vision and they just say,

**[00:52:52]** I don't know why, but I want it this way and you have to somehow deal with it.

**[00:52:56]** Another red disadvantage is that the e-shop is like

**[00:53:01]** having a corner grocery store, a food shop or a general store.

**[00:53:07]** At 6 o'clock you leave home to eat and sleep a bit, but you leave it open.

**[00:53:12]** Until morning comes, before you arrive again.

**[00:53:14]** What I mean is, of course, we leave the work there,

**[00:53:18]** but the store stays open, so if someone slips up by chance

**[00:53:23]** and makes a mistake, for example in an order, like a fridge that costs 19,000,

**[00:53:29]** is sold for 1,900, and by morning they've sold 500 of them.

**[00:53:35]** Just calculate the loss that creates.

**[00:53:38]** There is huge responsibility and a great need for control mechanisms.

**[00:53:44]** Then you might have a shareholder who understands everything,

**[00:53:47]** because it's a young field and everything is still developing.

**[00:53:51]** I experienced when Intel was the main shareholder in MOL,

**[00:53:55]** they came up with ideas like,

**[00:53:58]** 'Maybe we could add a greeting or chocolate for every customer who has a name day that day.'

**[00:54:02]** And the person doesn't realize it's not that simple,

**[00:54:06]** that you ship 30,000 items a day, and it's hard to pick out,

**[00:54:10]** while things are moving on the conveyor, who should get the chocolate.

**[00:54:14]** But it's hard to explain because a shareholder is someone

**[00:54:17]** who needs to be respected.

**[00:54:21]** What many e-shops, especially in the beginning, didn't realize,

**[00:54:23]** is that although it's an e-shop, it's a bit different, but still a company.

**[00:54:27]** And planning and finance were somewhat underestimated.

**[00:54:32]** It was normal to be at a loss because we are growing.

**[00:54:35]** Rarely did people realize, and then it happened,

**[00:54:38]** that all those e-shops earned up to 150 million.

**[00:54:41]** Then the founder decided, 'I'm doing well, now I'll make it a big company and take loans.'

**[00:54:45]** And then problems came, because it's still just a company.

**[00:54:48]** And of course, there's a conflict between,

**[00:54:52]** when the e-shop is big, between corporate and startup mentality,

**[00:54:54]** which, in my opinion, and we'll get to this later, is not a conflict,

**[00:54:57]** but rather an advantage.

**[00:55:03]** CZC, where I work today, is so-called a follower,

**[00:55:06]** because we define ourselves as number two in the market,

**[00:55:09]** but it wasn't always like that, and it's a bit of a reluctant number two.

**[00:55:14]** At the start, we were in a group of three IT e-shops,

**[00:55:17]** Alfa, Vohemka, and Mironet,

**[00:55:22]** and we first needed to break free from that group,

**[00:55:25]** which we managed, but got stuck halfway in a kind of vacuum.

**[00:55:46]** between this group we left behind,

**[00:55:49]** and Alza, which is basically unbeatable,

**[00:55:51]** because it is just huge,

**[00:55:53]** and we ran into some motivation problems, and that's when the number two was born,

**[00:55:57]** because no one was really breathing down our necks,

**[00:56:00]** but there was still a locomotive ahead of us,

**[00:56:02]** so we were simply looking for something to establish us in this space

**[00:56:06]** and give us some motivation.

**[00:56:08]** Times evolved in the next period.

**[00:56:11]** OK, Electroworld, DatArt tried to challenge us online,

**[00:56:15]** where we still feel like the number two and so on.

**[00:56:18]** We mastered it, but then, of course, with the pandemic era,

**[00:56:22]** there came a kind of consolidation of brands.

**[00:56:24]** DatArt merged with HPtronic and Juronix,

**[00:56:29]** and they can really push hard, creating a competitor

**[00:56:32]** we have to pay very close attention to.

**[00:56:36]** The fast and slow world is something I wanted to explain,

**[00:56:40]** but I have to say, in our case, it's a fast and even faster world.

**[00:56:44]** And that's because, going back to mentality,

**[00:56:48]** it's not a conflict between corporate and startup strategies,

**[00:56:51]** it's basically a huge advantage.

**[00:56:53]** Because if you're neither a corporation nor a small company,

**[00:56:58]** you can choose where the process,

**[00:57:01]** which will guide us for a long time, is very important for the company,

**[00:57:05]** so there we simply do the process in a corporate way,

**[00:57:08]** to make it solid and always reliable.

**[00:57:12]** Where something needs to be delivered quickly to the market,

**[00:57:15]** where you need to catch up with the competition or even take the lead,

**[00:57:20]** there we can just do it on the fly and send it out.

**[00:57:23]** Look at how new products are launched today.

**[00:57:26]** Can you imagine if the iPhone didn't come out with a new model in September?

**[00:57:30]** No one can imagine that.

**[00:57:32]** But do we look at how perfect it is in September?

**[00:57:35]** How many software updates come just two weeks later, a month later?

**[00:57:39]** Because for Apple, the most important thing is to meet the deadline,

**[00:57:43]** to come out in September, so that Samsung or someone else doesn't beat them to it.

**[00:57:47]** So maybe it's not completely finished yet,

**[00:57:50]** but they already know they'll finish it shortly after.

**[00:57:53]** And I think that's the engine that can drive the company forward,

**[00:57:58]** because it can choose between a thorough process,

**[00:58:01]** but it doesn't have to do it, unlike the quick, makeshift one that can also do it.

**[00:58:06]** While the small one has to do everything makeshift,

**[00:58:09]** and the big corporation has to do everything thoroughly.

**[00:58:12]** What the pandemic period showed is that we managed

**[00:58:17]** to really push ourselves from home in that euphoria and managed to do

**[00:58:21]** things incredibly fast. For example, we developed an app

**[00:58:24]** so that a customer could pick up their device contactlessly

**[00:58:30]** in the store over a weekend. If it had been a year earlier,

**[00:58:35]** the developers would have told me we need to analyze it,

**[00:58:38]** that would take three weeks, then we'll tell you the cost,

**[00:58:42]** then we'll develop it for two months, and then we have to test it.

**[00:58:45]** It was simply done over a weekend, which I really found amazing.

**[00:58:51]** And now the question is, the pandemic period is over and I'm starting to fear

**[00:58:57]** that we're going back, starting to slow down again,

**[00:59:01]** and I can't expect people to do everything just as fast.

**[00:59:04]** They can't always be at the computer at home again.

**[00:59:07]** And so now came, with that naming, Radka Dohnalová from Atajir,

**[00:59:11]** which really struck me, because she says we need two-speed work.

**[00:59:16]** Because before, we got an external push for that speed,

**[00:59:20]** which was the pandemic, and now we have to create it

**[00:59:24]** from our own internal energy. And from that came her definition,

**[00:59:28]** that we must distinguish run the business and change the business.

**[00:59:32]** That means in the usual daily operations, what we do every day,

**[00:59:36]** let's be thorough, do it at the pace we were used to before the pandemic.

**[00:59:40]** But if we have something new, want to introduce something innovative,

**[00:59:44]** the speed simply has to be much faster.

**[00:59:47]** It's like doing it makeshift, it just has to move forward quickly.

**[00:59:51]** And maybe it won't be perfect and maybe we'll fix it later.

**[00:59:55]** I have here a photo of a differential, not that I invented it,

**[00:59:58]** because again, I'm just...

**[01:00:00]** like a blonde, but basically it's similar

**[01:00:03]** to when you look at a car's differential.

**[01:00:05]** When the car turns, the wheels on the same axle

**[01:00:10]** each move at a speed that lets the car make the turn.

**[01:00:16]** And what I still say,

**[01:00:18]** is that every organization sometimes needs a carrot.

**[01:00:22]** And by carrot, I mean any reward,

**[01:00:26]** impulse, or challenge, because we,

**[01:00:29]** and that's what pushed me out after ten years at Panasonic,

**[01:00:33]** I couldn't come up with the carrot.

**[01:00:36]** We're always doing something.

**[01:00:37]** We get assignments, deliver results,

**[01:00:40]** we simply tune our economy, trying to optimize costs,

**[01:00:44]** and it's always the same.

**[01:00:45]** And again, we've moved forward by 0.1%,

**[01:00:47]** which, of course, in our 6 billion turnover is a lot of money,

**[01:00:51]** but it's still the same.

**[01:00:52]** So sometimes you need to come up with

**[01:00:54]** what the company could do completely differently,

**[01:00:56]** at least internally, so people get a sense

**[01:01:00]** that they can work on something new.

**[01:01:02]** And now we're trying to focus on digital health

**[01:01:08]** and the devices related to it,

**[01:01:11]** and also help a bit with education,

**[01:01:13]** where digitalization is coming today.

**[01:01:17]** Five minutes after leaving, a person starts to evaluate

**[01:01:21]** what was the most important in their career.

**[01:01:24]** Was it becoming a CEO at thirty,

**[01:01:28]** or working in glass luxury offices,

**[01:01:32]** or achieving an international career,

**[01:01:35]** or becoming the first female CEO at Philips

**[01:01:38]** and also from Eastern Europe?

**[01:01:41]** And when you look back like that,

**[01:01:43]** you realize that over life,

**[01:01:48]** your values and how you see life change a lot.

**[01:01:52]** I realized that, and many people around me already know this story.

**[01:01:56]** At the start at CZC, when I held the first employee meeting,

**[01:02:00]** I asked if they wanted to know something about me,

**[01:02:03]** and a girl from finance signed up and said,

**[01:02:06]** Ms. Hořáková, I googled you a bit,

**[01:02:09]** looked at Philips and the CEO,

**[01:02:13]** and don't you think our CZC feels like,

**[01:02:16]** a bit like skiing downhill, just a step back?

**[01:02:21]** And my answer then was, it depends on how you look at it.

**[01:02:25]** When I was 20 and had 500 euros to spend,

**[01:02:30]** I bought 10 pairs of sneakers in all colors and was thrilled.

**[01:02:35]** At 30, I bought one designer handbag for the same amount,

**[01:02:41]** and was just as thrilled.

**[01:02:44]** At 40, it was a trip to Barcelona, moving into experiences.

**[01:02:48]** And at 50, I bought a single ticket to the San Francisco Philharmonic for 500 euros.

**[01:02:55]** And when I look back, I don't know what kind of shoes they were.

**[01:03:00]** I don't remember what the handbag was, but the experience of that sound,

**[01:03:04]** the genius of the San Francisco Philharmonic orchestra, is still with me

**[01:03:10]** and I think I will remember it forever.

**[01:03:12]** And that's why, even though it was actually at the end,

**[01:03:16]** for me CZC is simply the most, because I got the chance

**[01:03:22]** to work with that team, to be on that journey of growth,

**[01:03:26]** and there was this amazing thing that when we agreed on something in the evening,

**[01:03:31]** we started doing it the next day.

**[01:03:33]** And that rarely happens in life.

**[01:03:38]** I have perfect timing.

**[01:03:42]** Thanks for the questions, definitely keep sending them, there are plenty.

**[01:03:58]** I have one, after listening to the talk,

**[01:04:01]** and I want to thank you very much for the leadership lesson.

**[01:04:04]** Very nice, even more than for the thinking.

**[01:04:07]** I wanted to ask, when you meet or have met that visionary,

**[01:04:13]** and you say you were able to program something over the weekend,

**[01:04:19]** that means the vision materialized very quickly.

**[01:04:23]** Isn't it addictive for those people, that it actually works?

**[01:04:27]** Meaning, when you know it works...

**[01:04:29]** Well, that's exactly my problem, because I just...

**[01:04:32]** That's why I started saying now, lockdowns are over and you're starting to sleep again.

**[01:04:36]** But when you think about it, that time was exhausting.

**[01:04:42]** Because at the start of the lockdown, you could feel euphoria from everyone,

**[01:04:47]** because there was a crisis, and we have to handle it, right?

**[01:04:52]** Basically, when it started in April, it was the slow season for our business.

**[01:04:56]** So we had a process crisis, we didn't have enough people in the warehouse

**[01:05:00]** to respond to the demand,

**[01:05:03]** and yet we managed it without any delays.

**[01:05:06]** And I realized that...

**[01:05:07]** And that's how the two-speed work came about.

**[01:05:10]** I can't expect them to always work that fast.

**[01:05:13]** Because now everyone can go back to the cinema, to exhibitions.

**[01:05:16]** We can't sit at the computer all day.

**[01:05:18]** So now I'm just trying to say,

**[01:05:21]** let's do it like before, but let's pick the things

**[01:05:25]** where we use the experience that we found out it can be done quickly.

**[01:05:29]** Otherwise, we'll burn out if we do everything super fast.

**[01:05:31]** That burnout is what the whole acceleration is about...

**[01:05:37]** You couldn't go anywhere, you were at home, you couldn't even slowly go to the park,

**[01:05:40]** So it was kind of a different time.

**[01:05:43]** I remember when covid started, we also began Home Office TV,

**[01:05:48]** and we always had psychologists who called it the heroic phase.

**[01:05:52]** And that it can't go on forever, that people will eventually collapse.

**[01:05:56]** So what would you advise leaders, especially visionary ones,

**[01:06:00]** to prevent this from happening, to avoid burning out the team?

**[01:06:03]** What would you suggest to them?

**[01:06:05]** I think I can't really advise visionary leaders at all.

**[01:06:07]** They won't listen to me, and they're right.

**[01:06:10]** I don't think like they do, and they'll never learn what they need.

**[01:06:14]** That's why I think the best thing they can do

**[01:06:17]** is for each visionary leader to find some kind of buffer

**[01:06:20]** or a managerial filter who will follow up on things for them,

**[01:06:24]** to catch any contradictions.

**[01:06:26]** I thought of it, checked it off, and it didn't happen.

**[01:06:31]** I also think feedback might be important, right?

**[01:06:33]** When a person hears it from multiple perspectives.

**[01:06:37]** Probably. The problem is that I found out

**[01:06:40]** we also speak slightly different languages, of course.

**[01:06:43]** I speak a different language that the visionary doesn't understand,

**[01:06:46]** because I'm kind of down here,

**[01:06:47]** and he speaks a language I sometimes don't fully get.

**[01:06:52]** So that's basically where the contradiction happens.

**[01:06:55]** And what's also important is when you talk to such a person,

**[01:06:58]** who is a strong personality and lives very fast, always looking ahead,

**[01:07:03]** what I've learned over the years dealing with visionaries,

**[01:07:06]** and I've taught several of them,

**[01:07:08]** is that if you can't catch their interest with the first sentence, they switch off.

**[01:07:13]** Because they don't have time for the kind of talk I bring about,

**[01:07:16]** like 'Marenka has too much work and we should get her an assistant.'

**[01:07:21]** They don't need to know that, so no.

**[01:07:27]** Thank you.

**[01:07:31]** Martin asks, hello Jitka.

**[01:07:33]** Do you have any proven practices or methods

**[01:07:35]** to connect people of different age groups,

**[01:07:37]** for example 50 plus and under 25 in one team?

**[01:07:41]** Well, I haven't really succeeded because in e-commerce it's mostly young people,

**[01:07:46]** so it's more a question of how I fit in there,

**[01:07:49]** and it was quite difficult at the beginning.

**[01:07:52]** I felt the looks like, what does this blonde have to say about computers,

**[01:07:57]** And that's why I'm really grateful they gave me this opportunity.

**[01:08:01]** Sometimes it can be explained,

**[01:08:05]** because a person at that age doesn't get upset so easily,

**[01:08:09]** doesn't get so worked up.

**[01:08:12]** They can be a moral and personal support to the young person,

**[01:08:15]** so it's more a matter of explanation

**[01:08:18]** and you have to hit the right mentalities, you know.

**[01:08:21]** But we are only now experiencing this in e-commerce,

**[01:08:26]** as the entire leadership of these companies is becoming professionalized.

**[01:08:29]** If we look today, I don't know, at Alza or Mol,

**[01:08:32]** the leadership today is no longer just founders and visionaries,

**[01:08:37]** but professional managers.

**[01:08:39]** So it happens automatically

**[01:08:41]** and the age structure of online organizations is also rising a bit.

**[01:08:47]** I would certainly like to pause for a moment.

**[01:08:50]** You said you are constantly learning in that world

**[01:08:53]** and learning about young people.

**[01:08:57]** The startup world, with its speed, as I observe it,

**[01:09:00]** doesn't have much time for sharpening the axes.

**[01:09:03]** How does it work there?

**[01:09:05]** It works by just doing it, so people move forward...

**[01:09:09]** They simply don't accept 'no' as an answer.

**[01:09:12]** If I say, now we know it doesn't work,

**[01:09:16]** this has no impact, thank God.

**[01:09:19]** If they said, 'Oh my God, the director said so, let's give up,' no.

**[01:09:23]** They say, 'No, but it can work.'

**[01:09:24]** Or they say, 'Let's find a way to make it work.'

**[01:09:27]** And at that moment I realize I've been saying for ten years it can't work

**[01:09:31]** and never thought about whether it might.

**[01:09:34]** So if you learn to respect youth and have a bit of humility,

**[01:09:38]** because it's new for all of us, it really helps a lot.

**[01:09:43]** I remember from some of your interviews when you evaluated a marketing campaign,

**[01:09:48]** which you said was stupid.

**[01:09:50]** If I don't like it, it will be successful.

**[01:09:52]** Because I truly rely on the fact that our marketing director is about ten times better at marketing than I am.

**[01:09:57]** It showed, I always said, 'Jesus, I wouldn't want to watch that on TV,'

**[01:10:00]** I thought it was silly. Yet it was simply the best. So I no longer judge,

**[01:10:04]** I always just ask and ask others and try to get their opinion first,

**[01:10:08]** and when I find out I'm the only one who doesn't like it, I often stay silent.

**[01:10:20]** Maybe an interesting question here somewhat follows up on what you said. You came from your little cage.

**[01:10:25]** What can make you angry and what does an angry Jítka look like?

**[01:10:29]** Well, when Jítka is angry, she is really angry, but you won't see it.

**[01:10:33]** I try to just breathe it in because it doesn't help anyone.

**[01:10:39]** I've probably shouted twice in my life, I won't repeat it,

**[01:10:43]** because I think it just doesn't make sense. And it showed during the pandemic.

**[01:10:47]** Those bosses who work like this: I'll invite you to the office and yell at you.

**[01:10:51]** For me, if someone yells on the phone or online, it’s completely meaningless.

**[01:10:55]** So I think these are methods that simply don't work.

**[01:10:59]** When I'm angry, I tell my closest team.

**[01:11:03]** I say, now I'm really pissed off. But I won't throw anything, it's not in my nature.

**[01:11:09]** But I can be angry. Internally, very much so.

**[01:11:14]** You mentioned in the lecture that it didn’t pay off to negotiate your salary.

**[01:11:22]** There’s a question about that and also about what you think about the pay gap between men and women.

**[01:11:29]** Also the equal pay gap, which we discussed.

**[01:11:32]** I didn’t say it didn’t pay off, I said I never had to.

**[01:11:36]** I always went in thinking, that can wait, step two can come later.

**[01:11:41]** First, I care about the work, and when it didn’t work out once,

**[01:11:46]** that it didn’t come back with the results I put in,

**[01:11:49]** I actually burned out because I didn’t know how to do it.

**[01:11:52]** So I’m not saying that’s the way. I think a person must.

**[01:11:57]** On the other hand, I don’t think it’s right to negotiate the final amount

**[01:12:03]** you want right at the start. I’ve encountered this,

**[01:12:06]** I had a candidate I liked and I had this idea

**[01:12:10]** of the starting salary, and he had a different one.

**[01:12:14]** When the person pushes hard and corners you,

**[01:12:17]** because you really need them and you hire them, they risk a lot,

**[01:12:22]** because anytime they slip up even a little, you’ll surely say,

**[01:12:26]** this is what I got for the money they wanted from me.

**[01:12:29]** I think it’s a bit double-edged. I don’t think it’s necessary,

**[01:12:33]** if a person trusts themselves, to negotiate the target amount

**[01:12:37]** right at the first interview. I think it can be counterproductive.

**[01:12:41]** We’ll continue right away with this question. Hello. How to achieve

**[01:12:46]** self-confidence and have a chance to move up in a company,

**[01:12:50]** beyond where you currently are? I really enjoy discovering new fields. Thank you.

**[01:12:53]** How to move up in a company?

**[01:12:59]** Well, for example, by not asking at the first question

**[01:13:04]** how the company views work-life balance and if someone will force me to work overtime.

**[01:13:09]** Because I think the approach to life is a personal, internal matter for each person.

**[01:13:17]** We all have the right to our own work-life balance.

**[01:13:20]** Either we can practice that in the company, or we can't.

**[01:13:24]** And then we'll go somewhere else. But when a person has that job

**[01:13:30]** not just as something that brings them money at the end of the month,

**[01:13:34]** there are many people who go to work just so they can start living at four o'clock.

**[01:13:40]** And that's okay too, it's just a life philosophy.

**[01:13:43]** I think that whoever enjoys their work and does it honestly, it shows.

**[01:13:51]** So do it.

**[01:13:52]** So do it. Of course, there's the question, and that is,

**[01:13:55]** when a person is unsuccessful at work, I always say,

**[01:13:58]** it's 50% the manager's fault.

**[01:14:01]** Because the manager has to assess if the person is fit for the job.

**[01:14:05]** And when we hire a new person, we also have to look at them

**[01:14:08]** in terms of their potential.

**[01:14:10]** Whether they are already at their limit, so they will only do the position as they currently work,

**[01:14:16]** or if they still have potential for development.

**[01:14:19]** If we put a person in the wrong position, we can harm their self-confidence.

**[01:14:24]** They might be good at something else. We put them somewhere else,

**[01:14:27]** without realizing it. And I always feel somewhat responsible,

**[01:14:30]** because they might be frustrated that they are not succeeding

**[01:14:33]** and lose confidence, but their value lies somewhere else.

**[01:14:36]** So there is always a share of responsibility on the manager.

**[01:14:40]** During the lecture, you talked about the 80% potential and then the 20%,

**[01:14:45]** when you need it, how do you handle that...

**[01:14:48]** By personal approach, you said?

**[01:14:51]** It is said that this only works up to a certain company size,

**[01:14:57]** to have contact with everyone. So how do you handle this here?

**[01:15:00]** Sure, but I always talk about it with the incoming people,

**[01:15:05]** or if something reaches me, I try to explain

**[01:15:09]** that the person is not yet someone to be thrown away,

**[01:15:13]** but maybe needs a different approach.

**[01:15:17]** It also showed during the pandemic that the signs of burnout

**[01:15:21]** are much harder to detect than when you see someone every day in the office.

**[01:15:26]** And if the person got into the problem not through their own fault

**[01:15:30]** and you don't want to lose them, you need to notice it in time.

**[01:15:34]** Then it depends on how many people you work with.

**[01:15:37]** In my life, I had at most 14 direct reports,

**[01:15:41]** and I say 14 is too many. It's too much.

**[01:15:44]** And you can't use this approach then. I simply think

**[01:15:47]** the optimal number is about 8-9 people

**[01:15:51]** with whom you work regularly.

**[01:15:55]** And then you can have that individual approach.

**[01:15:58]** You can motivate each person in a different way.

**[01:16:01]** Not everyone can be motivated by money, not everyone by a trip,

**[01:16:05]** not everyone can be motivated the same way.

**[01:16:08]** If you want to get the maximum, you have to find the right path for each person.

**[01:16:13]** You also mentioned the strong individuals,

**[01:16:17]** the senior versus the less experienced team players.

**[01:16:21]** Do you prefer the second option then?

**[01:16:23]** I was kind of pushed into it,

**[01:16:25]** because the consumer electronics and IT field is low-margin,

**[01:16:31]** so costs have to be closely monitored,

**[01:16:34]** processes have to be controlled, every mistake costs money.

**[01:16:37]** I ended up in that situation unintentionally,

**[01:16:40]** but it showed me that it would always be the better path for me.

**[01:16:45]** Isn't there a notion that it actually requires

**[01:16:48]** more work from the manager to monitor it somehow?

**[01:16:53]** I think the effort is the same,

**[01:16:55]** because with team players you help a bit with technical matters,

**[01:17:00]** maybe guide them a little, coach a little,

**[01:17:03]** you have to make sure to provide them with external professional growth.

**[01:17:07]** And with strong managers, you always have to watch out

**[01:17:10]** that they don't get carried away, that their ego,

**[01:17:14]** or their own interest, or their effort,

**[01:17:16]** which is not bad in itself, to succeed, doesn't harm someone else.

**[01:17:19]** That can quite easily happen.

**[01:17:23]** I often get this question that Anonym used.

**[01:17:28]** The open and friendly approach, or maintaining certain customs.

**[01:17:33]** How do you handle it?

**[01:17:37]** I had it a bit complicated because I am really the oldest.

**[01:17:42]** Everywhere around.

**[01:17:44]** And I recently even found out that at MOL group they use informal address.

**[01:17:50]** When you come in, we have a culture of using informal 'you' here,

**[01:17:54]** and now when a colleague from the canteen has onboarding and 20 new people come,

**[01:18:00]** they work with them the first day, introduce everything, and he stands up and says,

**[01:18:05]** we all use informal 'you' here, except Mrs. Dvořáková is addressed formally.

**[01:18:09]** And it didn't come from me demanding formal address,

**[01:18:12]** it came from the fact that I just seemed like a grandmother in age to someone,

**[01:18:16]** and it felt awkward for them.

**[01:18:18]** So on the contrary, I am probably still the only one there,

**[01:18:21]** who has, I don't know, out of a thousand people about 600 I address informally and 40,

**[01:18:25]** And I often get lost in it, but I mostly had trouble convincing them.

**[01:18:30]** That friendship is about how well a person can keep it inside.

**[01:18:37]** I think I can be told anything, but at the same time, when a decision needs to be made

**[01:18:44]** or to be strict, that's about fairness.

**[01:18:47]** I've spent my whole life trying to make sure people aren't afraid to tell me things,

**[01:18:52]** but that doesn't mean I forgive everything and say,

**[01:18:56]** well, we lost half a million people, no big deal, František.

**[01:18:59]** No, that's not how it is. But I try more to make sure they're not afraid to come and tell me,

**[01:19:03]** that there's a risk there.

**[01:19:05]** It's really important that they trust I'll help in the first phase.

**[01:19:10]** So I would really like that when something is about to happen,

**[01:19:14]** and it could turn out badly, the person doesn't say,

**[01:19:18]** I'm Orangutan, I can handle everything.

**[01:19:20]** And then they come to you when nothing can be done anymore.

**[01:19:23]** I simply admire when a colleague can come and say,

**[01:19:26]** hey, I have a feeling this might not work out.

**[01:19:30]** And in that case, I'm very happy to help.

**[01:19:33]** That's the kind of culture where a mistake is actually a friend.

**[01:19:38]** As long as it's not the same mistake twice.

**[01:19:41]** But we weren't really taught that much in school.

**[01:19:46]** During the time we were preparing this,

**[01:19:49]** the same question came up.

**[01:19:51]** You said yourself that you don't really know how to rest.

**[01:19:53]** But here the question is, how and with what do you recharge your batteries in your work pace?

**[01:20:00]** I can rest, I'm somewhat of a workaholic, but I'm not proud of it,

**[01:20:06]** and I don't expect it from anyone else.

**[01:20:09]** I do it myself inside, and I don't want it from anyone else,

**[01:20:13]** but it's more about intensity.

**[01:20:17]** Everyone tells me now that I'm not the youngest anymore,

**[01:20:21]** I should just slow down.

**[01:20:23]** And I just say slowing down is a road to hell.

**[01:20:26]** But it's because I just have that pace inside me,

**[01:20:29]** and I keep that pace even in non-work activities.

**[01:20:32]** When I rest, I rest intensely,

**[01:20:35]** and when I work, I work intensely.

**[01:20:37]** And I feel that if I slowed down,

**[01:20:40]** that's when I would start aging.

**[01:20:44]** What recharges me is that I enjoy the work.

**[01:20:48]** You have both positive and negative stress.

**[01:20:52]** And negative stress causes health problems

**[01:20:55]** And the positive one, that one pushes you forward.

**[01:20:57]** So when you enjoy your work, it creates positive stress.

**[01:21:01]** And the second thing is, I really draw energy from the young people.

**[01:21:05]** It's just amazing when you push yourself,

**[01:21:09]** you find out that this one ran a marathon and that one ran a marathon,

**[01:21:13]** so I should run at least 10 kilometers.

**[01:21:15]** So it really helps me.

**[01:21:19]** Who is currently an inspiration, a role model, a source for you?

**[01:21:23]** Is there someone worth following? Tell us.

**[01:21:27]** I was recently asked this question.

**[01:21:29]** I think it was from Forbes magazine.

**[01:21:32]** The question was, who is the best living CEO in the world for you, and why?

**[01:21:38]** How should I know if I don't work for them?

**[01:21:41]** I choose role models based on the human side.

**[01:21:46]** For example, I admire Angela Merkel's communication.

**[01:21:50]** My German isn't perfect, but she really inspired trust in me.

**[01:21:54]** Maybe she's not the smartest and maybe she struggles with decisions,

**[01:21:57]** but she can show credibility so people follow her.

**[01:22:03]** I have role models in different areas and I don't focus on just one person.

**[01:22:11]** You mentioned at least a few.

**[01:22:15]** The Pope and that story seemed really powerful to me.

**[01:22:19]** I find it powerful too, and I must add that I'm an atheist.

**[01:22:23]** Yet it is incredibly powerful to me.

**[01:22:27]** And of course, I've seen two films about the Popes,

**[01:22:31]** which I assume are largely based on truth.

**[01:22:35]** I admire Ratzinger's courage because the other Pope who abdicated in history,

**[01:22:40]** was back in the 13th century, so that was a long time ago.

**[01:22:43]** And I basically consider it an almost heroic act.

**[01:22:47]** I liked Pope John Paul,

**[01:22:51]** whom my mother met personally twice.

**[01:22:55]** And although she was basically a non-believer, she said,

**[01:22:59]** that the personality and strength of that person is just enormous.

**[01:23:03]** So in a way, it is a heroic act.

**[01:23:07]** I want to touch on one more area.

**[01:23:11]** You really like the topic of men and women, how it actually is.

**[01:23:15]** And I know Maruška feels very similarly.

**[01:23:19]** When we heard that she doesn't quite perceive it that way,

**[01:23:23]** try to tell us what your opinion on it is.

**[01:23:27]** I was once asked by Deloitte,

**[01:23:31]** to participate on behalf of the Czech Republic at a conference,

**[01:23:35]** which was requested by the German government in cooperation with the European Union

**[01:23:39]** and I told them, look, I don't know if I'm the right candidate,

**[01:23:43]** because I just don't agree with it.

**[01:23:47]** I think quotas are wrong,

**[01:23:51]** because quotas lead us to a situation

**[01:23:55]** where we hire a less qualified woman for a position,

**[01:23:59]** just to meet some quota.

**[01:24:03]** And I also said, if someone wants to introduce quotas,

**[01:24:07]** then let them have representation in parliament, let them be in the government,

**[01:24:11]** let them be in the parties, and lead by example.

**[01:24:15]** And at that conference I said, I don't know if you need,

**[01:24:19]** we'll give you some special support, because look how many of you are here.

**[01:24:23]** A full room and all of you are successful, so whoever wants it, will succeed.

**[01:24:27]** Yes, there are fields where a woman has to be much better than a man

**[01:24:33]** to get the position. But I believe that if a man wanted to become

**[01:24:37]** head of a cosmetics company, he would have to be better than the women

**[01:24:41]** to get it. So this playing around, yes, it's true in terms of pay.

**[01:24:47]** But can't we take some responsibility ourselves?

**[01:24:51]** I just showed you an example that maybe if I had fought

**[01:24:55]** for every salary, maybe I'd be somewhere else today.

**[01:24:59]** I just didn't do it, so maybe even that...

**[01:25:02]** I don't think it's worth crying all the time, but it's also about asking,

**[01:25:06]** if a person does everything for it. I just don't believe in dividing.

**[01:25:11]** I've heard theories, but I definitely think

**[01:25:14]** it's good to have a woman in every leadership team,

**[01:25:18]** because that's one aspect of diversity. They say

**[01:25:21]** there should be one or three women. When I asked why,

**[01:25:27]** I think it was Rostě Gordonsmith who said,

**[01:25:31]** if there are two, they will compete and it will be terrible.

**[01:25:34]** And you see, no one says that about men, so they should

**[01:25:38]** just be part of the team, but there are many women

**[01:25:41]** who don't want that, because the top level

**[01:25:44]** is no longer about work, it's about politics.

**[01:25:48]** And now it doesn't matter if that politics, which is of course

**[01:25:51]** in companies, is a bad word, often it's not,

**[01:25:54]** because you can't do without politics,

**[01:25:57]** so it can be positive in its own way, but it's there.

**[01:26:00]** And there are many women who have a family, love their work,

**[01:26:04]** and don't want to do politics on top of that, they'd rather stay in

**[01:26:07]** middle management. I'm not in favor of any quotas.

**[01:26:12]** Thank you. And then I actually want to go back

**[01:26:15]** to the title of the lecture itself.

**[01:26:18]** What advice would you give, I don't know,

**[01:26:22]** to someone more experienced in this world,

**[01:26:25]** which is just speeding up and moving forward?

**[01:26:28]** Look, my life kind of turned around, and what needs to be said,

**[01:26:33]** to be fair, is that I didn't plan it and it wasn't exactly voluntary.

**[01:26:37]** But I even used to laugh at those articles

**[01:26:43]** or magazines that said, Marian, when you hit the market,

**[01:26:46]** life begins at 40. Then someone wrote a book,

**[01:26:49]** that life begins after 50. I just found it funny,

**[01:26:52]** but today I know it's not a cliché.

**[01:26:55]** And now the question is whether something from outside kicks you, like it did me,

**[01:26:59]** that actually forced me.

**[01:27:01]** Or if a person plans it for themselves.

**[01:27:05]** The times are faster, sure,

**[01:27:09]** it's not that simple, but we have a slightly longer life.

**[01:27:13]** Today, it's hard to even reach retirement,

**[01:27:15]** because under normal circumstances, I would have been retired long ago,

**[01:27:19]** since I have two kids and I would have been lounging somewhere in the woods since 55,

**[01:27:23]** I probably would have gone crazy from it.

**[01:27:25]** So I don't know, it's about wanting it and not being afraid

**[01:27:31]** that there will be someone next to me who is half my age

**[01:27:35]** and will be good or better.

**[01:27:37]** I think the courage to bring people into your team

**[01:27:40]** who you already see could potentially surpass you,

**[01:27:44]** is very important.

**[01:27:46]** You have to do it because you care about the overall result

**[01:27:50]** and, after all, also about some planning,

**[01:27:52]** because someone has to replace you one day.

**[01:27:56]** Don't give up. I just think that's the whole thing.

**[01:28:00]** So thank you very much. Thanks.

**[01:28:03]** That was Jitka Dvořáková. Thanks.

**[01:28:05]** Have a nice day.

**[01:28:08]** So.

**[01:28:11]** Someone's got the key.

**[01:28:14]** Jesus, thank you so much. That's beautiful. Thanks.

**[01:28:17]** So, I'll sit down for a moment and ask you,

**[01:28:21]** let's switch, because today was also about feedback,

**[01:28:25]** so we ask you for it. Let us know if you liked it,

**[01:28:29]** five stars, one star means it didn't work smoothly

**[01:28:33]** here under this broadcast or in the slide app,

**[01:28:36]** how you voted, I'd like to encourage you.

**[01:28:42]** If you're somewhere at work or with some friends

**[01:28:46]** or in a library, definitely sit down and let it sink in.

**[01:28:49]** We have a form with some aha moments,

**[01:28:52]** which you can fill out, and I also remind you

**[01:28:55]** that on November 4th in the afternoon on Edu, which you might be watching now,

**[01:29:01]** there will be a discussion with Jitka, me, and a few others,

**[01:29:05]** like Maruška here, and we'll talk about this.

**[01:29:09]** It's kind of an experience, that's why we called it

**[01:29:11]** Brain and Breakfast Digestive, so this is the discussion

**[01:29:17]** you're invited to. Red Button, besides

**[01:29:20]** Brain and Breakfast and Edu, also does things like book of the month.

**[01:29:24]** The November book of the month is Where Did My Sulfur Go,

**[01:29:27]** which is about change and we highly recommend it,

**[01:29:30]** chosen by Radegajdušek, so this is the new book of the month.

**[01:29:34]** If you enjoy Edu, be sure to follow other shows

**[01:29:38]** we have planned, and next time we'll meet

**[01:29:41]** on November 25th, with guest Gabriela Končitíková,

**[01:29:46]** and we'll talk about Tomáš Baťa,

**[01:29:49]** so November 25th, another Brain and Breakfast,

**[01:29:52]** you're warmly invited. There will be a little surprise,

**[01:29:55]** because we'll celebrate one year of Red Button Edu.

**[01:29:59]** So thank you.

**[01:30:00]** today for coming, thank you for watching,

**[01:30:02]** take care and see you on the 25th, bye.