A Company Must Not Rely on the Memory of a Few People What Will Determine Which Companies Succeed in
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FINANCE
has happened in a company, not what
is happening in it right now. That is why
the qualitative layer is crucial: the quality
of management, an assessment of where
the industry is heading, and company
culture, which is the hardest thing to judge
from the outside. You learn the most
when you are as close as possible to both
management and employees. People
say that numbers don’t lie. Sometimes
they do – and when they do, there
is usually a reason behind it that you won’t
find in a spreadsheet. The qualitative
perspective therefore acts as a check on
the numbers.
When does a company’s reliance on
emails, spreadsheets and a few key
people become a real risk?
Most companies like this are used
to operating that way and it never occurs
to them that things could work differently.
As long as nothing changes, it works.
It becomes a risk at precisely the moment
when the company needs to change: when
it wants to grow, when the owner wants
to hand it over to the next generation, or
when they want to sell it. That is when
it becomes clear that the company
cannot function without the owner
and two key people, and its value
is far lower than the owner expected.
The departure of a key employee
creates the same problem, only sooner.
The aim is to build a system that runs on
its own, rather than one that relies on
the memory of a few people. In my view,
three things will determine which Czech
companies survive over the next twenty
years and which ones grow: whether
they can operate without their founder,
whether their business is transparent
and understandable to banks
and investors, and whether there will be
someone to take them over.
Where do you think companies
in the Moravian–Silesian Region,
and the region itself, will be in ten years’
time – and what would help them most?
The pressures are real and they are not
going away: low–cost manufacturing
from Asia, AI that is reducing the time
needed for office work, and Europe
continuing to impose additional rules on
itself. Czech companies often cannot
compete with Asia on price. Where
they can compete is on speed, quality
and proximity to the customer. Industry
is in our region’s DNA. We have people
who know how to make things and many
companies that have operated for thirty
years on the experience of a single
individual. The next ten years will
determine how many of them transform
into companies that function as systems.
What would help most is for owners
to start preparing earlier – not wait
until the year they want to sell their
company. And for students who have
gone abroad to study to come back
– not out of nostalgia, but because
there is something worth building here.
And I believe there is.
If you returned to the 1
st
International
School of Ostrava today and could tell
students preparing for their final exams
one thing you did not yet know at their
age, what would it be?
I believe that our future is decided much
earlier than we think or realise. Your
maturita and IB results determine which
university you can attend, what kind
of environment you enter and, importantly,
the people you will be surrounded
by. Personally, I am convinced that
at university, grades matter less than who
you spend three years sitting in the same
room with. It is the atmosphere,
the people and their mindset that
influence you and ultimately shape you
more than what you learn from a textbook
– and they do so at a time when you are
still particularly open to being shaped.
It is difficult to make up for that later.
So choose a university for its environment,
not just its name. The work you put
in now determines how wide your range
of choices will be. As John Spence says:
‘What you do today determines who you
will be tomorrow.’