Šimon Pánek (People in Need): If you succeed, it’s your success. If you fail, it’s your problem

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Šimon Pánek, co-founder and director of People in Need. Over thirty years, he has built it into a humanitarian organisation that works in forty countries, employs around two thousand people and manages more than CZK 6 billion, mostly from international institutions and governments. In Ukraine alone, it helped almost two million people in the first two years of the war.

People in Need’s culture is built on trust, freedom and responsibility. Pánek doesn’t want managers telling their teams what to do. Everyone should know what their job is, and leadership is there for support and advice. Everyone has the right to make mistakes, and Pánek prefers people who try things and take initiative to those who sit and wait. But there is a simple rule: “If you succeed, it’s your success. If you fail, it’s your problem.” When to consult and when to rely on your own judgement is therefore down to each person’s self-discipline.

Salaries at People in Need are significantly lower than in the commercial sector. Donors, Pánek says, don’t expect the organisation to pay itself like a business, and modest pay and operating costs are one of its competitive advantages. Even so, people stay, and those who leave for higher pay often come back. What keeps them is above all the meaning of their work, along with the atmosphere, relationships and trust in leadership. Flexibility helps too: job sharing, working from home and a child-friendly and even dog-friendly workplace. Lessons from the early years, when the organisation was a group of hard-working singles, led to rules that protect time for family and rest, such as no work emails after hours.

The organisation’s character is known as “PIN spirit”, after its English name, People in Need. It means confidence, willingness to help each other, looking for ways to make things happen rather than reasons why they can’t, honesty, openness and individual responsibility. It also means an egalitarian environment: everyone, directors included, shares one office, and salaries are transparent. According to Pánek, culture across forty countries isn’t held together by codes of conduct or training. It is held together by the sixty to eighty people in leadership who share the same values, and above all by middle management, who are on the ground every day. “Real culture is made by people, not by paper documents,” he says. Tools such as a regular “Call the Director” session, retreats and internal videos discussed by teams around the world also help.

Pánek is also active in authentic leadership, which he teaches in workshops for middle and senior management. For him, authenticity means that a leader’s words and demands on others match their own behaviour. If management is evasive in meetings or says things it doesn’t believe, people notice quickly, and an environment of distrust develops. In that kind of environment, not even high salaries and bonuses will keep people.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• What people learn at People in Need and why humanitarian aid is an expert field

• Why people stay in the organisation despite lower salaries

• What PIN spirit means and how to keep it in a growing organisation

• How to carry company culture across forty countries

• Why middle management is the main lever of company culture

• What authentic leadership is and why trust in leadership depends on it

Šimon Pánek shows that a strong culture doesn’t come from documents but from how leaders behave. When people see meaning in their work, are given trust and see leaders who walk the talk, an organisation can grow and keep its people without paying the highest salaries on the market.