Martina Ježková, HR Director at České Radiokomunikace, Gorjan Lazarov, CEO of OREA Hotels, and Petr Doberský, CEO of Czech Airlines Technics, discussed corporate culture, business transformation, and other topics every CEO carries on their shoulders, as part of Kogi CON's 10th anniversary celebration.
Read the panel discussion transcript
(the text was transcribed and shortened using ChatGPT)
Pavel Kuhn: Let me start the introductions with the lady in the group: Martina Ježková, currently head of HR at České Radiokomunikace. If I remember correctly, she's held similar roles at Tchibo and Sportisimo, and also at ING. I'll let you in on a secret — she's a huge, active volleyball fan. Next is Petr Doberský, currently head of Czech Airlines Technics, an aircraft maintenance company. If you'd like to see six Boeings lined up side by side, I'd recommend getting in touch with Petr or his colleagues. Even though I'm not much of a flying enthusiast myself, that sight is genuinely impressive. Two things about him: he loves long walks with his hunting dog, and on a trip to Asia, his daughters made him stop in Seoul because they love Korean pop music. And our last guest, and our host today, Gorjan Lazarov, head of OREA Hotels, who's had a rich career connecting two seemingly unconnected worlds — telecoms and hospitality. That's actually where we first met. I'll let you in on a secret about him too — he loves tennis. And since Kogi's main focus is corporate culture, I can't help but ask my colleagues here what corporate culture means to them.
Petr Doberský: Hello everyone. For me, this is actually a really interesting topic. When we started working with Kogi last year, I mostly pictured corporate culture as us working together, greeting each other, and being considerate toward one another — basically just behavior. Ironically, it turned out the topic is much broader than that. There's even the OCAI matrix, which helped us define what kind of company we want to be — more innovative, say, or more process-driven. I have to admit, that really opened my eyes. If your culture doesn't match your business, it goes against the grain, and the company ends up internally set up differently from what the business actually needs. Through our discussions with Kogi, that mismatch became clear to us. We're a large company in aviation, so we definitely don't want to be an experimental company — customers probably wouldn't appreciate that. We're process-driven, and we're comfortable in that setup.
Maybe we're just a bit too process-driven, and we need to shift out of that box a little. We had a problem with employees not cooperating with each other — or rather, not cooperating at all. In the end, we worked through various rituals and behaviors. At first I thought, what nonsense is this now, but I had to admit the methodology actually made sense. It was only as we went through it that I understood what it was really about. For me, it was interesting to discover that corporate culture is a much broader topic than just collaboration.
Gorjan Lazarov: Corporate culture is the cornerstone of a company, because it shapes people's behavior based on shared values. Looking back at OREA's transformation journey, we tried to align around the values we believe in — care, innovation, trust. That's what moved us forward, because once you have clear values, a shared goal, and a way of treating each other, you can achieve anything. When I started, I thought like a doctor. OREA was like a patient in a coma. The goal is clear: save the patient — you don't get caught up in the details. Right before covid, we invested a billion crowns in the product. First, we wanted to fix the "software" — our employees, the people who take care of clients — and only then the hardware. Once we finished the hardware, covid hit, which gave me time to think about everything I was doing wrong.
I realized we lacked structure in how we understood and measured corporate culture. I'm glad we started working with Kogi on a project that pushed us even further. We came out of covid stronger, and we're now hitting record numbers.
Martina Ježková: For me, corporate culture is the engine behind strategy. Strategy is the route on the map, and corporate culture is the engine that drives us along it. I experienced an extremely strong corporate culture at Tchibo, one that was self-cleaning. The values were clear, which made things easier for us as management. Teams would let a new person in, but the moment that person stopped acting in line with the values, the team would simply stop working with them. That's the power of culture. When I joined České Radiokomunikace six months ago, I was handed materials for a project that had started a year and a half earlier in partnership with Kogi. The project had been professionally set in motion, and I believe we'll take the corporate culture further once it's functioning and self-cleaning. But we do have to protect that culture.
Pavel Kuhn: My second question — do you feel the topic of corporate culture is changing over time? Is its urgency shifting given what's happening outside or inside companies? Does corporate culture need more attention now than it did before covid, for example?
Gorjan Lazarov: I definitely think so. Everything happening around us — maybe it started with covid, then came uncertainty, geopolitical shifts, Russia's invasion. Since the nineties, we've lived with the idea of building a connected, global world, and that idea is now slowly falling apart. Why? Because people hold different values. That's exactly why this topic matters today. Corporate culture isn't just values. The worst kind of corporate culture is the one that makes beautiful posters, hangs them around the office, and stops there. For us, care is one of our core values. During covid, we were genuinely fighting for survival. When government measures came in and the company could have cut salaries to 60%, we kept employees at 100% pay. We knew that people with lower incomes would run into real trouble. In the end, it cost us tens of millions of crowns. I remember long discussions about whether to actually go through with it. We'd just made a billion-crown investment. If you add twenty million crowns to a billion-crown project, everyone says "sure, fine" — but twenty million into people? Hardly anyone invests that.
For us, it was a bet. Either the hospitality world would collapse, and we'd have a problem, or it would come back. Either way, we had to treat it as part of the investment, because we already had the hardware — but if we destroyed the "software," our employees, there'd be no fixing that.
Martina Ježková: I think the need for corporate culture is genuinely growing. It has a direct impact on productivity and on reducing turnover. There's plenty of research on this, including a 2020 Gallup study. For companies operating in competitive environments, corporate culture is a necessity. Another factor is the new generation, who expect to work at responsible, cultivated companies with a strong CSR program. Inclusion is also playing an increasingly important role. We want to feel good regardless of gender, faith, or anything else, and to be respected. Those are the reasons corporate culture deserves attention.
Petr Doberský: Compared to you, we're probably about twenty years behind. We're a maintenance company — we have one female mechanic and 250 male mechanics. So we really do cherish that one mechanic, so we can put her on posters and show that yes, we do have a woman working here. The second one we had got pregnant, and we're hoping she'll come back one day. We're starting from zero. Last year, the company was in a state of total breakdown. The first phase was something like marriage counseling — mainly about getting employees to believe that something would actually change, and that someone was finally going to start caring about them. I think we're gradually getting there. In the nineties, the leadership style here was harsh — maybe partly because people were grateful just to have a job and didn't have many other options. That's changed today. If a company doesn't talk to its people, doesn't collaborate, and isn't transparent, that's a problem. You can't get away with doing things the hard way anymore. And that was exactly our situation. The guys dug in their heels completely, refused to cooperate, and that was that.
Pavel Kuhn: You're all evangelists on the topic of culture, and you believe it's the right thing to invest in. Do you also see culture as a path to the business results you're responsible for?
Petr Doberský: I need it to work. At the end of the day, it all comes down to money. We have plenty of projects, we're constantly working on this, and it's funny — even when we said something a year ago, it took people a long time to arrive at it themselves. If we'd pushed it through immediately, nothing would have changed. We obviously can't just fire everyone and replace them with new people. So yes, it took longer. But we're not a social club. We're a company that has to make money — that's why we're all here. In the end, people will be happy about it, because they'll have contributed to the company's success and will be rewarded for it.
Gorjan Lazarov: Personally, I believe corporate culture is the foundation. When you look at management, the question is whether you're "driving by looking in the rearview mirror" — managing by results — or focusing on corporate culture and a shared goal. We ask ourselves: "What is Orea?" Sometimes I say, half-jokingly: "Elon Musk makes electric cars — we make joy." And if we're making joy, then people matter. We don't want to be McDonald's, where everything is perfectly set up and runs flawlessly — but if you want to stand out through customer experience, corporate culture is what matters. And so far, the numbers back that up.
Martina Ježková: I believe it works. A strong corporate culture genuinely affects results, so for me it's both. Besides being a volleyball fan, I also coach it — that's its own kind of subculture, with its own culture. What matters to me there is that the girls play as a team and with fighting spirit. Those are values we instill in them from a young age. I need parents to cooperate with us and support us. Recently, in our WhatsApp group, one father reacted inappropriately, and the group set him straight in a very civilized way. Us coaches didn't even have to step in. I think that's a sign of a strong culture. We do it so the girls enjoy it, but we also want results. I see it the same way at work — I believe it works, and that's why we do it.
Pavel Kuhn: How do you deal with having five generations in the workplace today?
Martina Ježková: We're missing the younger generation, which is one reason we need to work on employer branding, to attract younger people.
Gorjan Lazarov: We do have young people. Every generation has different needs, obviously. The younger generation wants more flexibility, so for us, corporate culture is an important connecting thread. Our culture bridges different generations, and that shows up in customer feedback too. When I took over the luxury Boscolo hotel in 2011, the Italian owner told me Czechs don't know how to do customer service. It turned out that wasn't true — Czechs can improvise and follow rules at the same time, which contributes to good service and helps bridge the gaps between generations.
Petr Doberský: We have young people too, it's not going too badly. On top of that, there's a shared love of planes and technology, so younger people look up to more experienced colleagues who really understand aircraft. Experience matters a lot here, but we have to make sure the older generation doesn't pass their old habits on to the younger ones.
Pavel Kuhn: Thank you. Gorjan, do you see a connection between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction?
Gorjan Lazarov: Absolutely. At the end of 2016, I decided we would reward people based on customer satisfaction, and that general managers would receive bonuses once a year instead of quarterly. That stopped people from "gaming the numbers" and got us focused on long-term customer satisfaction. This approach — that a satisfied, motivated employee creates a satisfied guest — still holds true today.
Pavel Kuhn: What was the hardest part of shaping your corporate culture?
Gorjan Lazarov: Trust is key. When you're changing something, earning people's trust matters most.
Petr Doberský: I had a similar experience. I had to stand in front of grim-faced guys who'd been at the company for 30 years and explain that the changes were real and would actually benefit them too. We need to work together, or the company won't survive.
Martina Ježková: The hardest part is convincing managers and directors not to compromise on questions of culture.
Pavel Kuhn: I like to joke that I only work with IT companies — even though some of them happen to take care of hotel guests, others provide ICT services, and others repair aircraft. How are you managing to build digital skills across the company, beyond the IT department?
Petr Doberský: For us, it's a bit like fixing a car. Everything follows manuals, often printed ones, and people follow them step by step. We'd love it if one day people had smart glasses showing digital instructions right in front of them, but for now, technology adoption is moving more slowly.
Gorjan Lazarov: We're just getting started. We measure employee motivation and engagement, we have a feedback platform, and we're developing digital projects for guests that should improve personalization of service.
Martina Ježková: We're also just getting started, and so far our approach to digitalization and skills development has been fairly opportunistic.
Pavel Kuhn: Thank you so much for such honest answers.