Are you able to count how many organisations and institutions you hold various functions in? Where does this commitment to social purposes come from?
Indeed, I cooperate with quite a number of organisations – there are 29 of them. It is a family tradition. My great grandfather Antoni Kazimierz Blikle (he set up the company in 1869) was one of the founding members of the Confectioners Guild, which “gained its independence” from the Bakers Guild. My great grandfather was even appointed the chairman of the guild, just like later on my grandfather Antoni Wiesław Blikle II and my father Jerzy Blikle III. I, Blikle IV, started in a similar way – as a founding member of the Polish Information Processing Society, where for 12 years I was a member of the management board and for 4 years I held the position of its chairman. I am committed to social purposes, so when Poland was finally free, I decided that the civil society should organise itself and this way obtain the right to comment on issues concerning society.
But in Poland we have a problem with working in a group …
It is true. We, Poles, are able to unite quickly and spontaneously for the sake of great ideas, but positivist work from scratch is more difficult for us.
In the USA there is a downright cult of associating, and most of all in various extraprofessional organisations. In Poland we are not observing this phenomenon.
Historically speaking, we are an old democracy, but generationally, quite young. Furthermore, the people of my generation usually don’t have the best associations with organizations. They are viewed with the times of the People’s Republic of Poland in mind. However, this tendency has been reversing and the number of various organisations is increasing. In our association Family Business Initiative there are more and more active members.
What is the Family Business Initiative and why was it established?
It is an association which was established in 2008. At the time a group of representatives of family businesses got together in the School of Business WSB-NLU in Nowy Sącz with Krzysztof Pawłowski, Ph.D. There was also a conference on family businesses, organised by Jacek Lipiec, Ph.D. (working for the Warsaw School of Economics today). It was then that we decided that it would be a good idea to exchange our experience relating to managing and working in a family business (irrespective of its trade). In our statutory purposes we focused most of all on the integration of the environment and supporting the development of family businesses, which is extremely important, because there are 1.5 million family businesses in Poland – united, we could be a significant power. Other statutory purposes are also important to us, such as the rule of law, the market economy and ethics in business. Our association is open to everyone who wishes to support our activity, not getting into detail about the definition of a family business. Among our members there are also people who deal with this issue from a strictly scientific point of view. There are twin organisations, such as the Institute for Family Business and the Foundation for Family Businesses, which were established as a side effect of our project “Family Businesses”, implemented together with the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development. It is Poland’s first training programme directed to family businesses, targeted at learning together and exchanging experience between their owners and managers. The project applies the latest methodology of working with family businesses, cooperation with experts in the field of management and building strategies, knowledge and experience of representatives of the most active enterprises in Poland. And all this to make family businesses more competitive on the Polish and foreign market. Succession is the most important challenge faced by a family business, which as such should be handed down from generation to generation. But in order to do so, it is necessary to prepare the successors, which turns out to be a hard task. In the European Union only 30% of family businesses have a succession strategy ready. In my opinion it should be built-in the moment when your children are born, by preparing them from their early childhood, e.g. showing them the positive aspects of running a family business. It is a mistake if only problems of the company are discussed at home. The children hear only that a client didn’t pay, that a client returned the goods, that employees come to work late. They are exposed to such information for 20 years, so no wonder that they don’t want to share their parents’ experience. Another aspect is the ability to build a properly balanced relation between your company and your family. Your company must not dominate your family life and your home must not dominate your business. It is important to be able to maintain an intergenerational dialogue, but we also have to build relations among employees who are family members and also those who are not our relatives.
Looking at the history of the Blikle company – you didn’t decide to join the family company right from the start.
That’s true. I was involved with mathematics and scientific work, which lasted 30 years and it was a very happy period of my life. I started my studies in 1956, in a time which did not favour running your own business. My father had advised me to choose a profession with broader perspectives. At the same time, he wanted to prepare me for work in our family business, so following his advice I passed the journeyman exam, and then the master craftsman exam, as these documents gave me the right to work as a confectioner and to run a confectionery company. But my son, Łukasz Blikle V, was at once selected by my father, and his grandfather, as his successor. Therefore, my father employed our cousin, Maria Szukałowicz, in our company, who after his death could run the company until it was to be taken over by Łukasz. And that is how Łukasz was the first to introduce the concept of marketing to our company, and I got involved with comprehensive quality management.
What attributes should a good manager have?
I agree with Emmanuel Gobillot, the author of the book “Leadership by Integration”, that the most important task of a manager is providing the team with energy and using the knowledge of each team member. I also sympathise with the opinion of the former head of SAS airlines who saved them from bankruptcy. He said that a manager is employed not for his knowledge, but for his ability to use the knowledge that already exists in the company.
On your website you write a lot about management paradigms of companies in the 21st century, especially those referring to quality. What challenges connected with management wait for Polish companies?
In the group of Polish corporations there are none which would apply all these principles fully. But there are such companies in Poland and they have their branches here, e.g. Egon Zehnder or Mary Kay Cosmetics. For me the challenge is to take advantage of the abilities of people – there is still a lot to be done here as there are huge reserves of unused potential of employees in Polish companies. The aspect of motivating employees is important, not by assuming the archaic carrot and stick approach, because it is a method from the turn of the 19th century. The trainings broadly offered in Poland and financed from EU funds won’t help a lot, either. If training is completely free of charge or almost free of charge, it is usually not selected properly and carefully. Actually, such training is very often something like “happy hours” for employees and it has no influence on the level of their knowledge and motivation.
What do you think, why haven’t we lived to see a Polish export brand, a flagship product that Poland could be associated with?
But we do have true export aces, which are often better known abroad than in Poland. Take the Fakro company, a manufacturer of roof windows since 1985, holder of 25% of the global market share. It is not a brand like Nokia, used by every child and adult; it is not a brand which is shown on TV and on billboards, because it is a different type of product – purchased by developers and construction companies. Another example is Konspol, manufacturer of poultry products, which every day processes 100 thousand chickens. What’s more, Konspol has just developed the world’s first patent for the production of smoked poultry without pork fat, which opens the markets of the Middle East, where for cultural reasons products which contain any addition of pork are never consumed. Another example of a Polish export ace is Solaris buses. During its nearly 20 years of existence the company has marketed a new original product – a municipal bus. There are also examples from the Aviation Valley in Podkarpackie Province, where components for Boeing aircraft are produced.
It is a pity that we in Poland know so little about successes of Polish companies. Is it because we don’t like boasting or are unable to do it?
Unfortunately, it is the fault of the media, which feed on scandals, misfortune, disasters, because it sells well. There used to be “Dobry Magazyn” (Good Magazine) published by Roman Kluska’s company Prodoks, where as a rule only positive issues and successes were written about. Unfortunately, this project is no longer continued.
I think that the magazine Polska Teraz is to a certain extent a continuator of this idea – of presenting Polish successes in each walk of life. Thank you for the interview.
The Foundation of the Polish Promotional Emblem „Teraz Polska”
