Episode #3

Appropriate Management Style

Interview with: Maciej Herman
CEO at Lotte Wedel

Maciej Herman, CEO of Lotte Wedel, did not take chocolate with him to the Plac Studio for the recording of the TOP LEADERS CLUB videocast. However, he provided such an inspiring conversation about leadership that I decided to ignore it 🙂

We talked about, among other things, self-development, motivators and finding inspiration, as well as long professional careers in one workplace and turning points in one’s career.

I found Maciej’s myth-busting point of view on choosing a management style, learning from mistakes and how to deal with the Zeta generation, which is supposedly so difficult to manage, very interesting. Is it really such a difficult piece of leadership bread?

Maciej Herman
I don't know if there have ever been such dynamic changes and such uncertainty management in the history of the world. This is a very big challenge, maybe even the number one challenge currently facing business and people who manage companies. Some factors can almost turn a company upside down. And there are many of these factors. And there is enormous complexity.
Therefore, a very important skill will be managing complexity, or colloquially speaking - connecting the dots. And there are a lot of these dots at the moment and they are in many different places. Connecting these dots to predict the repercussions of different situations is difficult. Therefore, if someone does not have the skills to manage complexity, they should have a team that has such skills, that is diverse, that has different experiences, that is competent, and that is also highly creative. This is probably the best way to deal with such factors.
Maciej Herman, CEO w Lotte Wedel says,
Our conversation also revolved around:
  • the cultural identity of the organization,
  • a way to construct balanced and effective teams,
  • related to diversity and inclusion,
  • generational differences, or rather their lack,
  • competencies and incompetencies of managers,
  • an unequal fight against uncertainty and variability in business.