PIETER VOSS II. Proper business

1.What do you know about the role of a General Manager in a company? 2.Make a list of 10 skills and personality traits that a General Manager (GM) needs to have to be successful. Select five of them that you consider absolutely crucial. 3.How does someone prepare for being a GM? What kinds of schooling and experience does someone need to be prepared? Can someone have only high school experience or do they need undergraduate and graduate experience? Discuss. 4.Can you imagine yourselves doing the GM’s job? Why/why not? Do you know anyone who is now or would make a great GM? Describe the person. Exercise 1

1.Pieter Vos used to work first for Makro, then for Tesco, and lastly for Ahold. 2.Pieter Vos had worked in education before he became businessman. 3.The job of the Commercial Manager was his first position with Nobilis. 4.When he first arrived at Nobilis, the products were stored in a warehouse. 5.Pieter Vos advised Nobilis to find a General Manager. 6.Pieter Vos believes that every company must become more formal when it grows to a certain extent. 7.The biggest strength of Nobilis was very good contracts. The weakness was the low quality of products. 8.The main reason why Pieter Vos was invited to perform the second audit was to get rid of the existing General Manager. 9.One of the main reasons why Pieter Vos accepted the position of the GM was because he liked the Nobilis products and their team. Exercise 2 Are these statements TRUE or FALSE?

Listen and fill in the gaps Exercise 3 I was helping them to build the logistic network here. I used to work for big transport company Hopi and recently, actually since last year I have worked for Tesco, but I did also a lot of other jobs, specially in logistic area and distribution area but also production logistics. I have an record of 18 years in education. I was rector of gymnasium in Amsterdam – one of the biggest ones we had at the maximum 1200 students. …a friend of mine was actually working in Nobilis as a Commercial Manager and she asked me if I could help them because there were couple of operational problems. They noticed it but they didn’t know exactly how to solve it. So I suggested to do an audit to make visible what’s going on, what’s happening. So I took some days off. I went to Krásná Lípa in the north and I did there an audit. And in the report there was a whole list of recommendations and things, easy things to do. We call it easy winners. Quick things you can do for immediate improvement. I had interviews with almost everybody asking people how they are working, how things are organized, made flows visib le and, for example, ready products were stored everywhere in the building and then you can either not keep good track on the flow … Another thing was, one of the conclusions was that I recommended them to find a because they are very much focused on just production… And they are very much operational things. To keep stocks, to keep lists of contacts, what you do in all businesses, in fact.

Match the English expressions with their Czech equivalent Exercise 4

GROUP WORK 1. Make groups of three. In your groups, establish a general manager job description. Compare your results with this one at: Are there skills that you believe should be in the job description that aren’t there? Discuss the results of your groups as a whole In your groups, discuss the characteristics of the following three, main elements for a company’s success. Given what you know about local business enterprises and products, what factors can be detrimental to a company’s success? Good product, Good advertising, Good management 3.Why are the capacities of General Manager so important to a company? What cultural skills do managers need? 4.Based on your analysis of the previous questions, would you be interested in learning how to be a General Manager? Why or why not? Exercise 5

GROUP DISCUSSION 5.Imagine a possible business that your team could create together. Who in the group would be the most suited to be its General Manager? Present your business idea and its organizational structure to the rest of the groups. Discuss how different kinds of management skills are needed for different kinds of community services or business production. What other kinds of managers can you think of (e.g. cultural managers; political managers; commercial managers; financial managers; etc.)? What are their differences? What are their similarities? 6.Discuss and Reflect: How important is it for students to develop knowledge, skills, and experience in management? Are there other areas besides running a business that management skills would be useful to you? Exercise 5