Interview / Interim management
100% CEO
Meet Jiří Vácha, a seasoned interim CEO who helps companies in trouble during the day and builds technology startups at night.
Prepared by Vojtěch Sedláček / Photo: David Markovič.
Headim, under the leadership of Jiří Vácha, has more than 20 years of experience in business and management.
It has supported over 50 companies in the Czech Republic and the EU and implemented more than 150 corporate projects.
After the revolution, a number of entrepreneurs started their own business. Some people were crushed by the wild nineties, but many businesses are still operating with the same project thirty years later. But times are changing, the market is evolving and energy is waning. Some hitherto prosperous companies are thus beginning to reach their limits. A way to help the company get back in the saddle can be interim management, i.e. the temporary deployment of an experienced CEO, such as Jiří Vácha from Headim.
His job description is simple and yet very complex. It helps companies plagued by various problems to get back in shape, teaches their owners how to delegate management, or advises on how best to sell the company. Vácha describes himself as the new sheriff in the city, who helps the mayor expel desperados harmful to the city and introduces new laws.
However, he sometimes changes his white shirt and jacket for a black T-shirt, when he melts the knowledge he has gathered in his startups into new software solutions that make it easier for companies to run. “Company owners often do not admit that they are doing something wrong and that they have missed the train,” says Jiří Vácha.
You describe yourself as a 100% CEO. How did you get to this setup?
I started my career in a foreign corporation – and they train you there. The company supported and educated people who wanted to succeed. Either you move up the career ladder, take on more responsibility and more demanding roles, or you give up. I spent a lot of time on internships abroad and worked in Italy and France for several years. At the age of 35, I was already managing a big team in Paris. And then you say to yourself that there is not much room to grow and try to succeed in the market on your own.
Did you have a tendency to manage things when you were young?
He didn’t. But I’ve always been a great individualist. I liked to do things on my own, without people around me, which is still true today. I don’t listen to any podcasts, I don’t use social media much or read books about successful people. In my opinion, such things don’t give you much.
You have been involved in interim management for the last 15 years. Why did you choose this segment?
I realize myself in the management of companies. I tried to pass on the leadership role to my startups, but it didn’t fit me – and it didn’t fit the others. I’m already an old panther, I’m 53 years old, and I surround myself with people with high abilities, who also have the appropriate ego, and yet they don’t feel the need to fight with me.
Your position at Headim can be paraphrased as a transformational, restructuring and crisis CEO. What do you mean by that?
Simply put, I come to the management of a company when it has been struggling with problems for a long time – they go down economically or get stuck at a standstill and do not grow. In Germany and Austria, it is a common profession. The local owners, who have had a company for 15 or 30 years and have not trained a successor, are used to passing it on and enjoying freedom. In our country, however, business owners are very rigid. They try to solve problems themselves, often unfortunately unsuccessfully. Interim management not only prepares an analysis for them, but also puts it into practice. This is how we differ from consultants who create 10 to 25 pages of what the owner should do and then disappear without taking responsibility for the proposed strategy.
How demanding is it on the psyche to constantly move from one company to another, where you only deal with problems?
It’s challenging. You have to meet your goals and at the same time withstand the pressure of the owner, who very often tends to do micro-management and take you as an executive assistant who ‘puts it all together for him’.
So you are not exactly sparring partners with company owners?
It’s a lot about psychology. During the initial analysis, I can tell if we will get along with the person at all. If so, I try to arrange that he will entrust me with the management, he will not be unnecessarily involved in the company and I will regularly hand over reports to him. I have experienced cooperation several times when it was very rough. The owners often cross the defined boundaries, they do not want to change the style they have led the company for decades, and they often do not even admit that they have done something wrong. On the other hand, there are also companies where you can see that the owner wants to learn something, is interested in new procedures and is so-called cooperative. In such a case, I can imagine that I am directing everything in his presence. However, most owners are anxiously watching the transfer of management to someone else – even if only for a short time. They are afraid that someone will cheat them, that there will be irreversible interference with the company, and therefore they usually look for references for us first.
But collecting references for you is not easy, is it? Clients don’t want to boast too much about using your services.
You can say that again. When a project succeeds, it’s as if we weren’t there at all – all the success is attributed to the company and its management. However, if the situation does not improve, they say that they tried to reach out to professional management, but they did not budge either.
Is it even possible to define the most common causes of why the companies you help get into trouble?
The main problem is the stagnation of profitability. Companies can report sales, but they do not have the resources to grow and invest. Capitalism is built on growth. If a company starts to stagnate and doesn’t move forward for two, three, four years, doesn’t create value, dividends or profits, it’s a problem. If it does not sell and we do not see any progress, it is necessary to find out whether it is a management error or a poorly set product. It is necessary to identify weak points, devise a strategy and then apply it.
When else can you be called?
The second option is a situation where change management is needed. This occurs when the owner decides that he does not want to devote so much time to his company and wants to gradually hand over the management – for example, to his descendants. However, they often need supervision and gradual training. Alternatively, the owner decides to leave the company and it is necessary to build functional management that can do without him. However, it can also happen that they want to prepare the company for sale. We have many projects where owners want to find out what their company is worth on the market and to whom they could possibly offer it.
What is the most common profile of the companies you join?
It is the SME (Small and Medium Enterprise – ed.) segment, so a typical target group is a company with 100 to 500 employees.
What situations are so-called red flags for you?
For example, when the owners describe the company as there is no problem anywhere. This already indicates in advance that hidden problems will soon arise that they do not want to talk about. Another warning sign is when they don’t want to let me into a more detailed analysis. But there are more similar situations, usually I can tell whether to go for cooperation or rather withdraw from the initial interview.
Do you keep track of your success score? What percentage of projects do you get out of trouble?
Today I can say that all the companies I joined for a certain period of time continue to prosper. It is also important to realize that when I leave the company, most changes are just starting to bring results. The effect may not be immediate, but the company will start to grow in the short term.
How many companies do you refuse?
I would say that for every four rejected projects, there is one accepted.
Is the focus of the company’s business also important to you when making your decision?
I make sure that it is a field that I am close to, but at the same time it can bring me new experience. It’s the same as switching from car to car – if you’re an experienced driver, you can do it without any problems. I am proficient in economics, business, marketing and management. However, the key is to see that people in the company have a sparkle in their eyes.
How deep do you go in the employee structure when analyzing the state of the company? Do you talk to the management, but are you also interested in the perspective of ordinary employees?
Definitely. I go directly to the plant, visit the production, take notes, measure the times of individual processes, talk to the foremen and find out what is bothering them. It’s often quite wild – people sometimes even scold me, but when we get to know each other better, they usually change their minds.
How long does the company’s treatment process itself take?
It depends on the complexity of its problems. We usually range from six months to a year and a half.
Are you interested in what is happening in the entrusted companies even after your departure?
I usually build good relationships with the owners, even though they tend to be quite tense at the beginning of the cooperation. People tell me that they didn’t have the best first impression of me. When leaving, however, it is usually exactly the opposite. So yes, I continue to follow my former clients and their projects.
At the same time, you seem quite sympathetic to me. So do you take on a certain role in your work?
I try to be authentic, so I don’t play anything. Hypocrisy is often rather harmful. I don’t shout, but I’m consistent in meeting goals and what I expect from people. If I see that someone is not competent, lacks energy or just doesn’t want to, we sit down and tell them straight.
What about you and burnout? Aren’t you tempted to stay somewhere permanently, where it’s not just about problems?
I’ve been doing this for a long time, but honestly? Elsewhere I would be completely useless (laughs). It would be beautiful, but after two years I would just sit there and stop working. In the end, someone else would have to come and fire me. That’s why I also build startups – I put a lot of energy into them, but I know that I’ll sell them in a few years and won’t be in them forever.
You have already successfully exited several such startups. Now you have two new ones, named Calkira and Tesyda. What do they focus on?
In the companies I go through, I often see what they are missing and find out if such a tool exists, how much it costs and how well it can be implemented. Naturally, a number of ideas follow from this. One such tool was behind the creation of Tesyda, which develops a tool for predictive analysis. It can tell the sales director which product has the best chance that a particular customer will be interested in it. My only condition was that we would not launch it in the Czech Republic, but in Great Britain, then in the EU and finally in the USA. Czechs are still lagging behind in technological thinking. Business owners often work in Excel, some even still use squared papers and cross themselves when implementing new tools. That’s why I didn’t want to waste energy on the local market and instead penetrate markets where they are better prepared for innovation.
And Calkira?
It was created in response to our dissatisfaction with software platforms that read invoices and transfer them to accounting systems. There are several similar tools on the market, but each has its own specific drawbacks. Today, large companies even offer us the opportunity to build the whole thing ourselves – and then they buy it from us for a certain amount.
The question arises: how do you manage it all?
My strength is the organization of all corporate activities, and I also surround myself with people who make me the dumbest in my startups. I pride myself on not being allowed to work as an executive – I have to manage, delegate tasks, monitor the structure, set goals and look for what doesn’t work. I go to companies in a shirt and jacket, to startups in a black T-shirt. Sometimes I hear that I’m the oldest start-up entrepreneur in Prague, but I’m excited about this time, which brings new opportunities. A lot of people are afraid of the future, but I’m an optimist.
As an interim manager, you probably have to be an optimist.
There is something to that.
This is how Tesyda was born, which developed a predictive analytics tool/platform that helps managers predict future business or financial developments based on their data.
Follow Jiří Vácha on LinkedIn.
