Aleš Šlechta
During my working career, I met a lot of people and a lot of bosses. From the communist to the capitalist. After all, I’ve been employed since 1977. I remember them all. Everyone had their positives, but also their negatives. But I was lucky that I could usually learn something from them. To this day, however, no more than 3 names have stuck in my head.
Jean-Pierre Souchard, director of the French company Fours BMI, with whom I basically founded our first heat treatment plant in Liberec. Just because we communicated only in French, he was different from the others. They communicated before him in Czech, sometimes in Russian, those after him only in English. The second difference was that while the others were discussing in pubs in the evenings, he locked himself in a hotel room and played Bach’s at transverse flute.
Then, after some ups and downs, he was replaced by John Hubbard, and that was the second name. He is the one who introduced me to the world of big business. John was and still is a great personality and the fact that we are still in contact only testifies to our mutual respect.
The third is Aleš Šlechta, and he, unlike the previous ones, has never become my boss, and he will never happen again. But he is a man with a lot of wonderful ideas, sometimes perhaps utopian, a man with a huge emphasis on social relations within his family business, and for me with an incredible approach to ecology and to connect people with nature. It is hard for me to admit how many times I have left him ashamed of what kind of barbarian and antisocial I am. And so I keep learning on my old knees and maybe it’s so good ….
Why am I writing this here? Today I received a document called Interview. So I present it here, I wouldn’t write it better
March 2, 2022
Jiří Stanislav
