Marketing Meets Mobility: A Chat with Michal Janda

Michal not only a student of the Programme but equally an event contributor. As a managerial employee of OMV, he has presented internal issues during a Corporate Workshop and was a Corporate Sponsor during the recent 3-month Business Consulting Project. In September 2024, he shared his MBA experiences with the new student intake. When not working on his final MBA project, or at the office, or with his family, Michal is an ardent cyclist.

Michal Janda photo

Tell me about your job. What do you like about it?

These are challenging times from multiple perspectives. Actually, if I would look at myself only, I’ve been recently challenged with overtaking again one more department, which will take me a little bit back to my marketing heritage, so to speak. So once again, I will be responsible for both the marketing and convenience retail departments – which can work quite well together, as they have in the past.

Marketing means we promote products to increase sales, while convenience retail is responsible for the assortment and overall offer to customers. In this game, we’re quite lucky because we have physical locations close to customers – and my big challenge is to come up with the right solutions, products, and offerings that will help modern people on the road stay mobile, well-fed, healthy, and happy.

I’d say there are two levels to it. On a personal level, it’s a bit more challenging to take over another team again and to focus on restructuring it so it works as one unit. And on the strategic level, there’s the long-term challenge our whole filling station industry is facing.

You’ve been a popular star if you wish this year and I mean this as a compliment.  There was the corporate workshop and then the consulting project. The consulting project from your perspective, how much between the two of these have you implemented and how much are you thinking to implement or even not consider it?
Note to our readers unfamiliar with the Programme: during the second year, students actively work with a corporate or organisational sponsor to resolve internal issues during a 3-month period.

To be very honest, it’s too soon to say we’ve implemented something specific yet. We’re working on certain ideas we picked up from the students. The Corporate Workshop was shorter, while the Consulting Project was more of an extension of it, more vivid and very engaging. Together with the students, we were challenged throughout the whole process.

We had a lot of discussions around our internal processes – especially our assortment and promotion strategy – because the whole project focused on the future of our company and how we communicate our offer. This is where I believe we’ll implement ideas from both the workshop and the consulting project.

The students managed to highlight things we were already somewhat aware of but hadn’t properly addressed. Now we’ve taken those insights and made them a priority. What I’m referring to is this: we do a lot of things, many great little initiatives, but we don’t always ask ourselves why we’re doing them. What is the ultimate goal?

The students helped open our eyes. Once we clarified that, we were able to set priorities better. Then it quickly became clear that some projects are nice-to-have and can wait, while others deserve more focus because they’ll have the biggest impact.

Your thoughts and experience of the Programme, how can we become better…

I think there is no simple answer to that question, because I think you already do many things very well. You’ve managed to gather a truly interesting group of candidates. In fact, that was the main reason I enrolled in the programme and I was definitely not disappointed. It’s not just about the people in my cohort. There’s a strong community across different cohorts, and I think that’s something you should keep nurturing. It brings a lot of added value to the programme.

If I had to suggest an area for improvement, I’d look at individual classes and subjects. Sometimes, there are different opinions on how to deliver an engaging class. But what I appreciate about the MBA is that we already have university degrees and professional experience, so the biggest benefit isn’t hearing the theory again, but rather discussing how it’s applied in practice. Plus having guest speakers and professionals sharing their real-world experience with certain methods or frameworks is very valuable.

The Corporate Workshops were quick and didn’t take too much of our time, but they served their purpose. They gave us a chance to apply what we’d learned. I liked that. As for the Consulting Project, I think the whole process could be slightly more polished – given it runs over 2.5 months. That said, the foundation is very strong.

We thank Michal for his very frank and open discussion. Best wishes and much success in your life and career.

 

Learn more about our MBA students and alumni in a series of interviews: