Experience 2023

After a long time back to work...

Having had three years of video-meetings we will come back to normal work. As in 2015 - 2019 we are travelling from all over Europe to a new target company to give them ideas to make a better job.

Up to oct. 2022 we had five candidates and our leading-team will reassure with theses companies the potential dates in 2023; then end of 2022 we have decided
"The winner is YORK from Poznan, Poland..."

Our meeting dates:

March 31st 09:00 until april 1st 2023 Get-to-Know Workshop in Poznan, PL
Sept. 23rd 09:00 - 18:00 Exchange Workshop in a European capital (Copenhagen or Zagreb or…?)
Oct. 27^th and 28^th Results Workshop in Poznan

Get-to-Know Workshop: What a reunion - at York in Poznan

The evening dinner after 3 years lasted so long...

For three years, we in the English-speaking international work group of the ICV met only by zoom because of Corona in 2020 and 2021 and because of the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, but now the common, finally analogous work in personal togetherness started again:
On Thursday, 30.03.2023, all 13 participants arrived at the hotel in Poznan in the evening, arriving by plane or car. The dinner lasted so long, we had so much to tell each other - a circle of friends that has grown over the years!
But also our new working group member Olga, who comes from Kiev in the Ukraine, was immediately warmly welcomed; we in the international working group, like the EU, are growing together...
On Friday, 31.03. in the morning, according to our work group motto
   come together,
       work together,
            learn together,
                develop together.
we drove to our "target company", the family business York, which had won our tender. Together with eight colleagues from York, we set ourselves the task of producing ideas for York - ideas and approaches to solutions that would then be further processed or implemented by York employees after our visits to Poznan from the end of the year.
Filip Makowski, York CEO and co-owner, showed us around and introduced us to the company, which produces cleaning utensils (see: york.global/). Especially in the production area, we were shown how to produce in an innovative and sustainable way.

great to be in Poznan with York-collegues

Visiting the YORK-production

After getting to know each other personally, we exchanged suggestions for topics from York. The following topics were chosen:
1. profitability analysis for (operational as well as strategic) projects
2. setting up a responsibility-oriented budget process
3. developing a contribution margin system for decision making
4. successful strategy implementation to increase staff motivation

Teamwork

Our four team leaders:
Team 1: Johannes Vollmer from the Netherlands,
Team 2: Karol Sikora from Poland,
Team 3: Axel Ehberger from Spain and
Team 4: Peter Janžekovič from Slovenia -

a truly European team leader selection !

The team leaders went into retreat with their staff, two other AK members and two York staff members each and started with organisational clarifications:

     - what are our team rules?
     - when and how do we organise our 6 to 8 virtual meetings until October?
     - what is our work programme?
     - what will be our first main topics?

Then we started to look at the technical questions and to draw up a first working paper, which was then presented to the plenary on Saturday and discussed.

final presentation

in the end: presentation of the 4 teams: What will be done the next months — in the end: presentation of the four teams: What will be done the next months

The highlight of the first meeting in Poznan was an invitation from York to spend an evening together at the Delicja restaurant in Poznan. It was a great atmosphere: there was a lot of laughter, a lot of discussion and also some technical discussions...

At the last meeting on Saturday evening, even our colleague Luiza from Warsaw came just to be with us. What a joy!

saying good bye to our collegues from York

what´s next ?

Participation in the following two face-to-face meetings is mandatory for all work group members:

1. on 23^rd September 2023, we will meet for a one-day meeting in Mataro near Barcelona to present, comment on and coordinate the results of the individual work group teams.

2. at the results and final meeting at the end of October at our target company York in Poznan, the individual work group teams will put the finishing touches to their presentations. In the evening we have another dinner together.
On the second day, everyone, really everyone, presents their final presentations to the owners, the CEO and his management team - followed by a discussion.

According to our experience in the previous projects:
     1. 2015 near Zabrze in Upper Silesia
     2. 2016 in Zielena Góra (Lower Silesia)
     3. 2017 in Ljubljana
     4. 2018 in Berlin and
     5. 2019 near Barcelona
more than 50% of our ideas / solutions are implemented.

Our workload for each of these is about 10 days, plus flight and travel costs. Not a small amount though:
It's great to learn with and from each other. We are a great team, have become real friends, meet privately on trips through Europe and thus live up to our motto:
    we come together,
       we work together,
            we learn from each other,
                we develop together.
Working together is a lot of fun; if you want to join us next year, please contact our work group leader
Dragana Mujanović, mail: dragana.mujanovic.co{bei}gmail.com