Sustainability of people matters the most

By: Barok Eszter Date: 2024. 09. 27. 12:07

Zoltán Gazsi, company manager of Eisberg has shed light on the human factor in his presentation: how to manage stress and what it takes to create an honest, inclusive corporate culture where motivated, happy people are working. The world is changing dramatically and the uncertainty that comes with it – according to a survey by Imre Porkoláb and his team – is something that only one in ten managers can cope with.

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2024/8-9

There is an error in the success model

Our image of success is wrong. “If I, the managing director of Eisberg, say that last year we made a HUF 2m loss when sales were at HUF 14bn, am I a failure? No, and my Swiss managers don’t think like that either. They say: yes, it is the kind of world we live in, we have a good team, but that is all we have managed to get out of this situation. KPI should not be the only measure of success”, explained Zoltán Gazsi. In many cases, management thinking in Hungary is still based on Schwarzenegger’s presentation that he gave in Hungary many years ago: the key to success is hard work and if you can’t sleep 6 hours “sleep faster”.

“The world is changing drastically, and 9 out of 10 managers either lack the ability to provide psychological safety to their employees, or lack the mindset or the skills” – Zoltán Gazsi, CEO of Eisberg

Not hard, but enjoyable

Zoltán Gazsi thinks the key to efficiency isn’t a professional training course or cyber security training, but a good night’s sleep. FirstBeat Life has profiled the sleeping habits of 27,000 people and found that one in two people go to work tired in Hungary. The average person who lives for 78 years sleeps roughly 28 years and works 10 years – if you sleep badly and hate your job, you are wasting almost 40 years of your life. This is why Zoltán Gazsi agrees with the Indian teacher Sadhguru, who says that you shouldn’t work hard, but enjoy your work. One of the prerequisites for this is proper stress management.

The key to success is the ability to change your perspective – if you can look at things from a different angle, not only can you remove the stress factor, but creative solutions can find their way, too

Changing your perspective is key

“Everyone’s stress is different – what is stressful for one person may go unnoticed by another. This is why the key to success is the ability to change your perspective”, says the managing director, who thinks that if you can manage to look at things from a different angle, not only can you get rid of the stress factor, but creative solutions can find their way in. Eisberg’s managing director has brought a new colour to the office of the year competition, saying that the main criterion for a good office isn’t “cool furniture”, but the number of motivated people working per square metre.

A leader must know his people

IQ and EQ are both important, so it isn’t a good idea to focus on the former alone. Sustainability is important, but so is the sustainability of people – and building a culture of trust in the company is essential for this. But trust is a strange thing: according to Erikson’s developmental psychology model, the depth of trust is developed in the first year of life. Primal trust largely depends on whether our needs are met after we are born.

Sustainability is an important issue, but so is the sustainability of people – and building a culture of trust in the company is essential

The human factor is everything

It is typical of humans to be carried away by the events of the world and not to look inwards. Five years ago Zoltán Gazsi was diagnosed with colon cancer, and after this he turned to deeper self-knowledge, which also involved the subconscious, such as the world of dreams.

Now he believes that human factors – self-awareness, empathy, creative thinking, and appropriate communication – should be at the heart of corporate team building and business decision-making. This will be even more necessary in the future, when in many cases AI will completely take over work processes. //