Sławomir Jędrzejczyk - Kongres Obywatelski 2013

Thank you very much. Before I get to karate, I'll start by saying that half a year ago I had no awareness whatsoever that the Citizens' Congress existed. Three months ago I had the idea to sit in the second-to-last row — and I warmly greet everyone sitting in the second-to-last row — and just passively listen to what's happening. And today I'm sitting here before you, and this modernization of my personality was done by Jan Schonburg. If Jan modernizes Poland at the pace he modernized me, then I'm calm about Poland. So Jan welcomed everyone, but I think we haven't welcomed Jan, so if we could very warmly thank Jan for the organization.

And now, in five minutes I have two thoughts to share. I think I'm the only representative here of so-called business and corporations, so I should start with GDP, of course, with growth, which I really don't like, but I'll do it. So, first thought: in my opinion, the modernization of Poland is more a question of income distribution than chasing growth.

There is, of course, the dominant view among economists that growth and GDP will solve all our ailments and problems. But increasingly firm voices are emerging — I think about two weeks ago there was an interview by Jacek Żakowski with Richard Wilkinson, who clearly put forward the thesis that once we reach a certain stage of development, sharing wealth becomes much more important than its growth. And now the question is whether Poland has reached such a moment where it's time to share rather than chase growth. I'll cite some World Bank statistics: over the last 20 years, we advanced from 235th to 23rd place in GDP, and GDP per capita from 91st to 49th, if I remember correctly. In 2009, the World Bank classified us among the richest countries in the world. And of course we can have aspirations to chase China and the United States, but if we look at the world, the vast majority of people would like to be in our position.

So the question is what's happening. There's an OECD statistic that shows we work too much, rest too little, and are much less satisfied with life than other developed countries. And why is this happening? Jan compared it to Pendolino. I'll compare it to a marathon. In a marathon there's one critical rule: if a weaker runner wants to keep up with the best, it's only a matter of time before they need resuscitation. And the question is whether we're simply running too fast, whether a large part of society has already been left behind and needs resuscitation, and whether it's not time to stop for a moment. But I have a second observation: if we look at the statistical yearbook, Poles don't actually like running marathons. Poles like swimming, cycling, playing volleyball, practicing martial arts. So the question is whether the marathon is even our discipline. And that brings me to my second thought.

This week, in my opinion, one of the most important events happened in Warsaw — the Summit of Nobel Peace Prize laureates. I regret a bit that mainstream media looked at this summit through the lens of Sharon Stone's visit, but there were truly many wonderful personalities. Among them was the 14th Dalai Lama. I had the pleasure of participating in panels with him, and I'll say honestly, the 14th Dalai Lama changed my life a bit. His book from many years ago — I looked at his guide to life, and there's one sentence: 'The real purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness.' And that leads me to the second thought I wanted to share, which I think is much more important than GDP.

Namely, the modernization of Poland is for me a dream — a dream of a country of happy people. Simply happy people, that's all. And what does it mean to be happy? Everyone has their own answer. As for happiness, I started searching a bit in connection with astronomy, since I'm also somewhat interested. I reached the Big Bang and didn't go further because I couldn't find reliable sources to follow. But from the Big Bang, there are two concepts that are absolutely the most important: the first is time, and the second is energy. And when it comes to time, you simply need to have time to ask yourself the question: am I happy? That's where it really starts. So I threw out my TV and started thinking. I freed up some time and entered the energy sphere.

And now, of course, social energy is very important, but much more important is the energy we have within ourselves. So you have to start with yourself. I started with myself — it's a truism, but we know that 80% of energy comes from breathing. It's true that breathing is an unconscious activity, because if it were conscious, we'd probably suffocate. So let's start with breathing, then eating, then drinking — of course, live healthily. Then let's start releasing the energy we've accumulated. I recommend yoga — it's truly a brilliant way for that energy to flow through the body. And once that energy is not only present but flowing, you need to learn to use it. And here martial arts are very good. I really returned to karate — I trained karate for many years, had a long break because of my involvement in corporations, but I returned to karate in a much more mature way. I looked at karate through the lens of martial arts and the values that karate carries, not through the lens of competitions or fighting.

And of course, when that energy is released, everything else flows. I felt that energy within me and felt a desire to share with others. My first thought was to leave the corporation, because I have the fortune — or misfortune — of having worked in corporations continuously since 1994, and burnout syndrome absolutely affected me and still does. I was very close to leaving and starting to share my happiness, energy, and joy with others outside the corporation. But fate had it that an article from a Harvard Business School professor appeared on my desk, and the professor wrote this sentence: management, especially management in corporations, is one of the most noble activities that can exist, because we have an unlimited influence on sharing with others. At Orlen, over 20,000 people work, with families that's tens of thousands, and with companies that cooperate with Orlen, that's hundreds of thousands of people. So our decisions have a direct or indirect impact on hundreds of thousands of people. So I treated leaving the corporation as an escape, and I decided to stay and decided to do something.

It started with a meeting I held with my managers, and I asked one question: what is our goal of working in the corporation? Various answers came: achieving budget targets, improving profit, share price, improving efficiency indicators. And I told them: our goal is to be happy. They looked at me in a rather crazy way. But paradoxically, if we are happy, we have energy, we share that energy with others, we inspire others, and we achieve all those goals that corporations should achieve — the share price improves, the company's value grows, and we achieve budget targets. Then we went further. I organized an off-site meeting at a place in Poland — I don't know if anyone knows it — Dojo Stara Wieś, which is a sort of Japanese village replica in the center of Poland, an incredibly energetic place. I organized a team-building event with no PowerPoint, no lectures, no training. The agenda was quite surprising for my people: first at 7:30 yoga classes, then at 10 three hours of breathing techniques, and then at 15 karate. Most of these people wore a kimono for the first time. They absolutely returned charged with completely different energy, completely different energy — they were completely different people. It was a fantastic, fantastic experience. And then the whole avalanche started, which I don't want to go into detail about because the lady has already shown me the red card four times. But we were implementing a strategy, and in that strategy the most important things are values, not all those indicators. From Orlen come five fundamental values: responsibility, development, energy, people, and reliability, and these are the values we follow at Orlen.

And I can wrap up because I have to finish, I understand. We created a mission a year ago — we worked on the strategy and created a mission. The Orlen mission reads as follows: 'By discovering and processing natural resources, we power the future.' And I won't hide that when we worked on this mission, we were thinking about oil, gas, air — meaning we want to discover oil, we want to discover gas, to process it into fuels so that you can use them and power the future. But now, as I started to think about it, somewhat inspired by conversations with Jan, there is actually one natural resource that is truly the most important and unlimited — it's human energy. And I'm starting to approach our mission in a completely different way. I'm starting to discover the energy that we transform into inspiration, into management, into support, in order to power the future. So you can look at the mission in a completely different way. Thank you.