[cz2/8] Czym dla mnie jest modernizacja Polski i jakie drogi do niej prowadzą?- Sławomir Jędrzejczyk

Thank you very much. Before moving on to karate, I'll start by saying that six months ago I wasn't fully aware that the Citizen Congress existed. Three months ago, I had the idea to sit in the second-to-last row and listen passively, but today I'm sitting here before you. If my personal modernization progresses at this pace, I'm calm about Poland. Jan welcomed everyone, but I think we should thank Jan for the organization. Now, I have two thoughts to share. I'm probably the only representative of so-called business and corporations, so I must start with GDP, which I don't like, but I'll do it. First thought: In my opinion, Poland's modernization is more a question of income distribution than chasing growth. There's a dominant view among economists that growth and GDP will solve all our problems, but voices are emerging, like in an interview with Richard Wilkinson, that at a certain stage of development, sharing wealth becomes more important than its growth. The question is whether Poland has reached that point. I'll cite some World Bank statistics: over the last 20 years, we advanced from 20th to 23rd in GDP, and from 91st to 49th in GDP per capita. In 2009, the World Bank classified us as... we can aspire, but if we look at the world, most people would want to be in our position. The question is what's happening. There's an OECD statistic that shows we work too much, rest too little, and are less satisfied. In a marathon, if a weaker runner tries to keep up with the best, it's a matter of time before they're resuscitated. Are we running too fast? Has a large part of society been left behind? Is it time to stop? Many Poles like marathons, but is it our discipline? This brings me to the second thought: this week, one of the most important events in Warsaw was the Nobel Peace Prize laureates' summit. I regret that mainstream media focused on Sharon Stone's visit, but there were many wonderful personalities, including the 14th Dalai Lama. His book changed my life, with a sentence that leads to the second thought: modernization of Poland, for me, is a dream of a country of happy people. What does happiness mean? Each has their own answer. I started searching, inspired by astronomy, and reached the Big Bang. From the Big Bang, two concepts are absolutely crucial: time and energy. For time, you need to have time to ask if you're happy. So I got rid of my TV and started thinking, freed up time, and entered energy. Social energy is important, but the energy within ourselves is more so. Start with yourself. I began with myself. It's a truism, but 80% of energy comes from breathing. Since breathing is unconscious, if it were conscious, we might suffocate. So start with breathing, then eating, drinking healthily, then releasing energy. I recommend yoga for energy flow. When energy flows, learn to use it. Martial arts are great for this, and I returned to karate, which I practiced for many years but had a long break due to corporate work. I returned to karate in a more mature way, seeing it as a martial art, not competitions or fights. When energy is released, everything flows. I felt this energy and a desire to share it with others. My first thought was to leave the corporation, as I've been in corporations since 1994 and burnout affected me. I was close to leaving to share my happiness, energy, and joy outside the corporation. But fate brought an article from a Harvard Business School professor to my desk, stating that management, especially in corporations, is one of the noblest activities because we have unlimited influence on sharing with others at work. Our decisions directly or indirectly affect hundreds of thousands of people. So leaving would be an escape, and I decided to stay and do something. I started questioning the purpose of our work in corporations. Various answers were given, like achieving budget goals, improving profit, share price, efficiency. I told them our goal is to be happy. They looked at me strangely, but paradoxically, if we're happy, we have energy, share it, inspire others, and achieve all corporate goals—share price improves, company value increases, budget goals are met. We went further. I organized an off-site meeting in Dodo Stara Wieś, a place like a Japanese village in central Poland, very energetic. There was no PowerPoint, no lectures, no training. The agenda was surprising: 7:30 AM yoga, then breathing exercises, and at 3 PM karate. Most people wore kimonos for the first time and returned fully charged with completely different energy, completely different people. It was a fantastic experience. Then the avalanche started. In the strategy we developed last year, the most important are values, not all indicators. At Orlen, we focus on: safety, responsibility, development, energy, people, and reliability. At Orlen, we aim to... perhaps I must end now. We created a mission last year: By discovering and processing natural resources, we drive the future. Honestly, when working on this mission, we thought about oil, gas, wind—wanting to discover and process them into fuels for you to use and drive the future. Now, inspired by conversations with Jan, I'm thinking that actually, one natural resource is truly the most important and unlimited: human energy. I'm starting to approach our mission differently: discovering energy... inspiring, managing, supporting to drive the future. So, we can look at the mission in a completely different way. Thank you.