Petr Doberský (Czech Airlines Technics): A corporate crisis is like marriage counselling. Open communication brought our company back to profit

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Petr Doberský, CEO of Czech Airlines Technics. The company repairs aircraft, is a subsidiary of Prague Airport and employs over 600 people, more than 300 of them qualified aircraft mechanics. Doberský has led it since 2022, and in 2023 the company made a profit for the first time since 2019. He insists the credit isn’t his: “The company did it itself.”

When he took over, he says, the company was paralysed. Wages lagged behind the market and experienced mechanics were leaving for competitors. There was also a deep divide between mechanics and management. When management wanted to launch pilot changes with the best mechanics, they refused, because they didn’t want to go against their colleagues. Doberský compares the situation to a long marriage in which partners suspect each other and see everything negatively. History played its part too. Employees had ten years of bad news behind them, from the decline of Czech Airlines and a shrinking main customer to Covid. The lucky part was that both sides still wanted the company to get back on its feet.

The previous management style was technical: find the problem, calculate a solution and order it. With educated, experienced mechanics who carry huge responsibility for aircraft safety, that only increased resistance. So the company changed its approach. Management started explaining why things were being done and sharing the profitability of individual jobs and of the whole company. Previously, only a small group of people knew these numbers. Fears that the information would leak didn’t materialise. “Nothing happened. Everything just started working much better,” says Doberský.

The change also required a difficult decision in top management. A strongly directive colleague, whom Doberský respected and learned a lot from, had to leave. For part of the company, he had become “a red rag to a bull”. In the end, the colleague himself acknowledged that he didn’t want to work in a company with the new culture.

The company defined its values and expected behaviours itself. Around 22 people from across the company, nominated by their teams, spent six months working on five areas. The result isn’t feel-good talk but a concrete description of what the company wants and what it won’t tolerate, such as deliberately withholding information.

Performance pay, which brought a 10–20% increase, came about the same way. Mechanics helped set the parameters. These track how much of a shift a mechanic spends on a job and whether the work is done within the standard time. They are based on real data, and a standard can be re-measured if someone disagrees with it. Even the trade unions didn’t question the system. They sent a list of technical adjustments, and their representatives now help fine-tune it in a joint working group.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• How to recognise paralysis between management and employees

• Why a directive management style didn’t work with aircraft mechanics

• What happens when you start sharing job profitability with employees

• How to part ways with a manager who is blocking change

• How to set up performance pay in a field where a mistake can cost lives

• Why culture change takes twice as long as you expect

For Petr Doberský, culture change doesn’t start with a new process. It starts with willingness to talk and explain. It takes longer than management expects, and nobody can guarantee the result in advance. But once people understand how the company makes money and help shape the rules that affect them, the results follow.