Le Veneur

01/09/2026

Výkonnost českých dodavatelských firem v automotive měříme většinou škodlivě:

Zajímá nás obrat, zisk (!), případně marže. Používání těchto metrik ale vede k tomu, že české automotive firmy mohou tvrdě pracovat, ale přitom prodělávat nebo ztrácet hodnotu.

Mnohem lepší metrika je ROIC. Budeme-li ji používat, mohou být české automotive dodavatelské firmy opět dlouhodobě ziskové. Více najdete v článku Roberta A. Le Veneur pro Hospodářské noviny:

Výkonnost českého automotive, především dodavatelů automobilek, měříme zcela škodlivě. To nám pak znemožňuje přemýšlet o jeho budoucnosti. Zdůrazňujeme primárně tržby, v lepším případě některou z marží. Podle loňské studie Roland Berger a Lazardu u evropských automo...

28/08/2026

38 % ředitelů, kteří přišli, uzavřelo obchod s jiným účastníkem. Na vzdělávací akci byste to nečekali. Tohle ale vzdělávací akce není.

Většina firem dělá jednu ze tří chyb:

1.) nemá strategii, jen seznam přání, skáče od nápadu k nápadu, od požáru k požáru,

2.) nebo má plán, ale vzhledem k tomu, že se svět před půl rokem nebo čtrnácti dny změnil, je k ničemu,

3.) sype kapitál do projektů, které nevydělají ani na vlastní riziko.

V Praze 20. října a v Brně 21. října vedu boardroom session na téma "Úspěšné strategie v době nejistot a AI".

Sejde se 10 ředitelů u jednoho stolu, z každého oboru je povolena jenom jedna firma a celý den budou diskutovat nad svými plány - ne nad mými slidy.

Cíl je nepříjemně konkrétní: aby vaše EBIT v roce 2027 byla meziročně vyšší alespoň o 30 %.

Nebudete-li během prvních dvou hodin spokojeni, odejdete a peníze máte zpět.

Je to výhradně pro majitele a ředitele.

Podívejte se:

Získejte nové schopnosti, jak vaši firmu posunout do nového věku. Vysoce praktický obsah, nově vytvořené byznys vazby. Výhradně pro ředitele. V Praze a Brně.

19/08/2026

A client came to us asking what he should do to bring his project into profit. Yesterday we sent him an analysis recommending the opposite – to close the project entirely. Why?

Every company, and in truth every individual, should continually weigh where it makes most sense, at this particular moment, to allocate its capital and its other resources.

Say you hold projects A and B. You have to keep asking whether it pays to hold only A, only B, or both. Put simply: if project B would earn a higher return on invested capital — or another suitable metric — than project A, then holding A no longer makes sense.

In this case, the project we proposed closing failed on most of the parameters that matter:

👎low cash return on invested capital
👎below required risk-adjusted IRR
👎high capital intensity
👎long payback

We are always entirely honest with our clients. When we judge that a project does not make sense, we say so plainly.

03/08/2026

Who would benefit most from buying the Czech and Slovak Tesco stores? And why has Tesco’s market share in the Czech and Slovak markets fallen so sharply?

Our CEO, Robert A. Le Veneur, explained to Hospodářské noviny:

Když si téměř před dvěma desetiletími chtěla skupina kamarádů vystřelit z tehdy rozšířeného koníčku Čechů v podobě trávení víkendů v nákupních centrech, vyrobila trička s nápisem Česko v designu loga řetězce Tesco. To se potravinovému prodejci vůbec nelíbilo a pohro...

24/06/2026

Sometimes the right decision is to close a business you have run for twenty years.

A few years ago, an owner of a family business came to us. For two decades his family company had earned solid profits — but those profits had been shrinking year after year, until the business began slipping into loss.

His question was simple: could we fix it?

Our analysis said no, and we told him so.

The company had lost several of the suppliers whose products its customers wanted. More fundamentally, the way those customers bought had changed entirely — and no single firm could reverse that.

So our recommendation was not to repair the business, but to close the brand altogether and build a new one on a new model.

For the owner, that was an extraordinarily hard thing to accept. We advised him through the transition for two years.

In 2021 he began building the new business; in 2022 he closed the old one. Its profit since, in euros:

2021 - €0.1M
2022 - €0.3M
2023 - €0.7M
2024 - €0.6M
2025 - €0.7M

The financial figures are drawn from publicly available sources.

08/06/2026

At one company where we conducted an AI audit, they laid off of their PPC consultant and automated everything using AI.

As a result, their cost per conversion is now roughly 300% higher than when the PPC campaigns were managed by a human.

Please note that this is a single case. It is certainly not possible to draw any conclusions about a trend from this. The only thing that can be said, at least for now, is that we have recorded one case where replacing a human with AI is—at least for the time being—unprofitable.

A study State of AI in Business (2025) by MIT even claims that 95% of AI (GenAI) implementations do not pay for themselves.

Of course, it is possible that AI will learn to become smarter over time. On the other hand, we see that if there is no one to correct it, learning is very difficult for it.

In most cases, therefore, we propose that AI should not replace people, but rather complement them.

04/06/2026

Note that the phrase “We laid off employees and replaced them with AI” is most often used by companies that

a) are in trouble,
b) are lagging behind the market average or expectations in certain metrics,
c) want to attract the attention of the public or investors.

If Saudi Aramco, John Deere, Airbus, Gilead, Patek Philippe, or that installation company you have to book three months in advance started claiming, “We’ve laid off 50% of our employees and now AI will run everything,” it would probably scare you quite a bit.

Consider which headline is more likely to make the news and which one shapes the public’s perception of the company:

“Our company is facing financial difficulties. We’re exploring different avenues.”

“We had to lay off 50% of our employees.”

“We’ve increased productivity per employee by 100%, we’re shifting into high gear, and we’re fully deploying AI.”

Of course, it’s not that black-and-white.

But just today I had to laugh when I saw a headline in one newspaper:

“Company XYZ is replacing its employees with AI in high velocity, and its CEO is praising the increase in efficiency”

And in another newspaper on the same day:

"Company XYZ is still operating at a loss, and its cumulative losses continue to grow; investors are nervous."

(Robert A. Le Veneur)

20/05/2026

"What kind of company do you want to be?"

This is one of the strategic questions that precedes the deployment of AI.

Why:

AI can help you on your journey. But it needs to know the direction. There’s a difference between wanting to be Harrods or Lidl. For example, how do you expect AI to handle pricing, margins, hiring, or even visuals if you don’t know who you want to be?

Imagine if Lidl or Harrods asked AI the question: "How can we attract better employees?" Just like that, without proper instructions, without a lot of data, without in-depth prompting.

They’d end up with some generic AI nonsense that they likely wouldn’t be able to apply for the most part.

Only when you give the AI enough data and clearly describe who you are and who you want to be will you receive answers of vastly higher quality.

That’s why clarifying your strategy is so important.

14/05/2026

Yesterday, we recommended that a client implement a CRM system that is estimated to be the 15th largest in the rankings. Why did we rule out the 14 larger ones and the 5 smaller ones?

When choosing an IT system, CRM, ERP, sales framework, management framework (e.g., OKR, BSC, Scaling Up), etc., it’s important that the system feels right to you.

Tension arises during the selection and implementation process—and that’s completely natural. On the one hand, the system imposes constraints—which is good, because it means order. But it mustn’t be an order that constrains you to the point of destroying you.

Selecting a quality system, therefore, means first and foremost understanding how you work and think. Because it makes absolutely no sense to implement a framework or IT system that your work style or mindset won’t accept.

On the other hand, it is essential to have a very deep understanding in advance of the limitations of each system. Limitations can be both an advantage and a trap. This is a common mistake made by companies that do not know the systems thoroughly—and allow a vendor to impose something on them. After a year of work and numerous paid invoices, they discover that the system does not suit them—and cannot be changed.

We, for example, address this by offering the client three to five options out of perhaps 20 possible CRMs, ERPs, or strategic frameworks. And we re-examine and discuss which one will be most beneficial for the client.

"On the other hand again," as I like to say, it is very often necessary to customize the system a bit. But it mustn’t be too much. The logic of a given system—in the case of good systems—is usually very well thought out. And very often, requests for excessive customization reveal long-standing unresolved issues within the company rather than the company’s specific needs.

The em dashes (—) are a stylistic choice, not—in my case—the result of AI.

13/05/2026

Many corporate initiatives, whether market expansions, IT overhauls, or new Go-to-Market strategies, do not fail because of poor ex*****on.

They fail because the foundational thesis was flawed from day one.

Your teams will burn the midnight oil optimizing the mandate. They will deliver exceptional work. But often, no one in the room has the authority, or the courage, to stand up and say:

"This entire premise is capital destruction."

Imagine a board approving a budget to sell footwear to penguins in Antarctica. The corporate machinery immediately grinds into gear:

Supply chain establishes a logistics hub on the ice.

Marketing deploys an aggressive awareness campaign.

R&D meticulously measures webbed feet to optimize product-market fit.

Twelve months later, the initiative is bleeding cash.

The C-suite demands answers: "Was the ad spend inefficient? Is our sales team underperforming? Is the pricing architecture wrong?"

The problem was not the marketing. The problem was not the sales team.

The problem was in the boardroom. The initial brief was a hallucination.

It's boring, unpleasant, and obvious, but before you approve any major investment, whether it’s CapEx or even OpEx, rigorously stress-test the core thesis.

And don't trust Excel. If you try hard enough, Excel can calculate the Free Cash Flow even for selling shoes to penguins in Antarctica.