Wen Laboutkova Cai’s day begins at 5am on the dot, every day. A fan of Robin Sharma’s best-selling 5am Club, Wen has a system that promotes productivity—the perfect antidote to complexity, she says. And she knows what she is talking about. For the last six years, Wen has worked at the helm of Skoda Auto’s international sales function, coordinating the business development and showroom network across no fewer than 15 international markets. It is a role that sees her liaise and communicate with teams that are culturally very diverse, determining the location and configuration of Skoda showrooms to meet customer expectations and user journeys that are also enormously diverse. Waking at 5am helps her to front load the day, she says, so that the day will take care of itself.
“I’m working with teams from Asia to Latam, who are serving customer bases with hugely different needs and wants. Maintaining contact and keeping us well-coordinated means making very early morning calls to one side of the globe and structuring later meetings with teams in other continents. I start my day at 5am and I spend my early morning on exercise and mindfulness. The commute into the Skoda HQ in northern of Prague takes me an hour or so, which I spend on Czech language classes. By the time I get into the office ready for my first calls with Australia, New Zealand and Asia, I’ve already got plenty done in terms of reflection, wellbeing and focus. It’s about optimising productivity to better manage complexity.”
An international mindset
Managing international sales across different geographies certainly calls for a good understanding of cultural complexity. Where SE Asian customers expect Skoda showrooms to provide a wealth of digital tools to configure new cars, in India the preference for luxury goods means that clients want more of a human touch, as well as the wherewithal to customise their vehicle. It falls to Wen to manage these diverse needs while simultaneously setting the brand standard for each market.
“That first experience in the Skoda showroom is so critical to the customer journey, it has to be right. We have to really know how to present our car optimally across 15 countries that are all very different. For me, that means negotiating different partners, different time zones and building my understanding of different cultural expectations continuously.”
Fortunately, Wen has a considerable lived experience of cultural diversity. A graduate of Wuhan University in China, she is also a CEMSie and completed her MIM at University College Dublin, and Vienna University. She was able to leverage her own international experience and mindset in her first role at Skoda in specialist product marketing and worldwide competitor analysis—a role that she took up on completion of the Skoda Global Trainee Program.
“I joined the program straight out of CEMS 10 years ago out of a real love for this industry and the meticulous precision and the security that it is built on.”
Other sectors are prone to a faster pace, but the automobile industry is all about cooperation, collaboration, focus and expertise. Skoda appealed to me because of its prestige, its amazing, rotational graduate progamme and the opportunities for mobility within the organisation.
Finding the right fit
Wen emerged from the Skoda graduate programme, a 12-month opportunity to experience different functions within the company, convinced that product marketing was the right first fit for her. In the event, this first role gave her an opportunity to put her international exposure and understanding of Asian markets to good use, she says.
“Part of this role was benchmarking Asian competitors and catching new technologies and market trends and then working with the market research team to pinpoint the kinds of new functions and products that could add real value to our vehicles. It was a great fit for my skills and background and an exciting opportunity to have impact and add value from the start.”
Making the shift to international sales in 2017 was straightforward, says Wen, largely because of the open and transparent culture within the organisation—and the expectation that talented people will migrate to new challenges as they grow and develop.
“Skoda is a huge organisation and there’s a real expectation within the company that you switch things up every few years and look for opportunities that match your capabilities well and that give you the opportunity to learn, as you bring your skills to different areas of the business.”
The organisation is also predominantly flat in hierarchy and structure, which gives it greater flexibility in terms of mobility for its employees. Wen does not manage a team of direct reports, as such—although her leadership skills are a key requisite in her current role.
“Leading is still a key concept in the work that I do, because my day to day involves coordinating lots of different business partners in different locations. A lot of my work means managing teams remotely, although recently I’ve been engaged in quite a lot of international travel.”
Time to be brave
Skoda recently opened a new showroom in Brunei and with plans well underway to commission new manufacturing sites and plants in Vietnam, Wen has been called upon to make trips to “exotic new locations,” she says, meeting teams and coordinating events with key stakeholders.
“In the last year, quite exceptionally, I’ve travelled to diverse destinations, from Brunei to India and Vietnam. So, there’s a real expectation that you can bring both the productivity and the flexibility to work in different cultures and contexts while holding the brand and product standards steady.”
Wen puts her productivity in part down to her 5am habit. Her cultural flexibility is both a function of her lived experience and her time as a CEMS student.
“CEMS really augmented my real-life experience from day one. There is just so much peer-to-peer learning with such top tier students from all over the world that enriches the academic experience exponentially. You master the techniques and the fundamentals of teamwork with diverse classmates as you present to CEMS partners, and you build a network that spans the globe. My CEMS friends all made it to my wedding in China, so these are ties that endure and that are meaningful.”
To make the most of an experience like CEMS and a rewarding career in a global organisation, Wen is very clear about the advice she would share with others.
“I think you must be brave today. And that means being open to exploring different industries and opportunities.”
“I began by doing internships that give you great exposure and really helps you to figure out what you want from your career and your life, and that’s a great start especially when you are young and you’re not clear about what you want to do yet.”
Being open to experience is important. But so too is making time for yourself, she stresses.
“I am a female working in a male-dominated industry and living in what is essentially a foreign country. I developed my 5am system largely as a way of doing something that is essential, and that is prioritising my work-life balance. Whatever you end up doing with your career, don’t ever forget to make time and room for your personal life.”
