AmChamps 2019: Leadership and Family Business Development

Jelena Pavlović took a look at her own carrier path and her professional development at Philip Morris and explained the organization and structure of large companies to participants. Jelena emphasized that as companies are dedicated to establishing and accomplishing strictly defined goals, the task of leaders is to motivate employees to contribute to the company’s business success. A leader should know how to devise and clearly communicate the company’s vision and mission in a manner that the organization understands, accepts and follows. Jelena emphasized the position of women in business and the obstacles that face them and noted that gender diversity and equality are of great importance in the culture of modern companies. She also stated that if high quality strategic, organizational and executive decisions are to be made, it must be possible to hear and respect different opinions and perspectives. Finally, Jelena gave AmChamps participants a detailed explanation of AmCham‘s activities and contributions to improving the business environment, networking and promotion and excelling professional development.

In the second part of this AmChamps gathering, program participants heard useful pieces of advice on family business development from Telegroup founders Diana Gligorijević and Aleksandar Vratonjić Gligorijević. They began by looking at the founding of their company in 1992 in London, and how it has grown to be one of today’s leading solution providers in the West Balkan market in the area of informational-communicational technologies (ICT) and energetics. Diana and Aleksandar presented the phases of family business development and the advantages and disadvantages of doing business with members of your family. They stated that only knowledge is timeless, that their trigger has always been curiosity and that it is important to keep a balance between ownership management, family and running the business.