I recommend the documentary Bata the First Globalist - a documentary co-produced by Czech TV and the French-German TV station ARTE in 2019 (only available to watch until 15.7.2023). I have taken an extract of the essential ideas from the documentary. Finally, I recall the important, essential information that is missing and should have been included in the documentary. It is symbolic that the son of a famous father, who participated in the destruction of his work, is watching you in the Czech TV broadcast. Why, even after 91 years, are we afraid to tell the full truth? Even today, we and the world desperately miss the Bata system! JŠ
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Bata created a universe with the shoe at its centre - The first globalist who gave work to millions of people - Work was not just the security of life, but its true meaning - People think, machines toil - Work is not an injustice - Humane shoemaking - Tomas Bata left a trail where his way of thinking still influences millions of people today - What you can't measure, you can't manage -He didn't use the word "problem", he called it a challenge!
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"My desire to live physically was just as strong as my resistance to moral death" Bata's words after his bankruptcy - I found more and more charm and inner satisfaction in my work - I was a slave to myself, but I managed to save the company - I managed to pay off all my debts in two years - I was a socialist, preaching a simple and primitive life, and I became an admirer of it. I was a collectivist and something of a communist, but definitely a socialist. I thought capitalist society was only good for bad people, for outcasts and lazy people. I dreamed of the simple life of Tolstoy. I would buy a small homestead and I would and will sow only as much as I need for myself and my family. No, I won't be a hated factory worker. The socialist was driven away from me by my workers. They looked at me with fearful eyes when they heard any doubt that this Bata would keep it up. As if it were not my life, but theirs. Is it possible to abandon these people? There was no way out, there was no choice but to stay in my place and become a hated factory worker, an outlaw, a slave-owner, in order to serve the people."
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Jan Antonín Baťa: Let's build a state for 40 million people
Jan Antonín Bat'a saved thousands of Jews (he was not decorated because he supposedly did not risk his life in doing so). To this day, the property has not been returned to his descendants, nor has any financial compensation. The Benes Decrees are still in force.
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"I maintain that the great prosperity of the American people is built chiefly upon the wisdom and diligence of the people there. There are even larger countries than the United States of America, with greater natural wealth, but because the population lacks the right conception of things, hunger and misery prevail there. I want to prove that such plants can be built in our country too - Bata built the American dream in Zlín and still surpassed it - Where is the limit? In heaven or on the sixteenth floor of a Zlín skyscraper?"
"Our task is not to build factories, our task is to build people - We want to build a man in our Zlín who smiles at the whole world - Only a satisfied worker can make a good shoe - He built apartments, hospitals, schools, shops - The pace of the running production belt was adapted to a heart rate of 60 beats per minute - Tomáš is still looking for ways to increase efficiency in his companies. He introduces employee profit sharing and new forms of management, reorganizes production on the principle of self-managed units, each workshop is a separate accounting unit. He is building a clear system that allows him to control his employees clearly. Bata wants to introduce a way of managing his empire that will run as automatically as the sun rises and sets."
"The turning point of the economic crisis? I don't believe in any turning points by themselves. What we have come to call an economic crisis is another name for moral misery. Moral misery is the cause. Economic decline is the consequence - There are many people in our country who believe that economic decline can be remedied with money. I dread the consequences of this error. We need to overcome the crisis of confidence. However, it cannot be overcome by technical interventions, financial and credit interventions. Trust is a personal matter, and trust can only be restored by moral standpoint and personal example. - Each day has 24 hours, that is 1440 minutes and 86 400 seconds. We must use every second wisely."
"My life was changed by this shoe. When you set out to do something, you're busy, you're coming up with something great and it's not like you're idle. I usually sell for 500, but since you shop here with me a lot, you name your price. All right, you'll pay me that much. I can't deny you shoes just because you're a scumbag like me, can I?"-"Now I'm teaching him how to deal with other people, how to live with other people without too much trouble. You have to live well and not be unfair and angry all the time. If you don't have a job, I couldn't raise my brother." "I try to get as much out of my skin as I can, I save the company material, that way the company will prosper and so will I."
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"I've been working here so long that even in my sleep I dream about work. I love my job. Have you never dreamed of not having to work and just getting paid? No, I don't. Don't you dream of money without a job? Not at all. I don't dream like that. It doesn't do a man any good to just sit around and eat. Depending on other people to give you something. You have to take care of yourself, with your own hands". (this text should be read by a considerable number of today's welfare recipients who may or may not work. JŠ) .
"What is the lifespan of a machine? It comes down to this, machines are different. Some machines break down only occasionally because they don't work with much pressure or don't do such heavy work. When you're under pressure, you live a very short time, but when you don't feel the pressure, you live a long time. What happens to a machine when it breaks, when it dies? We sell it as scrap metal. And what happens to people, what happens to you? Same thing, when they get old, God puts them in the scrap yard and they disappear from the world - After me, there's no one left who can fix and operate these machines. No one else can do it, there is no such person. How long do you think you'll live here? How should I know?!" From interviews with black shoemakers.
He loved life and wasn't afraid of death. He expressed it in his favorite song, "We die on horseback and when we fall off the horse, the saber rings." He had to die on the job, and he would sanctify his work with his blood. 1.Máj Zlín: Free the business! Courage and wit win!
Jan Antonín Bata perfected the idea of Tomáš Bata. Under his leadership, Bata became a multinational giant. A truly global company. Jan Antony is an entrepreneur and a maximalist with bold plans. When he found a piece of leather on the ground, he picked it up and handed it to a worker, saying: "This is money, you can't waste it!" When the worker popped to the toilet and didn't return quickly, he went to get him.
"Do you think his ghost is still here? Ghost? What do you mean? No, I'm haunting this place now as a ghost", says one Brazilian woman.
Do you dream of being like Bata?
"Yes. Being like Bata is not easy, the passion for the cause, the human ambition, the honesty, the daily struggle. I will never stop making shoes. I have nowhere to go but to my shoes because they are in my blood. It's in my DNA that I have to make shoes. And who passed on your DNA? Bata, Bata..."
Bata's DNA is coded to overcome problems. The Batas started by making shoes, then they built factories and entire cities. To connect their cities in Brazil, Jan Antonín initiated the construction of a bridge over the Paraná River in 1958. Today, Bata is the seventh largest company in the world (it could have been the first if not for the communists) - Bata's success is not the number of shoes, but the system he set up. There are stronger and more aggressive brands on the market today, but Bata's idea was the first.
"My work cannot and will not disappear. These buildings, chimneys, machines, they are just piles of bricks and old iron. My system will remain for the benefit of all who come after us. Our work and provision for the future consists above all in solving problems and in making a systematic effort to advance, to invent. We, in our shoemaking, solve problems just as artists solve them - with patience and heart."
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"Idea is more important than knowledge"
Albert Einstein
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Below, I recall the shocking, unquestionable testimony and information of Dr. Jaromír Vlček, which did not appear in the documentary, although it should have - and the only article in the Czech Republic that completely informed the public about the commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the tragic death of Tomáš Bat'a in Otrokovice on July 12, 1932.
Just to add that Great Britain and the USA, with the help of the son of the founder of Tomik, Edvard Benes, the communists and the US courts, got rid of a competitor that nobody could beat. Later, the UK and the US apologised for blacklisting the famous company, which marked the beginning of the end. Tommy only benefited from his father's name and tradition. Today, it is mostly other companies that manufacture for Bata. Jan Antonín Bata was sentenced by the communists, under the inactivity of Edvard Beneš, to 15 years (six months of hard labour each). In Brazil, he again became a prominent citizen and businessman (he built living conditions for 35,000 people). In 1958 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize, which he gave up in favour of another Brazilian. He died symbolically on the day of the opening of the bridge over the Paraná River, which he designed with the last sentence in his diary, "The truth will come out like oil on water..."
The real Bata is irrevocably in the past. Shall we make a feature film to thank the great men of our country? Bata still offers an unsurpassed recipe for solving the problems of today's man and the world! Today he would surely say: "Those who cannot do business without subsidies should make room on the market for someone who can" - "Let's stop talking, stating the known, let's start solving the causes!"
The economy is not about "stuffing" money into it, which encourages corruption and clientelism, but about real, honest work and real value creation. As Bata says, upbringing, education and above all personal example in your surroundings. This is the only way to change the world! JŠ
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Barefoot Bata: "Mr. President, drop the politics and come to my place to make shoes
Bata: The source of this information is German diplomatic archives from Berlin in the 1930s
Misunderstanding or deliberate, subliminal damage to Baťa?
Entrepreneurship education JAN ANTONÍN BAŤA - Perfect instructions that still apply
This day 100 years ago: The Expansion of Baťa's empire into the Netherlands - Baťa's lega
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