Mira Mines, CEO of Berlitz Israel

• Number of company employees: 400.
• Number of employees worldwide: Over 15,000 employees in 72 countries worldwide and over 550 study centers.
• Number of direct subordinates: 10.
• We provide: Language instruction, inter-cultural training and additional solutions (such as translation services).
• I have been in my position for: I have been at Berlitz since the year 2000. At the beginning, I worked at Perach at Tel Aviv University as a Coordinator and Deputy Manager for 5 years. Then I moved to Berlitz. I started off as a manager of a study center and was later promoted to VP, a position I filled for a period of 5 years. For the past year, I have been working as the CEO of Berlitz Israel.
• What I like about the job: That it is a unique combination of a managerial and educational position in a company that is an international brand. Our students undergo a process of self-development. I am fulfilled by my work from offering language or cultural solutions to our customers. Knowing that I am a part of a great change, since knowing a language is life altering, causes me to come to work energized each day with the desire to work. I must say that working with my staff and my teachers shows me that the dedication and concern that can be brought to an organization are endless.
• The most difficult part of the job: The remoteness from the field. It so happens that the better part of my day is dedicated to managerial issues and I would like more contact with the teaching staff and employees deployed around the country.
• Goals I want to attain: I aspire to continue establishing Berlitz’s mighty status as a leading language and inter-cultural training school in Israel. I am aiming to enter additional areas of activity and answer additional customer needs in Israel. I want to open new horizons to the children of Israel, to introduce them to new languages and to help strengthen their ability to speak English confidently.
• Our vision: Our vision is to be one place that offers communication solutions between various individuals and organizations in the field of language and culture. We aim to answer as many needs as possible that grow from our community of customers (that change over time). We at Berlitz see ourselves as an organization that helps immigrants adjust – an assortment of our teachers are new immigrants undergoing training and they get a profession and a warm and supportive organization. We are making an intra-organizational effort to implement our vision and translate it to action that will promote and retain it.
• An original product in the market: The TI (Total Immersion) program. This is Berlitz’s flag program, which received a lot of attention from businesspeople and executives. The program offers students the possibility of speaking any new language within two weeks. We encounter many businesspeople that have an important business trip coming up or an important visit from abroad and they have to know how to communicate in the new language. Of course, also people up for a promotion at work use the IT program as a wonderful springboard to secure their promotion. Another breakthrough product is the inter-cultural training. Beyond knowing the language, something that constitutes a significant obstacle is the unfamiliarity with the culture of the people we do business with, sometimes to the point of sabotaging a deal.
• Sources of innovation: : We assess the current and future state of affairs and adjust ourselves to these needs. For example, due to the proliferous dealings in the past year with business in China, we developed courses and workshops focused on China. We are attentive to our pupils, and they are the best mirror and feedback for us. Our teachers come from all over the world, from different cultures, and we are very happy when our teaching staff raises a new and interesting idea.
• Recommended professional book: The Right to Manage / Or-Lee Pecker, published by Pecker Ltd. The book discusses the fundamental issues in the word of management, and proposes a logical and applicable approach to significantly improving the way managers do business.
  
   
   
• Send feedback to mira.mines@berlitz.co.il
• Would you like to be interviewed?: contact us
• Information about Excellence in Customer Service workshops is available here (Page 25 in PDF Booklet).
  

The Book / Elioz Rabin / Opus Publishers

Published in The Marker Magazine, Fabuary 2008, in "The Management Bookworm" column written by Ari Manor, CEO of ZOOZ.

Elioz Rabin has extensive marketing and sales experience. Among the rest, he previously served as Head of the Life Insurance Department at the Phoenix Insurance Company, as VP of Marketing and Sales at Bituach Yashir, and as CEO of Neviot, Yedioth Communications and Autoserve. Elioz, an unconventional manger, has now written a new book published by Meter, which is a practical guide to anyone engaged in management, marketing and sales. Elioz wrote his book out of a great love for marketing, and mainly out of enjoyment, humor, and to shoot from the hip.

For example, he gives his book the pretentious title “The Book” (and designates it to anyone wanting to work “by the book” and never knew where to find this “book”). He also combined humor and nonsense in the book, and obviously fictional and fallacious quotes and references (in accordance with his belief that words do not need to be based on facts, but the opposite – they create a new reality). Elioz even entices the reader the develop new insights and not to devoutly follow what is written in the book. In this context, he quotes Groucho Marx: “These are my principles! If you don’t like them, I have others!”.

The insights in the book are challenging and surprising. For example – in the field of sales management: Elioz asks the readers not to pay salespeople that meet their goals commissions and bonuses! Why not? In principle, Elioz claims that a salesperson with a handsome fixed salary will be happy to do his part for the organization, while paying commissions disconnects and alienates him from the organization. At the practical level – objectives actually lower the sales averages… a clear goal will only energize the salespeople that approach the goal in any case, while those with much higher achievements will sell less (and leave available sales for next quarter’s bonus) and those with much lower achievements will only be discouraged by the goal and subsequently harm their performance.

According to Elioz, it is better to measure salespeople according to activity and not results. For example, to measure the number of meetings per day, the number of sales per day, and the average order size. And if they are already being rewarded for results – it’s better to do it as part of a weekly promotion (marathons) – without setting a clear goal – so that they will really make an effort because it is not clear when the goal was met. An entire chapter of the book deals with managing sales marathons with an emphasis on inventing a fantasy world (without clear objectives) that will challenge the salespeople. Elioz, who himself developed the first sales marathon in Israel, shares with the readers the lessons learned from several successful marathons, in which the sales rate was increased by tenfold or more.

Another chapter in the book explains why it is preferable to invest in processes and not in employees. A good and effective process provides customers with a satisfactory solution, making the need to train employees to handle complaints and serve customers superfluous, for example – Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) enabled bank customers to withdraw money almost instantaneously, using self-service, instead of waiting 15 minutes in line and being served by the bank tellers, as good as they may be. Customers, claims Elioz, are definitely prepared to serve themselves if it makes the process more efficient. As evidence, the Arcaffe chain requires its customers to stand in one line to order, and in another line to receive their orders, and still provides a good service experience in the customers’ opinions. Similarly, if the insurance company automatically returns incomplete policies to its agents (lacking all the required information) – the insurance company saves an entire department of finance managers, the agents get their commission, and the policy becomes effective and reaches the insured parties within a day or two instead of within weeks.

The Book includes insights that are no less important about marketing communication (for example – how to appeal to customers in a language they understand, instead of using professional jargon), about how to energize employees by depriving them of the satisfaction they so desire (for example – whoever craves prestige should make an effort so that he can be rewarded with a private meeting with the CEO), about how to develop a brand (without paying millions to a branding company), and much more.

From next year, The Book will be a compulsory read for Business Administration students at Tel Aviv University, and I recommend reading The Book even if you are not a student. This is a special book that is thought provoking, even if it is studded with humor and despite the fact that some of what is written in it is controversial and won’t always work. Don’t be fooled – the book is based on a significant amount of practical experience, and can change the way you work and add a great deal to your line of profit. This management bookworm enjoyed itself, grew wiser and has already changed a bit. Now it is your turn to think, internalize and profit.

• Buy the book at: IBooks
• The Book's website (in Hebrew)
• A list of other must-read books for managers
• For articles about Innovation, Click here.

A Surprising Twist!

A Philips screwdriver and Philips screw were registered as a patent in the United States in 1936 by the inventor and entrepreneur Henry Philips. This invention, which is based on multiplying the grove in a regular screw, and the shape of a cross in the screw and at the tip of the screwdriver, yielded two main benefits. Firstly, it was easier to center the screwdriver on the screw and prevent the screwdriver from slipping off the top of the screw. Secondly, the grooves in the original Philips screw were fairly flat, and this prevented the screw from being fastened too tightly. The screwdriver simply lost its grip on the screw when it was screwed in too tightly.

Henry Philips also founded the Philips screw company, but did not manufacture screws himself. Instead, he contacted the American Screw company, and reached an agreement with them to manufacture and market the screws that he invented. The first application of the Philips screws was in the automotive industry, where the new screws made it possible to speed up the production rate and still maintain the cars’ finish. In 1940, all the car manufacturers in the United States were already working with Philips screws.

The new screws also spread to other industries, and continued to develop according to the needs (for example – to a screw with deeper grooves, which can be tightened tighter than a regular screw). Ironically, the screws’ great success actually harmed the inventor. Use of Philips screws became so widespread, that in 1949 Henry lost his patent, which became common property. The fruits of success are not always so sweet.

 

• For information on Systematic Innovation workshops: see here or contact us
• An article on the Six Inventive Thinking Tools can be found here.