November 29 (BTA) - In a video interview to BTA, BORICA AD payment and card operator CEO Miroslav Vichev, who was one of ten finalists in the Manager of the Year contest and who went on to win the award, says that the most significant ability of the good manager is the ability to select the best team, define the correct goal and motivate the people to pursue it.

The competition, which this year was held for the 14th time, is  organized MITT PRESS OOD, the publisher of the Manager Journal.

The winner's name became known to the general public in a documentary of MITT PRESS OOD aired on bTV on Sunday. Vichev was named as the winner by President Rumen Radev at a closed-door ceremony in the presidency building on November 2. The cermony was attended by the other finalists in the Top Ten Managers of 2021 and the journal's publisher.

Below is the fill text of the interview with Miroslav Vichev who spoke to Ekaterina Toteva of BTA.

Hello, Mr. Vichev. Welcome to BTA.

Question: What makes a good manager?

Answer: The ability to find the right team, the flair for setting the right goal and motivating people to achieve the set goals are crucial for a good manager. It is also very important to create the right organization. There are many things related to management methodology and the right financial and business approaches, but the selection of people and the ability to lead them is of the essence.

Q: How would you assess the business environment in Bulgaria? Is it difficult or easy to do business in this country?

A: The business environment in Bulgaria is not easy. In a number of situations, one has to develop their business independently of the State or even in spite of it. Nevertheless, we are seeing development, the economy is growing and, generally speaking, capable people manage to develop their business at such a time. I believe that the opportunities here are not fewer than elsewhere in Europe. A country in an earlier stage of development offers an opportunity to fill in many gaps, to do many things, and there are quite a few opportunities for business development. I believe there are enough capable managers who have already gained experience abroad and in Bulgaria, and the opportunity to develop a business is big enough to make the efforts worthwhile, both in entrepreneurial terms and in terms of administrative management.

Q: Would you describe in a few words the challenges to the sector in which you operate in the context of the three crises that have accumulated and your expectations?

A: BORICA operates in the area of business and payment services - card, authentication services. In these areas, our business depends most on people's payments, on their willingness to move business and money in many different ways, and on their willingness to use electronic services. At the outset of the crisis card transactions plummeted, people were staying at home, there was a sharp drop, but there has been a turnaround in the past year. Regarding intercompany payments, they have hardly decreased during this period. As regards electronic and authentication services, they are booming and developing. At the moment, we provide services that allow e-signing through a mobile phone, remote e-identification. All these services form a basis for the digitization of every business, be it banking, contacts with the State or any other area of business and finance. In fact, the public's readiness to use electronic services has increased rapidly and the volume of this business has picked up. Things are complicated by the fact that at the same time, the institutions - banks that allow the use of remote identification and electronic signatures - are not that many, and that the provision of electronic services and e-government are not developing as fast as expected either. The use of this kind of remote e-services leaves something to be desired, therefore it is now crucial that everyone - both private business and the government -should be able to accept electronic identification and remote mobile e-signatures widely and well enough. This will allow people to do all kinds of things remotely much more easily and will lead to a truly digital society.

Q: I suggest that we leave the realm of business and try to find the connection between business and artistic creativity. In what way do you think the skill of business administration comes close to the creative process in art?

A: There are lots of orderly things in business administration, let's label them as maths. There are many techniques and approaches, calculations and finance, which at a first glance seem a world away from art, from art's freedom and beauty. On the other hand, if one went a bit deeper, the successful business is not just maths, structures and methodology. Things are very strongly linked with the acumen for people, for the market. Also, there is the ability to fit the things that you are doing with the teams you are doing them with, with the needs in the area where you have chosen to do business. In this sense, the acumen, the fine feeling and the ability to feel what to do when, what people to choose, how to motivate them, are elements which stand very close to art and exist in art too. When you cannot calculate things, cannot do the intellectual arithmetic, you need to just go along with your ability to feel people, the problems among them, the solutions, the motivation, and to direct everything in a given direction - this is on the one hand. And on the other, you need to feel the market in the given area, the competition, how to approach things, what to do to better stand out. These are all elements that are closer to art, to the fine inner feeling and sense of how things get done, not a purely intellectual and rational solution.

Q: Going along these lines, which art would you liken your business to, and which concrete work of art could you compare it to?

A: Regarding our business, and which art it can be compared to, I think that what most strongly attracted me to this line of work was the complexity of everything we do. BORICA's business is one of the unique businesses in Europe and the world in terms of combining various types of work and initiatives under the umbrella of one entity. On the one hand, we have payment systems, on the other, card services, thirdly, electronic verification services, as well as work with the state, with banks, with the business, and some services for end clients. This all is extremely complex and varied. As far as I see it, this kind of business mostly resembles more synthetic arts such as musicals and opera. The same as the creation of a musical or opera performance requires experience and abilities to combine very many different artistic people, organization, complex arrangements - it is by no chance that these are called synthetic arts, because they contain many different components which need to be combined into one, and the end product is much more an expression of the good fit of the various components, the sufficiently high quality of each one of them, searching for talents in each of the elements of an opera performance or in music - all this comes close to the complexity and the experience needed to gather some complex components in business and deliver something in a given project. I think these things are very closely linked.

Q: You made a comparison with a musical or opera performance. Is this an indication of your artistic interests or perhaps you have other preferences?

A: I personally am of that type of people who from an early age have been given many things and have tried their hands at many things. I have a good enough sense for music, I love dancing, I like visual art, fiction, and this diversity has led to the situation in which I have not directed my efforts in one single concrete thing but in different areas through time. So, I cannot name a concrete art above any other. I do have very extensive interests. I am a paintings collector, I like music very much, jazz, rock. I read a lot, all of the time, mostly fiction. Because we were speaking about music, with my family we have succeeded in seeing almost all contemporary musicals in Europe, and not least, the wonderful musicals staged in Bulgaria lately as well. The latest performance we have been to was Pilates' Dream by Stefan Dimitrov, which is a one-of-a-kind performance and which I am glad that we had the luck of seeing. We should not omit theatre either. In my view, there is a boom in theatre art at the moment, and it is very interesting. I think that my perceptions of and attitudes to art are very broad and diverse.

Q: I see you have quite a wide range of interests in various spheres of art. This makes curious about your opinion of the management of culture in Bulgaria. Do you think the project in this field in Bulgaria are visible enough?

A: The question of management is a very complex one. The state as a whole, unlike business, where a lot of experience has been accumulated and, as Manager of the Year itself shows, many top level specialists are included and it involves remarkable professional analysis and comparison. But that is in business and in economy generally. In respect to the state, however, things are not so good, there are many fields in which management is poor. I do not have so much professional knowledge how culture should be managed. From what we see, I could definitely say that the state could invest the money set aside for that in a better and more transparent way - something, which is an essential part of the way I manage BORICA. Speaking of the state, my opinion of how things in culture are managed is not very high. There are particular things that are visible, that are a good result, but these are rare. The overall feeling about this realm and the hundreds and thousands of people who are dedicated to it is - the moment when one comes into contact with the various aspects of culture and art in Europe and across the world and sees the things in Bulgaria, well, things in Bulgaria are a few rather concrete, very successful, while the mass aspect is not so well developed. I don't think this is valid for the particular sponsors, producers and specialists who implement cultural projects in Bulgaria. What I have seen impresses me a lot, but I think it is rather the result achieved in Bulgaria by a professional private organization and good experience. It is not by chance that Bulgaria already has high enough achievements at many places globally. I think that the specialists who specifically have experience in implementing culture projects manage to do so very well. My skepticism rather refers to how the state money in the field is managed.

Q: Would you share some personal impressions from contemporary Bulgarian art in a field you love best?

A: I told you my interests cover quite a wide range. If I have to give this in some order, maybe I would begin with literature, recently I have been very impressed with the achievement there. Many interesting books were published these years - Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter, Zachary Karabashliev's Havra [Hotchpotch], many, many books by Zdravka Evtimova, Maria Laleva, Maria Laleva - I liked them very much. Generally, Bulgarian things are published I like very much and I follows with interest, regardless of the enormous quantity of foreign language literature I traditionally follow, I enjoy alternating that with interesting Bulgarian things. In other fields, because we are quite interested in art, although most things we collect are either foreign or by the older Bulgarian masters. Recently, we were quite intrigued by and pleased to purchase two of (popular actor) Zueka's paintings, which was something exciting, regardless of the contradictory comments and of what is happening. That was a bright spot in something we had been doing. Other than that, we mentioned musicals and the things that are being done in Bulgaria. This I also think is very good. The plays - I would not like to go into detail and list them, for I am not objective enough, but I enjoy watching the new things coming out - the one-man shows, Marius' [Kurkinski] things were amazing, as always, and we have yet to see several interesting things in the coming weeks. I think Bulgarians have a lot of powerful things in each field. Theodore Ushev - I was very impressed by his Blind Vaysha that was released and nominated for the Academy Award. There are many fields in which we succeed in achieving something and I think this is an advantage of our nation and of the people engaged in art. I would encourage them and would try to support them in any way, support such initiatives. Once again, I would say, that it is in my character, in the way I look at these things, to rather inquire on a broad scale and see an enormous quantity and variety of things than focus on one specific thing.

Q: Let me ask you in the end: when you have to make a difficult managerial decision which book of a contemporary Bulgarian author would you first think of to look for advice?

A: Frankly, the way in which I resolve serious business problems is the same I mentioned - my feeling. In the same way that I mentioned, the feeling, relaxing and the capacity to sense the situation and make the correct decisions presuppose a parallel with art. At the same time, this parallel is not direct. My feeling and focus at such a moment are entirely on the given problem and in the way I resolve things. It is difficult to "turn on" such a concrete approach, parallel or jump. The only thing I will underscore again is that I don't resolve them like maths problems. I definitely try to relax, to wait, to absorb, to see all aspects of the situation and the decision comes gradually. In this sense this is close to art, but it is not quite directly, straightaway connected, so that I could take something and read it or associate it. I would definitely turn on music, for I also like our jazz very much. I would listen to a bit of Theodosii Spassov and Nina Nikolina, for example. I love such things that could give a background and capacity for the right attitude for something. DD, ZH, BR//

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