Graduates of Lviv Business School of UCU (LvBS) Key Executive MBA Program are people who have their own stories in business but are still ready to rethink their experience and to learn lifelong. Iryna Dmyterko works as a Deputy Financial Director of Mriia Agroholding. Since her graduation, she has been implementing accounting and business processes in companies with foreign investments. And she also represents Lviv Business School of UCU Alumni in the LvBS Advisory Board. “My two years of studies at this program grew into lifelong learning in the LvBS community”, Iryna mentions in our interview:
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Iryna, to start, please tell us about the agro holding and your tasks in it.
Mriia has an interesting story. It is one of the oldest holdings in Ukraine that was growing rapidly, and it declined rapidly just as well. In the summer of 2014, because of the misconduct of the former owners and managers, the agro holding declared bankruptcy with the debt of $1.3 bln. In February 2015, the creditors took control of the company and decided to keep the business going, so they hired new managers to complete this task. I joined the new team in the summer of 2015, and my main task was to carry out an audit: what is within the file of multiple legal entities comprising the agro holding, which assets actually exist and which don’t. There also was a need to find a common denominator for the administration and accounting, to provide reliable international reports, and to undergo an international audit.
Since 2007, even before joining Mriia, I have been cooperating with international management professionals; and getting reliable data in time is a key issue for them. I like building the systems when I can quickly give proper analytics of any complexity or provide a report inquired by a manager of any department or level. This year I am working on implementing a control system both for the operational processes and the accounting system. Skilled systems architecture gives confidence in data reliability, it allows to make the right managing decisions and prevents corruption. Working on complex projects helps you in self-realization and personal fulfillment. At the same time, it also inspires you, especially when you see the result of your work. As, for instance, Mriia Agroholding, when step by step we are creating a profitable agriculture market leader from the ruins of the company.
And what brought you to Lviv Business School?
It was the beginning of 2010, the financial crisis all over around, and there was no clear understanding of where Ukrainian economy was going. I am a pragmatic person, uncertainty is not my style, and somehow, unconsciously, I realized that I didn’t want to stay there and wait, I needed to move on. The company I was working in at that time (Agrokultura Agroholding) took the position of preserving the assets in the stage of stability; the Swedish management was waiting and giving the information very carefully, without too many promises. My loyalty and hope for the future helped me realize the company’s position, but my personal growth was taking more definite shape in my mind. Fate itself brought me to Open House Key Executive MBA LvBS. Frankly, I had no plans on going to this meeting, but after one hour spent among incredible people, feeling the atmosphere of the environment, there were no more doubts in my heart concerning the choice, and I made a definite decision: “I want to live among these people, I want to be with them and to move forward!” These were the people who had their goals, saw them clearly, and were able to lead.
Was the choice of Key Executive MBA Program unexpected as well?
As for the program itself, I can say that I once took interest in MBA; I could see its advantages in managerial skills that I was lacking in my job; the program offered knowledge in other spheres that I knew little about. But the high price of the program and the fact that the best similar programs were far away from Lviv made me wait long for better times. And then, the newly-established Lviv Business School of UCU made an offer that was valuable and financially affordable. I can safely say that I used this chance and didn’t waste it.
What were your expectations for this program, and did the program actually meet them?
It was excitement and anticipation of something big. It was an expectation of new experience, of new adventures; I wished to know more about business administration, to feel what it means to be an owner of a business and what challenges he or she faces. The results really surpassed my expectations; the power of the community is greater than you first see it; the lecturers are not theorists but people with considerable life experience; the members of the program, from managers to owners of businesses, shared their cases, and we often used them to solve an issue; the international tours rocked my world.
I can’t but mention a strategic marketing business simulation called Markstrat. This strategy cut me off my real life for three days. I didn’t even respond to text messages, and it’s not typical for me. The strategy was venturesome, its aim was to build the most profitable business in a virtual country. My two years of studies at this program grew into lifelong learning in the LvBS community.
What are the most interesting aspects of the program, the instruments that you still use in practice?
It is impossible to name only one aspect or one instrument that I use; it is complex material collected during my studies. The program allowed me to make a single mechanism out of all the departments of a company; it helped to better understand what a company works for, how to estimate goals and results, and how to find ‘pain points’ and ‘blue oceans’. Earlier, I didn’t understand how the sales department can be so skillful, I took a step aside because “it’s not mine, I am a financier”. But my studies revealed a secret that you need skills to sell even your own idea, so I had to look into it. Now I understand very clearly how to estimate the results of work at sales or marketing department, and what tough questions to ask.
The most important thing I now use is that I view any situation from the standpoint of business administration. I learned to look not only from one side, to meet the needs of not only one department; I look at the variants at once, and what influence these or those changes can have on other departments or a company as a whole, how effective the result will be.
How would you describe your personal and professional growth before and after your studies?
Before my studies I was often guided by intuition in my work; when I had more complex projects, I often consulted with someone from outside. Now I have more understanding not only of the knowledge, but also of the sources of knowledge, I can work quicker and more effectively, and I have a lot more consultants now, I mean the community of LvBS graduates, LvBS Alumni.
My personal and professional growth became quite noticeable. I work on more and more complex projects every time, the amounts are getting larger every time; new companies I work for have more and more influence on Ukrainian economy. My first personal project was the reorganization of financing and accounting, and the organization of business processes in a company with 600 employees and production facilities on one territory; and today it is the debts restructuring project for Mriia that has 150 immediate subordinates and over 2000 employees of the holding, with production facilities and factories in six oblasts of Ukraine; this project is strategic for agricultural business and investment prospects of Ukraine. It’s my great excitement and self-realization to take part in improving at least some businesses in Ukraine that change and strengthen our country.
Tell us about your graduation project that you successfully passed at LvBS.
At that time, I was working in Agrokultura Agroholding, and I chose a project that would allow the company to move to a new level and raise its capital and profits. My project was to create a seed production sector as the added value of the holding. The efficiency indices were quite high, but some changes took place in the company, a bigger part of the business was sold, the company profile got narrower, and I didn’t manage to realize the project; there was a need of additional investments. But I didn’t lose heart; having written one project, it’s not difficult for me to write one or several more. Working on the project, I got a better understanding of agricultural business, the value of cycle manufacturing, long-term and short-term projection, the value of non-waste industry that I am still excited about and propose to implement it in business. I use this project when analyzing the current company (Mriia) that has a seed-growing department in the initial stage. The project I worked on earlier now helps me to quickly respond to production inquiries in order to improve or tune the processes.
For you personally, KEMBA LvBS is …
a powerful transformation of how you see every situation, events, and people. It is the globalization of your knowledge and consciousness.
What do LvBS Alumni and the LvBS community, in general, mean to you?
Oh, this year it is an important project to me, I work on it during my off-work time. Thanks to the graduates who elected me a member of the LvBS Advisory Board, I have an opportunity to take part in creating the LvBS Alumni Association. I am very happy that we finally have a critical mass of people who are ready to ‘launch’ this community. Earlier, we made several attempts to organize it, but those first attempts were often unsuccessful. And now, both business school itself and the graduates made an effort, and hooray, it worked!
The previous meetings of the Association left us with some initial materials that we shaped into the Association’s mission and vision. In six months we produced a document called “Alumni in Action”, and it is now used as a foundation for our further activity and cooperation with various groups in our network. I sincerely believe in the power of transforming people who are the graduates; I am sure that together we can change our cities and our country. Here we have highly-qualified professionals and high level of trust; there’s every chance that these two components can create initiatives that are second to none.
And what does success mean to you?
Success is when you realize yourself and your ambitions. When you do a business that you know and love, when you create things that your close people and society need, and when these things work for people or improve the environment, you can feel satisfaction and pertinence. Successful are those who create added value.
And to round it up, three really important questions for our graduates:)
What did you want to become when you were a kid?
It is not a surprise that during my first year of school I heard such an unknown word as ‘economist’. My grandma and I were on our vacation by the sea, and we lived with a girl who was studying to become an economist. I didn’t know what it was and what it meant, but I wanted to be like her. We became friends in spite of a huge age difference. After a while I forgot about it and dreamt of becoming either a teacher or a sportswoman, I had second thoughts, I was getting ready to enter another specialty, a then popular faculty of international relations. And that’s where fate itself led me; super-high bribes to enter this faculty became an obstacle, and the word ‘economist’ emerged from my childhood memories. Now it’s absolutely logical for me, I understand Maths really well, and I always tried to control our child games. Could I have chosen anything else? 🙂
Would you fly to Mars and colonize it? What business would you do there?
No, I wouldn’t. I am fine here on Earth; there are so many mountains to climb and lands to visit; I haven’t seen all the lakes and seas, and haven’t been to all the corners of the globe. My life is not enough to get to know Earth really well. So how can we talk about Mars? And you can do business here. However, if you dream a little, and there would be times when people would actually get there, then I surely would manage their businesses through remote access from Earth 🙂
If you were a superhero, what powers would you like to have?
I would dream to have the power of hyper learning, finding the truth (I hate lies and distortion of facts), and the power of Flash to move extremely fast. Sometimes it takes you a lot of time to learn something new or travel to the other part of the planet. The knowledge would help to develop new ways of improving life on our planet, and the speed would help to spread this knowledge.
By Olena Yankovska
