In Zhytomyr (Ukraine), another edition of the Unite for Trade business club took place — a format that is gradually moving beyond traditional networking events into hands-on work with real managerial challenges.
This time, the highlight of the meeting was the Hot Seat session — an intensive format where one company brings a real business challenge, and other participants collectively work on solutions through experience sharing, structured facilitation, and collective thinking.
Case Company — “Lehka Khoda”
The session featured “Lehka Khoda”, a well-established Ukrainian manufacturer of hosiery products with a long-standing production tradition and strong market presence.
The company produces over 500,000 pairs of products per month, operates more than 200 units of equipment, and employs around 140 specialists. Despite its strong manufacturing foundation, the company faces typical modern HR and organizational transformation challenges.
Key Business Challenge
During the Hot Seat session, the company presented three core management challenges:
- transformation of corporate culture
- reducing resistance to change within the team
- effective onboarding of new employees without losing key staff and productivity
These are highly relevant issues for many manufacturing and service companies today, especially in rapidly changing labor market conditions.
How the Session Worked
The Hot Seat format within Unite for Trade is designed as a high-intensity problem-solving environment:
- strict time management to maintain focus and clarity
- associative thinking techniques to trigger unconventional ideas
- group work with a strong element of constructive competition
- continuous exchange of experience between entrepreneurs from different industries
Rather than a traditional discussion, it is a structured process where ideas emerge quickly, often unexpectedly, but with strong practical relevance.
Insights from the Company
According to representatives of “Lehka Khoda”, the session became a true “business hot seat” — not in an entertainment sense, but as an intense and focused deep dive into real organizational challenges.
Key takeaways included:
- new approaches to talent sourcing and recruitment
- a different perspective on so-called “toxic” team members and how to manage them
- a shift in mindset when working with younger employees — focusing not only on company expectations, but also on employee needs
The team emphasized that they did not just receive ideas, but rather structured solutions that can already be tested and implemented in operational practice.
Conclusion
The Zhytomyr session once again confirmed that the most complex business challenges rarely have a single correct answer. Instead, they require an environment where experience, diverse perspectives, and structured dialogue are transformed into actionable solutions.
This is exactly the value of the Hot Seat format within Unite for Trade — a space where business problems are not just discussed, but actively deconstructed and rebuilt into new, practical management approaches.
The Unite for Trade program is developed and implemented by Visionest Institute in Ukraine (Estonia) in cooperation with the Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office under the national Diia.Business project, and the Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Estonia in Zhytomyr. The program is financed by ESTDEV — the Estonian Centre for International Development.