December, 2005

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
– William Butler Yeats

Interviewed by Elizaveta K. Levina

What does a Western manager need to know to successfully manage Russian employees?
In northern European cultures it’s deemed professional to keep business and family separate, but not in Russia. Here, people expect to be able to discuss personal problems at work and think it’s fine if their boss calls late at night or on the weekend to talk about business. In other countries, at half past six workers are in private time.

This means that what you, a foreign manager, might consider good business management, is actually not. Family and work are more mixed in Russia—it’s what you call a diffused culture—and this may create conflict.

In Russia if you want to succeed in business as a manager, you must show interest in your employee’s life. You must ask your employees how their granny feels and whether their child did well in their exam. And this goes both ways; employees also expect to take an interest in your personal life.

If you manage your staff in this way, should you ask an employee to come in Monday at 8 AM instead of 9 AM to settle important issues, the employee will agree gladly because he or she is grateful to help and feels connected to you personally.

Of course in Russia there is a style of management, called management by walking around, that builds on this more personal work environment. In this model, employees expect the boss to know everything. The boss is like a teacher. Overseas, your typical teacher may take time to think about a student’s question, but in Russia if you ask the teacher a question he is expected to answer at once, even if he doesn’t have the right answer. This is what your workers will expect of you.

How do relationships between managers and employees differ in Russia verses the West?
Work in Russia is very hierarchical. The boss always remains your boss, and you know and feel your status. In the West, business-unit organization is popular. People work cooperatively on projects, adopting different roles at different times. So your subordinate this month may be your boss next month, and then, in another month, you’ll be the boss again.

This has a huge impact on performance assessments. In a business-unit-type organization people are eager to praise their colleagues’ performances because they hope their colleagues will do the same for them in the future. In Russia one must be more careful and assessments may be muted—everyone looks average.

This is one of the major differences. Foreign companies, looking for feedback from their employees, should advertise more transparency and teach it.

On your site, www.clamart.net/cross-culture, you discuss Russian fatalism and its link to nature. How does the Russian character affect cross-cultural management here?
Cross-cultural management theories all boil down to several issues: For instance, where a culture lies on the line between inner-orientated verses outer-orientated. To understand what I mean, think about man’s relationship to nature. This can go two ways: either he is controlling nature (Internalistic attitude) or he is controlled by nature (Externalistic attitude). There is no right or wrong way to operate in the world because every person does both at one time or another. Humans fall victim to earthquakes and tsunamis, but also dig channels and reverse the flow of rivers; we all try to control nature and our life but for some it is natural, for other futile.

Now extend this idea to managing across cultures. Let’s say an American company and a Russian company sign an agreement and go into business together in Russia. Americans, who tend to be Internalistic, usually manage by setting objective targets: you do the job on time and you get a bonus, in other words: control your destiny. Yet Russians tend to operate with a more Externalistic attitude. When deliveries are late and targets are missed, local employees protest that they cannot control delivery, which is true. The environment has changed, hence he result is affected.

Instead of the American managers looking critically at how each group operates, they often assign cultural blame. Americans think Russians are lazy, Russians claim foreigners can’t understand their country. In the end everyone gives up, saying, “This is just how things are in Russia,” which is the worst conclusion to draw.

The only way to handle such a situation is anticipate it; you know you are tasked with creating one effort across cultures, so get ready to deal with it. At the start work out a flexible strategy for handling the cultural differences, coming up with several scenarios just in case one doesn’t work out. This is a great tool to use in all countries where people feel they are being controlled by nature, like in Russia.

Many expatriate managers working in Russia come with their families. If the family can’t cope, the assignment may fail. What advise can you give an expatriate worker to help the family best adapt to this new culture?
This is a very difficult issue. When an expatriate assignment fails it is usually because the non-working spouse is unhappy. There simply comes a point when the wife (or husband in some cases) says, “I want to go home. That’s it.”

To avoid this, discuss everything very carefully with your family before expatriation. Many companies sponsor a “look-see” trip, bringing the entire family here to visit. This is really helpful; family members can get a sense of how it would be to live here, meet other expatriates, and gain a vision of the country without the stress of moving.

Second, make sure your style of life is not going to change tremendously. Often people are moved and promoted simultaneously, creating a double change in their life. If you are promoted in your home country, it has already put a stress on your family. Here you may be put in charge of a new department, plus you have to learn the language and how business is done here. New expatriates tend to work crazy hours, and if the wife is sitting at home all the time—stuck in a foreign country all alone without understanding the language—it simply turns into a nightmare.

So discuss within your family how your lifestyle will be; it must be clear to all. Then the family must make plans so that the spouse doesn’t stay at home, instead getting out and learning. For example, there are expatriate spouses clubs where she can study the language. Finally, you must organize trips home regularly, especially if you have no previous expatriate experience. It’s crazy to move to Russia and then give up after a year. You and your family must be free to go back, see your family, town, environment, and be able to compare.

Jérôme Dumetz, a French national, studied in France, Holland, and Russia. During and after his studies, he worked in Russia, France, America, and Canada, and conducted various projects in other countries. Always passionately interested in cross-cultural communication, he got acquainted with Mr. Fons Trompenaars with whom he kept contacts since then.
He is presently working for the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics as International Graduate Programs Coordinator at the Plekhanov Graduate School.
He teaches Cross-Cultural Management to the P-Graduate School, is a visiting lecturer at the American Institute of Business and Economics (AIBEc), Mirbis and Essec Business School, and is a consultant to various western companies.