My friends and colleagues know that I’m deeply fond of Alexander Prokhorov’s book The Russian Model of Management, and I give it to anyone who hasn’t read it in the past ten years. I love it because it works like a bible: whenever you’re faced with a question — “What on earth just happened?” or “Why did things play out this way?” or “Have they all lost their minds?” — you open the relevant chapter and everything becomes clear. You get an answer to just about any question.
I remember a strategic session with a major Russian aerospace company. One of the managers quoted a Western management guru on the importance of process stability. The CEO — a veteran of the business wars of the 1990s and 2000s — smiled. “Stability is a luxury we never had. We survived precisely because we know how to change the rules of the game mid-play.” I gave the whole team a copy of Prokhorov’s book on the spot.
The Russian BANI World
When I first encountered the concept of the BANI world, one contradiction struck me immediately. We in Russia have been living for decades in conditions that the West is only now beginning to recognize as the “new normal” — brittleness, anxiety, nonlinearity. What sounds like a shock to Western managers is simply our natural habitat. This reminded me of The Russian Model of Management. It articulates clearly that we grew up in this environment and developed our own unique managerial DNA. And that DNA doesn’t have to be a weakness — it can be a powerful advantage, if properly integrated into modern approaches to adaptability.
Our management culture has several distinctive traits:
- The management pendulum — we intuitively know how to swing between “tightening the screws” and “letting things run free.” What looks like inconsistency is actually an adaptive mechanism.
- Mobilization mode — our capacity to work miracles when our backs are against the wall. Western companies spend years learning agility. We know how to mobilize instantly in the face of a crisis: dismantle a factory, ship it east of the Urals, and reassemble it.
- The power of the leader’s personality — in our context, team performance is directly tied to the charisma and energy of the leader. This is an asset in a world where decision speed is critical. The tsar commanded, the boyars moved fast — or else.
- The dual reality of processes — what’s written in the regulations, and how things actually get done. This duality, often criticized, creates remarkable adaptability. Remember those park paths worn through the grass — not where the official pavement was laid, but where people actually wanted to walk?
- Tactical time horizon — we’ve learned not to trust five-year plans, preferring quick tactical decisions. And as it turns out, in the BANI world, that’s an advantage.
The FLEX Framework, Russian-Style
During my years at RDIF, I was involved in evaluating a large number of companies — not just financially, but in terms of operational management, strategy, and risk management. I noticed that classical Western methodologies tend to stall precisely in those moments where Russian specifics need to be taken into account. That observation led me to develop the FLEX framework, which I continually enrich with Russian context.
1. F — Future-Focused in a Russian Context
The problem with the classical approach: when I would start talking about strategic foresight and long-term planning, the response was often: “What future? Our tax code changes three times a year!”
What works in Russia:
- Dynamic scenario planning — not 3–5 static scenarios with assigned probabilities, but a constantly updated set of probable trajectories with switching triggers between them
- The concept of “strategic alertness” — developing the ability to pick up weak signals of change at the earliest stage
- A “time-zone” system — different time horizons for different aspects of the business; it’s almost always clear where long-term planning will hold and where it won’t
2. L — Learning Continuously: Genuinely Russian-Style
The cultural paradox: working with Russian companies, I encountered an interesting contradiction. On one hand, there’s deep respect for foundational knowledge and education. On the other — a clear skepticism toward “theory without practice” and ready-made Western frameworks.
What works in Russia:
- Rapid learning cycles — where the educational process is directly embedded in solving real business problems. Instead of “theory first, practice later,” we move from practice to theory and back, constantly closing the gap between knowing and doing
- Cross-industry enrichment — a structured approach to borrowing and adapting practices from other sectors
- Expert polyphony — instead of a hierarchical top-down transfer of knowledge, we create an environment where expertise is recognized at all organizational levels, depending on the domain
3. E — Experiment Boldly: Experimentation You Won’t Get Punished For
Key observation: In Russia, a culture of experimentation collides with two extremes — either fear of punishment for failure, or reckless “all-in” risk-taking with no thought for consequences.
What works in Russia:
- Legitimate experiments — formally sanctioned controlled risk-taking with clear boundaries
- Cheap prototype methodologies — the ability to test ideas with minimal resource expenditure
- Protected failures — a structured approach to extracting lessons from setbacks without searching for someone to blame
4. X — X-Factor Development: Unique Advantages, Russian-Made
The unique Russian context: our capacity for survival and adaptation under uncertainty — which we often fail to appreciate — can become our greatest competitive advantage in the modern world.
This isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
- “Uniqueness” through the lens of antifragility — turning turbulence from a threat into a source of strength
- Networking through “trusted circles” — building deep rather than wide connections
What Are We Actually Measuring?
When people ask me about the ROI of implementing FLEX, I always say that beyond standard business metrics, Russian companies need adaptability metrics that can serve as genuine success indicators:
- “Mode-switching speed” — how long does it take to shift between decentralization and centralization?
- “Crisis mobilization index” — how quickly can the company concentrate resources on a burning issue? During the COVID year, I watched a pharmaceutical company with a high index outpace its competitors by instantly retooling production to meet new demand.
- “Dual efficiency ratio” — the relationship between formal and informal process effectiveness. Companies where these two worlds coexist harmoniously show remarkable resilience in crises.
- “Leadership situationality” — the ability of managers to shift their management style based on context. My research shows that teams scoring high on this indicator implement change 2.7 times more effectively.
I’m currently running a series of experiments with clients that should validate these proposed metrics — stay tuned.
The Russian Management Code Must Become Our Advantage
Over 20 years in Russian and international business, I’ve watched Russian companies try to blindly copy Western practices while simultaneously feeling ashamed of their own “non-standard” approaches. But this is precisely the moment of truth.
The BANI world — with its brittleness, anxiety, and unpredictability — is exactly the environment in which we as a people have “genetic” experience surviving. Our management culture, with all its peculiarities, was forged in conditions of high uncertainty going back to the time of Ivan the Terrible. What looked like a weakness in a stable world becomes a strength in a turbulent one.
It’s time to stop being embarrassed by our “non-standardness” and learn to turn it into competitive advantage. Our experience should become the foundation of global adaptive practices — to build truly antifragile organizations that don’t just survive, but thrive in an era of constant change.
