Section 1. Basic facts about the profession of top manager.

Top manager- This business owner, creator and thought leader or hired - hired professional manager.

Basic facts about the profession top manager

Top management implements policies (formulated by the board of directors) into goals, strategies, business plans, budgets and projects. Top management makes decisions that affect every employee of the company and are also responsible for success or failure companies.

Top managers have different specializations and are responsible for different areas of activity companies or organization. Each position has certain requirements covering educational, personal and other characteristics of top managers.

Top management positions

CEO;

Executive Director;

Technical Director;

Chief Operating Officer;

financial director

9. Amazon Store - Jeff Bezos

Determination, vision of the situation and the ability to predict events down to the minute helped a talented businessman achieve success in business. And his business success story began with the fact that he asked his friends and acquaintances to tell everyone they could about Amazon. In the first month of operation, the site sold books already at 45 countries peace. With zero advertising costs, the first year of work brought profit about millions of dollars.

10. Company: Fast Retailing - Tadashi Yanai

The businessman's intuition has proven that a business success story leads to a positive result. And his business success came from selling inexpensive clothing. Representative offices opened in New York and Paris helped Yanai achieve business success and worldwide recognition.

There are quite a lot of companies in Russia that are looking for employees. According to some estimates, the market volume exceeds 25 billion rubles - this is thousands of jobs.

The largest ones are recruiting companies; they can employ more than 500 people. This is a streaming business; employees of such agencies can employ 10 or more people per month. The agency's commission is on average 1–1.5 months of the candidate's salary. If you need an accountant or a sales manager, you will contact one of these companies.

The elite of the market are executive search agencies, which fill vacancies for top managers in the largest companies (most of the companies on the Forbes list, as a rule, are clients of executive search agencies). This is an exclusive and expensive service; each search is unique in its own way and is carried out only upon prepayment. The agency's commission is on average 4-5 monthly salaries of the candidate, that is, a bill of 5 million rubles for the service of selecting a top manager is common. A good indicator for an executive search agency consultant would be 8–10 filled vacancies per year.

Management selection is a fairly new phenomenon that combines elements of executive search and mass recruitment. Such agencies are looking for top managers in medium- and large-sized companies, as well as second-line managers in large companies. As a rule, such a search is carried out without prepayment; the agency’s commission is about 3-4 months’ salary.

The agency commission is on average 4-5 monthly salary of the candidate, that is, the bill is 5 million rubles for the service selection of a top manager is a common thing

As a rule, executive search and management selection do not exist in their pure form. Since these areas are very close, most companies carry out both orders, perhaps gravitating more towards one of them. If we are talking about a classic executive search, then the customer pays for each stage of the search - as a rule, 1/3 before the start in the form of an advance, 1/3 after providing a short list and the balance after the candidate starts a new job. Since this process is complex, long (from two to three months to a year), expensive and not always justified, recently the services of management selection companies have been in great demand.

The executive hiring market is highly segmented. Companies that employ 30–50 people are considered large. There are about five of these in Russia. At the same time, there are quite a lot of small agencies (from 5 to 15 employees). They work in the same market and with the same clients, specializing in several sectors, unlike large companies that have many industrial practices.

I am a consultant at Purehunt - a small company that specializes in working with investment, management and holding companies, as well as large banks. We are looking not only for financiers: the holdings include a variety of businesses, from retail to the oil industry, so I can simultaneously search for, for example, an investment director for a fund and a general director for a transport company.

The main difference in executive search is technology. The recruiter’s task is to find the best candidates on the market, despite the fact that most of them are not actively searching, and in general, top managers extremely rarely post resumes on career sites.

List of candidates

The direct search technology used by executive search agencies looks like this. First, the agency consultant meets with the customer and discusses all the details of the search with him in detail in order to create a profile of the position and discuss the search strategy.

Then a long list is compiled - this is a kind of market map, a fairly impressive (100 or more names) list of professionals, often from various industries, who, in the opinion of the agency, may be suitable candidates for the vacancy. When compiling the list, many factors are taken into account: company size, ownership and corporate governance structure, internal culture and others. The process is creative and labor-intensive.

The reason for searching for a top manager is very important. For example, if this is a replacement for a person who left for competitors, then the list will primarily include those companies that are similar in size and structure to the client company. It happens that a company hopes to “buy” some kind of expertise in a new manager - then you need to look for companies where it is present. For example, if the IT sector is sagging, try to lure the IT director from a technologically advanced company. It happens that companies are looking for managers for a specific task. When the owners want to sell a company to a foreign investor, they will look for a person who knows how to communicate with investors and understands their psychology well, which will ultimately ensure a higher price.

Social networks, especially LinkedIn, are very helpful in compiling a list of candidates. The search is rarely carried out “in the open field”. Many candidates end up on the long list from the agency’s fairly extensive database. It is updated based on past searches, in addition, agencies receive information about graduates of leading business schools, collect data from professional societies, conferences, and so on. Good headhunters should be aware of all career news. They are often asked for advice or recommend strong candidates.

Communication with applicants

After the long list is approved by the customer, headhunting actually begins. Agency consultants call candidates to see if the information about them is true, conduct interviews with those who fit the description and are now open to options (or are simply ready to find time to meet with a hunter).

In 90% of cases, people do not refuse to talk to a headhunter. As they say, they don’t take money for asking, and we rarely hear the answer “I’m not interested in anything, thank you.” In the open question “are you looking for a job?” You can’t ask, because most likely the answer will be “no, I’m not looking.” A consultant can call “just to get acquainted,” ask about plans and prospects, and ask what vacancies might be of interest now and in the future. Once the conversation starts, we can discuss specifics.

Of course, there are anecdotal cases. You can often hear the question “where did you get my phone number?” But the best response was from the candidate (whose phone number, by the way, was publicly available on one of the social networks), who said that my call was an encroachment on his personal life and he would be forced to transfer my contacts to the security service of the presidential administration. I don’t know whether he handed them over or not, but the “people in civilian clothes” didn’t bother me.

However, one of the clients prerequisite ensured that the candidate we were looking for was handsome

Based on the results of all meetings with candidates (in some cases there may be more than 50), the client is provided with a report on the work done - a short list. It includes those who best meet the original brief - ready or not ready to consider job offers. There are times when a client wants to communicate with someone from the “refused” list - and here everything depends on the skill of the headhunter. With a 90% probability, a good hunter will bring any person to a meeting, but, naturally, he cannot guarantee that he will not refuse again after meeting with the client. After all, we are intermediaries, and decisions are made by the participants in the process themselves - the candidate and the client.

Along with the resume, the agency provides a detailed report about the candidate, describing strengths and weaknesses, successful projects, and, if possible, collects recommendations. The short list usually includes about ten people who will have to go through several meetings (their number varies from 1 to 10 or more) on the client side. Upon completion, a pool of finalists is formed (usually no more than 3-5 candidates). As a rule, the decision to hire a top manager is made by the board of directors.

Headhunters are used to find the most professional employees on the market. The element of personal sympathy is also important, but is usually not decisive. However, one of the clients made it a mandatory requirement that the candidate we were looking for be handsome, and a handsome man at that. From them we received, for example, the following feedback based on the results of meetings: “very cross-eyed”, “proud of connections and education”, “overweight, leg twitching”, “good work experience, meticulous, obligatory”, “seems very inhibited, and plump,” “drank three whole cups of coffee with cream.” We work in the client business and always treat any customer requirements with respect and understanding, but we still decided to refuse further work on this project.

How future bosses are assessed

The work of a headhunter is largely about sales. First, myself as a consultant to the client, then the vacancy to the candidate, and finally, the candidate to the client. Top managers, as a rule, are not looking for work and have a fairly busy schedule. How can they be interested? There can be many options: someone is attracted by the opportunity to manage a larger business, someone is bored in a stable company and wants rapid growth and development, someone has outgrown their position as a deputy and dreams of the position of the first person. No one has canceled a higher salary as a motivating factor either, but usually for top managers money does not come first. Cases when a person is outbid, offering an income two, three, five times higher than the current one, are rare.

In turn, the consultant should try to evaluate the candidate as objectively as possible during a personal meeting. Tests, cases and similar tools are rarely used; in most cases they are provided by the client himself.

In principle, an interview for the position of General Director is not much different from an interview for the position of a sales manager. The devil is in the details. It is important to understand that most top managers have excellent self-presentation skills, developed over countless meetings. There is no clear algorithm that will allow us to evaluate a candidate’s competencies with 100% probability. There are many different tests that help assess leadership potential, teamwork skills, stress tolerance, etc. However, tests are not a panacea. Firstly, a qualitative assessment requires about three to four hours, which means they are definitely not suitable for the first filter. They can be used in the “second round”, when you need to choose from three to five strong candidates. So the main working tool of a headhunter now, as a hundred years ago, remains interviews and collection of recommendations.

The questions and the structure of the interview itself depend on the specific position, but there are several basic things that need to be found out about the candidate: what has the person been doing for the last ten years and what might attract him to a new employer, what results has he brought to the business, how capable is he of thinking strategically, taking long-term decisions? decisions, managing people, what corporate culture you are used to.

One way or another, a certain element of information manipulation is always present: candidates tend to exaggerate their merits, clients may not disclose certain disadvantages within the organization, but cases of outright fraud are rare. If a strong candidate comes to the company and sees that all the golden mountains that were described during the interview exist only in the fantasies of shareholders, he will very quickly begin to look for a new job.

The headhunter’s task is to eliminate these discrepancies, although you can’t foresee everything, of course. There was a case when a person decided to move to the position of vice president in a very large and well-known company. He talked through all the possible details of job responsibilities, compensation package, brand of corporate car, and so on. The discussion dragged on for a couple of months. The company also approached the choice responsibly; we collected recommendations from all previous places of work. On the very first day of work, the candidate found out that he was not entitled to a separate office (he forgot to ask about this earlier), and in the evening the manager spoke to him in a harsh manner. This was enough for him to quit within a day. The story ended well: we were quickly able to find a replacement for him, and we helped the candidate get a job in another place, where he settled down and has been working for a long time.

How much do top managers earn?

It is pointless to talk about figures “on average for the hospital”, since the spread will be too large, from several hundred thousand rubles per month to millions. As a rule, the income of top managers consists of a salary, an annual bonus (on average from 0.5 to 1 annual salary) and a long-term motivation program (may consist of an option for a stake, an additional bonus for achieving certain KPIs, for example, achieving a target by revenue). There is a separate social package: a company car, insurance for family members, accommodation compensation if relocation is planned, etc.

When you see messages that “the manager of company X earns 10 million rubles a month,” you should understand that most of this money is a bonus.

What happens in a crisis

There are no mass layoffs of top managers yet. It makes sense to wait until the end of the year - perhaps then crisis phenomena will already be noticeable, especially in those industries that are at risk (retail, mechanical engineering, retail banks, real estate, consulting, etc.). The process of hiring and firing executives is time-consuming and expensive. Typically, executives receive good compensation upon dismissal, so companies are in no hurry. And companies that were less affected by the crisis (for example, export-oriented industries or some investment companies) may even raise management salaries to compensate for the change in the ruble exchange rate.

The agencies themselves, like all consultants, are having a hard time during the crisis: there are fewer orders, competition is growing, so weaker players are losing ground or leaving the market completely. A good reputation, a strong team, a correctly chosen strategy and the ability to reduce costs without compromising the quality of services help to get through difficult times.

Companies are not in danger of succeeding until they get rid of their bosses and bring in replacement leaders. What is the difference? Some give orders and instructions, that is, they are in charge, while others manage, organizing the work process and helping to optimize it. A manager is a manager who under no circumstances should become a boss. His task is to provide leadership to the entrusted industry, enterprise or entire segment. This is a difficult and extremely responsible job. At the same time, experienced and highly qualified specialists can count on salaries significantly exceeding the mark of 100 thousand rubles per month.

Who is a manager? Description of the profession

A manager is a management specialist, leader and organizer of work processes. The profession is often confused with its variety aimed at ensuring sales. In fact, the range of tasks of specialists is much wider - from recruiting personnel to managing federal companies. Let’s not forget about the heads of municipal administrations, city managers, whose second job title sounds nothing more than “city manager.”

The profession, on the one hand, is universal, on the other hand, it requires narrow specialization. You may know the theory of managing work processes in enterprises, but you will still have to go deeper into production. The same is the case with sales, recruiting, project management, and so on. Therefore, managers often become not graduates of specialized universities who have delved into a specific field, but representatives of the field who have acquired management skills. A striking example is team leads. Being representatives of the development team and knowing the industry, they simultaneously serve as managers in IT.

Types of management and narrow specializations

It is generally accepted to distinguish three types of specialists - lower, middle and senior managers:

• Lower-level managers are managers who supervise personnel. They are directly above employees and coordinate their work. As a rule, this is a small number of subordinates of up to 20-30 people.
• Middle managers. They usually report to lower-level managers. Almost always, these are specialists with higher professional education and work experience who have advanced up the career ladder.
• Senior managers are the top management. General directors, CEOs, TOP managers of large companies, city managers and others. A small class of representatives of the profession, whose salaries almost exceed the income of all lower-level managers combined. It is interesting that in theory, IP holders are also included in this category.

As for narrow specializations, the profession has at least 20 areas. The range of tasks of the manager, the scope of his work and the list of requirements depend on them.

• Profession sales manager. One of the highest paid in the lower and middle management category. The specialist organizes the company’s sales policy, controls the work of employees (merchandisers, call center staff, promoters, etc.).
• HR Manager. In theory, he should head the HR department, but in most small companies the employee also performs the direct functions of a recruiter.
• Advertising Manager. The manager coordinates the work of the advertising and marketing department, develops strategies and companies, controls their implementation, selects projects and ideas, and often negotiates with site owners for posting advertising materials or holding promotional events.
• Profession tourism manager. In most cases, a specialist not only coordinates the work of agents, but also performs their functions - he helps the client choose a country for travel, book a hotel room and transport tickets, organize a transfer from the airport or train station, arrange insurance, and work with claims.
• Network Business Manager. A person involved in network marketing and coordinating the work of people lower in the hierarchy. His responsibilities usually include conducting trainings, seminars, and implementing motivational programs.

Regarding network business managers: several years ago, employees of companies working under network marketing schemes celebrated their “victory” associated with being included in the State Register of Specialties of this profession. Whether it was introduced or not is not so important. It is important that this line of activity is not a profession in the traditional sense of the word. Not because network marketing is good or bad, but because the work does not fit into the framework of the classical device.

Our subjective opinion: choose another specialization; you will always have time to become a network business manager. Don't neglect education.

What are the responsibilities of a manager?

Managing employees or junior managers, coordinating work processes, and often developing and implementing marketing programs within the enterprise together with relevant specialists. The range of tasks largely depends on the direction of activity, as well as on the size of the company. So, in small organizations with a minimum number of employees, a manager can not only coordinate the work of a certain department, but also perform the functions of a specialist, for example, in personnel selection.

University graduates are advised to be especially careful when applying for jobs. The fact is that managers often refer to employees who have nothing to do with management and are, for example, absolute “sales people” or support service specialists. If you want to build a successful career as a manager, you need to take the right position as early as possible and start gaining experience. Otherwise, you risk spending your entire life on the phone, calling potential clients and offering them your company’s services.

What personal qualities should you have?

• Communication skills. Management involves not just constant communication with subordinates and senior managers, but also the ability to competently build contacts, convince people, and convey the necessary thoughts to them.
• Stress resistance. It is important to be prepared for the fact that you will be responsible for the mistakes of your subordinates. The position of a manager means frequent instability, constant stress and the inability to control absolutely everything.
• Creativity. In management, it is important to be able to follow job descriptions and combine a creative approach with them - this is the only way to find a way out of a difficult, critical situation. You must be able to think outside the box, beyond templates.
• Determination. This is a source of charisma, which is especially important for a leader to have. You will constantly have to prove your professional worth. And not only to superiors, but also to subordinates.
• Courage. Often managers make important and responsible decisions that can radically change the life of the company. They almost always involve risks. When you're under enormous pressure, it's hard to weigh the pros and cons, especially when you're afraid.

Where can I get a manager profession? TOP 5 Universities

Training in management is provided not only by higher education institutions, but also by secondary specialized educational institutions. However, with a secondary education, you cannot count on a position as a mid-level and, especially, a senior manager - you need to continue your education at a university, spending additional time and money. It’s easier and more convenient to immediately enroll in a higher education institution - submit documents even with a minimum number of budget places, try your hand. The ideal solution is a reputable university, but only a few are able to enroll there.

The best universities in Russia providing training in management:

• Moscow State University named after Lomonosov.
• St. Petersburg State University.
• High School of Economics.
• MSTU im. Bauman.
• MEPhI.

Be prepared for the fact that the best universities in the country often conduct their own entrance tests in addition to the Unified State Exam results.

Check their list with the admissions committee in advance. And don’t be afraid to try your hand - graduates of these educational institutions are ordinary people who are no better or worse than you. Every year, thousands of applicants from the province successfully pass entrance tests even with not the most brilliant scores. Take your chance so you don't regret missed opportunities.

Pros and cons of the manager profession

This specialty has both significant pros (the likelihood of a high salary, respectability, power for its connoisseurs) and significant cons (constant stress, lack of stability and work algorithms, enormous responsibility, and so on). Therefore, you should approach the choice consciously: you need to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages, pay attention to the compliance of your personal qualities with the requirements of this profession, try on potential jobs and imagine the development of your career in 5-10 years.

Key pros profession manager:

• Respectability, high social status.
• Opportunity to realize yourself as a leader.
• Experience and skills to successfully open your own business.
• Quite high salaries for middle and senior managers.
• Often a high-ranking position, special treatment from the team.

Minuses profession manager:

• Constant stress, tension, pressure.
• The need to make difficult and risky decisions.
• 80% of specialists have not the highest salaries.
• Industry trends change regularly.
• Lack of clear operating algorithms.

Regarding clear work algorithms: a specialist constantly has to invent something and somehow get out of difficult situations. Textbooks will write about what the head of a company did to get out of the crisis. But these measures are unlikely to be suitable for your company due to the mass of differences between the two enterprises.

The textbooks won’t tell you what to do if you are “run into” by the fire department or if one of the officials extorts a bribe.

Salaries of managers in Russia

On average across the country, managers receive 32 thousand rubles. Obviously, the salary largely depends on the area of ​​activity, education, qualifications and place of work. The level of the specialist is also important: senior managers almost never receive less than 110 thousand rubles per month, middle managers - less than 70 thousand rubles. At the same time, there is a significant difference between regions and cities.

There are also wage gaps among specialists with different work experience. On average, university graduates earn 2 times less than their colleagues with 3 years of experience. Therefore, the sooner you start working in your specialty, the better. It is also worth paying attention to specializations. If we consider lower-level managers, then sales managers and specialists working in the IT field receive the most.

Summary

Manager is a rather complex and nervous profession. In the process of work, specialists often have to think outside the box and find ideas to get out of difficult situations. A manager can be in charge of either a group of employees in a particular department or the company as a whole. It is important to have a sufficiently developed intellect to be able to immerse yourself in the industry: you cannot manage something that you know nothing about. Try to choose a specialization before entering university - this will help you concentrate on core subjects.

The path to the top of Russian business is thorny, but not as long as in most Western countries. For example, in Germany, according to statistics, it takes at least 12–15 years to climb the career ladder from a graduate of a prestigious economics department to the director of a large bank. In Russia it is quite possible to run in less than ten.

Our capitalism, more than twenty years after its birth, is still not very structured. This creates a lot of problems for the country as a whole, but it gives us all at least one advantage: a whole series of circuitous, not yet closed paths along which we can slip to the top.

If in the West, in order to head a large bank, you willy-nilly have to acquire an MBA degree, preferably from some London business school, then in Russia you can still be hired for a prestigious position without this economic super-education. Therefore, it is not surprising that among the Russian top executives handling billions of dollars, there are those who are barely thirty.

Who is a top manager, how does he differ from a “non-top”? Typically, the company’s annual turnover, as well as the number of employees under its command, are taken as a classification characteristic. True, the importance of the latter is falling year by year, and it’s clear why. The same high-tech companies in Silicon Valley can employ fifty, forty, or even thirty people, and the annual turnover will reach many hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars. And what, the person who manages all this is not the top? Especially considering that, contrary to popular expression, there are irreplaceable people there.

Each person contributes his considerable share to the added value - which means that managing a team requires even more subtle skills than managing multi-thousand companies, in which an individual employee can truly be likened to a small cog in a large mechanism. As the American economic journalist Ludwig Bachstein writes, “a top manager is not about the number of people under his command, but about the level of responsibility.”

In Russia, the tradition of top management is even older than capitalism itself: why weren’t those ministers who managed entire sectors of the national economy in Soviet times not top managers? It is clear that they worked in different conditions than the general directors of modern corporations, but the tasks they faced were exactly the same.

The paradox is that with the advent of a market economy and private companies in the country, the population of top managers not only did not expand, but even decreased. The fact is that the first Russian capitalists preferred to do business on their own, even if they had a dozen or more businesses.

There were good reasons for this. Romantic: the youthful excitement of the first sharks of capitalism, whose plans did not include simply resting on the laurels of their success. Pragmatic, not to say cynical: in the blessed times of the initial accumulation of capital, trusting someone with property was fraught with the risk of parting with it forever.

Today the situation has changed, the market has more or less stabilized, professionalized, and it has become impossible to do everything at once. If we are talking about an established business, then the storm and stress of the first years of capitalism have been replaced by daily meetings, papers, planned negotiations, consistent growth step by step - in a word, routine. For this purpose, we need a top manager who knows a specific business down to the last squiggle, a “professional bore” according to one of the Western classifications. And if a business is growing quickly and opening new directions, on the contrary, you need someone who is able to offer an unconventional view and is independent in the development of new directions.

I have never had any problems in my relationship with the owner. - Viktor Nikitin, director of the Velikiye Luki pilot plant "Mikron", has been running the enterprise for a decade and a half. - The principle is simple: it does not interfere with production at all, only with strategic planning and finance.

This is perhaps the most progressive, best option for business, and it is characteristic that we found it hundreds of kilometers from Moscow. In the capital, to this day, top managers sometimes expect almost daily reports on the work done - a situation that is almost unimaginable in the West.

It’s a constant headache,” admits one of our interlocutors, characteristically, on condition of anonymity. - That is, everything seems to be in order, but control is felt constant. Letters in the style of “No, of course I’m not interfering, but shouldn’t we do this?” they come almost every week.

Have you thought about leaving?

As far as I know, in the field I work in, this is generally a common practice, so I don’t see much point.

How to find a CEO on a playground

High-level managers, of course, are not born, but they become much earlier than is commonly thought. - English headhunter, in Russian speaking, personnel officer, Richard Whitemer believes that a significant part of the skills that will later be useful in management are formed almost in the lower grades of school. - Having sat in class, I’m unlikely to be able to tell you anything about the future of the children, but if we look at how they behave during recess, and even better, during a football game for the school championship, then a lot will happen. It's clear. First of all, who is the real leader, who seems to be in the shadows, but from there he rules the process, who contradicts everyone and pulls the blanket over himself, and who cheerfully and fervently carries out the will of others...

Sounds like popular psychology in a bad way, to be honest...

Well, I didn’t tell you which of them would be who. It is important to understand the child's potential. He can be the spark, the soul, the star of a children's group, but at the same time jump from one to another, from another to a third. Then, in the best case for business, he can become a successful startuper, but, most likely, business is not for him at all. But if the boy is completely invisible at first, second and even third glance, but is very persistent and consistent in his own actions, then I would advise the gentlemen from General Electric to tear him off with his arms and legs right now. Especially if they argue with him, swear, call him names, and you know he sticks to his line. Usually in a children's group such children become outcasts, “weird”, but this can both break and strengthen their will even more. Because the main thing that the top should be able to do is organize himself, and the team will adapt to him. This is an important feature of the work of the general director: it is not the person, so to speak, who paints the place, but the place - the person. The position is so high that others work under him, and not vice versa.

Of course, no one suggests making the training of a top executive the main educational goal - this is both utopian and inhumane towards the child: the work of a top manager takes place not only in beautiful high-tech decorations, but also in constant stress, which some people like, but someone will be taken to a mental hospital. Nevertheless, teaching a child to defend his opinion is both realistic and useful, no matter where he ends up next. With one important clarification: he must explain why his opinion is correct for everyone.

Let's say your daughter categorically refuses to go to her grandmother, demanding a zoo. Okay, you say, let’s discuss: why is a zoo better? And if she can tell you how much fun you all will have eating cotton candy, looking at the elephants and flamingos - the key word here is "together" - congratulations: you are growing the future of multinational business.

Where to go to study

Higher education is certainly a key point, reflects business consultant Stanislav Krause from the Russian Adizes Institute, one of the most famous headhunting firms in the country. - But, you know, I definitely wouldn’t follow the newfangled path and wouldn’t try to get a business education as my main one.

Russian management education is a decade and a half old, and each of the consultants, businessmen and top executives we interviewed stated with regret that, at least before the advent of the Skolkovo business school, it definitely left much to be desired. But the business school itself is designed for people with a serious background. Where is the best place to get it?

I myself graduated from the physics department of Saratov University and, you know, I’m not complaining. - Krause is clearly an ardent apologist for the good old Soviet technical education. - You see, it teaches you to think and solve problems. What kind of task this is - to calculate some kind of heating unit or bring your product to a new market - is a secondary question.

Ashkhen Hovsepyan runs a very young but already well-known company that specializes in selling 3D printers in Russia, which can be used to print, for example, models of new cutting-edge sneakers. By first education, she is also a physicist, Moscow State University. And he also criticizes Russian business education - his second, received there, at the main Russian university.

The physics department taught me that there are no unsolvable problems. This is very important, especially if you open a business, like we did, in the midst of a crisis. Many things don’t work out, one thing doesn’t stick to one another and - voila! - in the end, the problem was solved. And it was solved beautifully.

What did you not like about the Faculty of Management?

You see, they teach fundamentally and in beautiful words, only when you really immerse yourself in the work, it turns out that you simply do not know how to apply your technical skills. I strongly advise getting a degree in the West. I see the difference when I look at my own colleagues: they had case studies, and they know not only the theory, but also how to act in real situations. Ultimately, most of them are solved literally algorithmically, you just need to know these algorithms.

Sergei Kolesnikov, the founder and owner of the TechnoNIKOL company, Europe's largest manufacturer of roofing materials, has been in business for a long time and, unlike Hovsepyan, is not delighted with Western business schools.

You are taught to saw, plan, drill teeth, and when it comes to the real problem of business, you don’t even know what to get - a plane or a drill.

Kolesnikov looks not to the West, but to the East. After a trip to Japan, he said, he began to understand in what situations each of the hundreds and thousands of methods taught in MBA courses should be applied.

There is only one general advice to future captains of Russian business: do not be shy about decades-tested technical education and look for places where theoretical knowledge is richly enriched with practice.

Four ways of the Russian top

Having received all the available educational baggage, the young man makes the most important choice: he decides where to apply his knowledge, or rather, where to gain practical competence for a future career. You won't get this in Western and Eastern MBAs. The Moscow School of Management Skolkovo says that their approach is much more practical, down-to-earth, adapted to our conditions, but you cannot do without your own practice, even while receiving a Russian business education.

The first way is state-owned companies and government administration. At one time, RAO UES was the forge of very young managers who now occupy quite high positions in various companies. In the public sector, there are also many experienced top managers who have gone through all levels of the hierarchy, say, from a foreman at a drilling rig or from the head of a department in a state bank to a director, and who have engineering and other practical, close-to-the-ground competencies. But this also has its downsides: if young managers often do not know the “hardware” of their industry, then managers who grew up “from the ground” do not see strategic prospects.

Enough depth, but not enough breadth. Hence the second way. In Western companies, large and not very large, the principle of cross-functional careers is traditionally professed: a person who has grown into a sales director, as a rule, in his career path, which is not so long, worked on one project, on another, in marketing, in logistics , in developing. He is better with breadth, but the problem is with the depth of expert knowledge.

There are people among the top who have correctly built their fast careers. What does it mean? He hired and left companies, keeping in mind the thought: always reach a new level. He has an adequate education: business school, Moscow State University, MGIMO, Pleshka. The diploma itself works for him; he received it with an eye to his career. He comes to, say, McKinsey not to stay there, but to go further into business two years later with the line “McKinsey”. He knows which conferences to speak at, knows where to publish, he knows how to work for his name. He is not chasing money, but experience. Such people can rise to vice president in five to seven years, in four or five steps. And finally, the fourth type: those who are lucky.

Is it just us?

No, no, not only that. Your boss has made a dizzying career. The boss moves on with the team, pulling you along with him. You yourself have little idea, but the boss has become the general director, he needs a team - and now you are already a finance person. He trusts you because you were on the right team.

And often it turns out in the end that I myself am nothing?

Maybe never. It's a question of what your manager values. What is more important to him: fundamental loyalty or personal competence?

If loyalty is sad for the company, right?

Why? Not always. Sometimes you are needed not as a manager as such, but as a person who will not let you down and can assemble a good team of people. That is, they do not buy your managerial competence, but your human qualities. True, you definitely won’t learn them anywhere.

The class of Russian professional managers is just emerging. In this young population there are careerists in the best sense of the word, hardened cynics, and even romantics of the old regime. They have one thing in common: the ability to make independent choices, the courage to move outside of a given trajectory.

“We obviously don’t have an overabundance of top managers; on the contrary, we don’t even have enough of them,” believes Stanislav Krause. - What is top in the West? This is a person known not just for a line on his resume, but for a specific case: he did this and that, corrected the situation here and there, and effectively uses this or that method. Accordingly, they take it for a specific task. We still have very few such people. If such people appear en masse, there will be breakthroughs in the economy.

Photo: Vladimir Astapkovich/ITAR-TASS; press service archive; press service of the Mikron Experimental Plant; from the personal archive of A. Hovsepyan

In our work, we all come across people in one way or another from whom we need to get something. It doesn’t matter what - resources, money, response, approval, information or anything else. The situation is always the same - our further actions depend on this person. And whether this person works in your company or not, whether you have leverage over him or not, the principle does not change. This person is already a manager in terms of influencing you and your actions.

To begin with, I will propose the following terminology, which has worked very well in my experience:

• Manager(respectfully) - a person who knows how to make decisions correctly.
• Manager(disrespectful) - a person who must make decisions, but does not know how to do it.

WITH managers everything is much worse. There can be hundreds of forces at work here that interfere with work - from delusions of grandeur to an inferiority complex; from greed to unmotivated adherence to principles. You can try to resolve issues with them as quickly and creatively as possible, or try to switch to another (more adequate) contact person, preferably a manager.

I will try to list the signs by which a person can quickly be classified as one of these types.

Manager

• A real manager is truly responsible for his words. If he promises something, he always does it. Well, or trying really hard to do so. If it doesn’t work out, you will see for yourself the objective reasons for the failure and are unlikely to make complaints.
• The manager quickly and without hesitation involves other employees in the communication process if necessary.
• The manager values ​​his own and other people’s time, so he is constructive.
• The manager is not only responsible for his words, but also demands the same from others, so communication with him is very easy to formalize.
• The manager plans his actions, so your joint plans are always as informative and transparent as possible.
• The manager is always clearly aware of the boundaries of his powers and clearly outlines them to others, making the solution to the problem more predictable.

• Optional response to requests and uncertainty in response time. First call. The matter has not yet reached the specifics, but uncertainty already arises, you have to spend more attention and time getting feedback.
• Creating uncertainty about the decision-making process. As a rule, there are references to certain managers who are either on a business trip, or sick, or very busy. At the same time, their contacts are categorically not given, forming a black box, to which only a “selected” manager has access.
• Reluctance to conduct documented communication. Any document immediately entails responsibility, so whenever possible, communication is either conducted by telephone or in the most informal way possible.
• Failure of agreements. One of the most typical phenomena on the part of a manager. If you have agreed on something, it doesn’t mean anything until it is finally formalized.
• Dropping out of the communication process. The person becomes very busy and completely unavailable.
• Delaying the process at one stage for a long time. In this case, visible causes may be completely absent or demonstrated.
• Unconstructive communication. You can communicate with the manager for a long time, and after hanging up the phone you will wonder what was discussed. Think about it and be surprised that there are simply no real results from the conversation.

I wish all respected hackers to meet managers more often and bring all their undertakings to a successful completion.