Ruminations on Russia

This has been sitting in my too-be-blogged pile for a while.

At about the same time as the FT reported on the lack of good management talent in China and India in “How India and China risk being stifled by a skills squeeze.” The FT's sister paper in Moscow/Russia Vedomosti reports that Moscow's top management are the third most expensive in the world, and that's before you factor in competence/performance (below in Russian only.)

When MTS, one of Russia's top 2 mobile phone companies, started to face up to slowing growth it shuffled its management twice in an attempt to work out how to keep costs under control.  A rising tide has hidden many management faults.  The economy is growing considerably faster than the pool of management talent available. In trying to hire a marketing director for our broadband business we are faced with two problems; those with experience are excluded because their experience has taught them to do the very things we are seeking to avoid, and secondly they refuse to be paid by results.  So you have to take a punt on someone enthusiastic and bright who has not been tainted by gaining experience in a badly-run competitor.  Marketing and sales is one particularly weak area; I would imagine that all areas of retail suffer from the same paucity of talent and skill as Russians continue to ignore democracy with their wallets.  Controllers and accountants are one potential exemption from this rule; except that its very difficult to find one who is able to think outside the very small accounting box.

Expats are no panacea.  In start-up business its almost impossible to parachute someone in and make them effective inside one year unless they are long-term Russia-residents and fluent Russian speakers.  In larger multinationals expats will continue to provide a skill transfer service.  Albeit that I believe that in many of these companies there is an almost complete management disconnect between senior expats and the Russians running the day-to-day business.  I am sure that senior management in P&G are unaware that its brand managers are regarded as some of the most corrupt in the FMCG industry.  Increasingly expats no longer price themselves out of the market in price terms but there are too many instances of failure to overcome the belief that a talented Russian is worth considerably more than an expat.

Дорогие россияне - Московские топ-менеджеры – третьи в мире по заработкам:
Россияне стали зарабатывать больше, чем европейцы и американцы, – не все, конечно, а только руководители достаточно высокого ранга. Начальники-россияне уступают по уровню доходов только туркам и индийцам. В тройку лидеров Россию вывели чрезвычайно низкие налоги.

[composed and posted with ecto]

[composed and posted with ecto]

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