CRISES ARE IMPOSSIBLE

"Crises occur in the world economy every 4-5 years. By crisis we mean that it is hardly possible to predict with the help of any statistical methods. It is difficult to predict specific events that may occur. I remember meeting in December and discussing what might happen next year as the world looks at 2020. At the time, all analysts agreed that there was nothing on the horizon that could significantly affect the world economy in 2020. And in January we saw a very severe fall. America fell 35% and then recovered to historically high levels a quarter ago and has even surpassed them. However, the current crisis has consequences for the global supply chain, and what we see now is unprecedented in history. In recent centuries, there has been no impact of such a scale on international trade. "

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IMPORTANT VISIONS, MISSION AND VALUES

"I have been working with strategic planning for a long time. But I can definitely say that strategic planning is an oxymoron. The future is unknown, it is difficult to plan. But something needs to be done about it. The main thing here is the vision, mission and values, ie the fundamental directions of the company. And in such a changing environment, these things are difficult to quickly reformulate. This is a titanic process. Everyone wants to see and read a clear and easy strategy. But the devil is always in the details. Therefore, a lot needs to be done to come up with clear wording in reasonable periods of time. This is a kind of balance. People need to understand the company's priorities, how decisions are made, what the values are. And then it gets a little easier and the company becomes more resilient to crises. "

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IMPORTANT LEVEL OF COMMUNICATION TRANSPARENCY

"There are businesses that do not need to make quick decisions, they do not need thorough fundamental decisions that require a series of discussions, the development of consensus. There are businesses, such as venture projects, in which the speed of decision-making, approval and financing of a single project takes several hours. People come, and the deal is made in a few hours. Depending on the business model, the requirements for decision-making differ. Of course, what is happening now does not require other competencies - business leaders are expected to be taught why they have never been taught. And everyone learns together. Here, the level of transparency of communication is important so that people do not worry: we do not know what to do, but we are making efforts, and so far we have come to such decisions. Then people are more comfortable. "

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MICROSOFT TEAMS OR ZOOM

"Last year, we paid a lot of attention to IT strategy. We started developing Microsoft Office with new applications across the group. And so it turned out that they started using Teams before the crisis. Now Teams is a very convenient tool. We do not use Zoom. Teams hold both board meetings and meetings, and project working groups meet. In my opinion, this is a very handy tool. If we talk about the world, then everyone is in Zoom. Zoom held 10 million meetings a day in December, and 200 million meetings a day in April or May. Within the company we use Microsoft Teams. If you need to listen to some seminars or take part in any conferences held online, there are both Google and Zoom tools.

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THE COMPANIES MUST HAVE RESERVES

"The US economy is already at a stage of long-term economic growth. It is unclear when it will end. Naturally, bubbles are inflated there, and sooner or later the bubbles burst. What happened last week (the fall of shares of the largest technology companies in the United States), in fact, a minor correction. How will all this unfold next? For example, Tesla, which reached 2.2 thousand dollars per share, and now where it is ... Sooner or later, such long stages of growth end in correction. The question of whether this will move into a bearish trend, more medium-term or long-term, is already a topic for economists. There are no predictors yet. In my opinion, we need to look at a topic related to the likelihood of a global credit crisis. I repeat, we are now in a situation of uncertainty. And the situation of uncertainty suggests that something happened that was not previously predicted. We are in the process of distributing normal results in the probability tails. Extreme scenarios - when you need to be prepared for a certain continuation of further negative events. Companies must have certain reserves, some stabilization funds and plans in case of such negative events, which is not usually done. "