Systems Thinking, Empathy, and Theater:

I could say, of course, that it just happened. At one time, I was the executive secretary of an editorial office that, among other things, published the journal Financial Management. In five journals, I had about two hundred authors I communicated with every week. And Ekaterina Viktorovna Lisitsyna (head of the MBA course "Financial Strategy of a Company" at MIRBIS, Doctor of Economics, Professor) was its editor-in-chief. At the same time, MIRBIS needed someone to work with both marketing and product development for MBA and Executive MBA programs and their international projects. In 2010, knowing me from the journal project, Ekaterina Lisitsyna invited me to MIRBIS.

I am an international specialist with a focus on marketing by education. I worked as a marketing expert in real estate and the petrochemical industry; we always had many projects and communicated with partners a lot. At MIRBIS, all of this came together again. Challenges, urgent and new projects at the same time, unexpected problems. And, most importantly, a large number of very different and very interesting people. I guess this is my thing.

I try to navigate, to find a middle ground or get closer to achieving goals that are important for the company. Then I find ways to achieve goals that are important for me. And in this constant juggle between personal and professional, realizing my potential in different ways, I found my road, my track. I’ve had offers from various companies to lead educational programs in business. Being in the educational environment, through educational products, I can do something useful for business owners, for managers, for their companies and their operations. And therefore, for society, for industries, and for the country as a whole. And of course, this isn’t my pride talking, considering the achievements not only of MIRBIS as a school but also of its students. There is some greater meaning in this, and I would like to continue being a part of it. Something like that.

It’s impossible to keep up. What really helps is having a broad perspective. The ability to see the most crucial, important things. You and I, as students and graduates of the Executive MBA program, have been through this many times.

Systems thinking is one of those essential skills for leaders and business owners today. Ideally, we’d be able to look at what’s happening inside the company, within its ecosystem, and also look outward, at the challenges emerging outside, and try to predict what might happen, at least in the mid-term. And by predicting, we can prevent certain problems, if not completely, then at least partially. If not partially, then at least see the early warning signs to be ready to react.

I also think it’s important to be flexible, adaptable. Skills in systems thinking and adaptability, along with the ability to communicate with your team, key stakeholders, agents, partners, and the media are crucial. And when you notice changes in discourse, discussions, in written or spoken word, these might also be the signs of changes happening in society or at the government level. If you start to sense this, it’s time to consult with experts. I guess it’s like surfing: you catch a wave, but you know another one is coming right after. You understand perfectly well that change is inevitable.

We live in a state of constant changes now. It’s not like we go through some changes, new processes, something happening in the company, and then we can live peacefully for five years until the next new thing. No. Today, change is part of life. And we, as agents of change in our own companies and businesses, are probably ready for this. By understanding and accepting that this is part of life, we can simply welcome changes, be ready for them, and stay flexible as leaders and as a team.

Personally, I find it helpful in some situations to immediately think of metaphors or situations from completely different fields, areas of life, culture, art, or business. I look at how our colleagues might have handled similar situations in the past, not just in education, but also in business.

For example, continuity and generational gaps. When experienced younger colleagues join the team and find a common language with the older generation, it’s always a great mix of expertise, an advantage for the company. It’s all about communication and bringing everyone together.

In terms of focus and motivation, it’s probably about balance between your personal and professional life. It’s probably about having a hobby, a pastime, that should have its place outside our work. I love theater. Yes, it’s one of my interests. When my parents asked me what I wanted to be, I said an actor. I ended up becoming an international economist. Well, that’s how life often goes. And I long dreamed of the Russian Institute of Theater Arts. But my professional path turned out to be so interesting that I found fulfillment in it. Now theater is a form of mental reset for me.

And for me, probably, inner motivation and drive come from people. The people around me in the company, in business, in my personal life. It’s the opportunity to communicate and find solutions together. There’s drive in that! And in this drive, which, let’s say, doesn’t drain my inner resources but rather fuels me, that’s where I find my inner motivation.

If at some point I woke up on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday and really didn’t want to do this anymore, or didn’t want to go to the theater because I no longer found emotional fulfillment there, or didn’t want to help my family in the garden (I often watch how trees, bushes and plants grow, how they turn from seeds into something significant, how it’s part of evolution)… If I stopped being fascinated by it, if I stopped being interested, if I stopped looking at the roses I planted myself in bloom, I would probably have lost the meaning in it and would find something else. As long as this drive is alive, as long as these wonderful people around me fuel me and I fuel them back with positive energy, as long as it all works as a win-win, then that’s the opportunity to live, work, and develop myself.

What inspires me most about working with them is their professionalism, positive attitude, and desire—and, of course, the opportunity given—to talk, discuss, share experiences and opinions, and always receive feedback. This is very important, especially today It’s great when colleagues are sometimes self-critical. They find an inner resource when we discuss and analyze positive stories or things that help us, the expert professors, and the colleagues we work with on external communications. This is useful for the school, for our work, and it helps us become even better. The point is that it’s useful for a leader in education or business to always remember that becoming 100% better every day, 24/7, is simply impossible. That is a direct path to nowhere, to stress. It’s important to remember that we are constantly in communication, in an ongoing conversation. What inspires me about business people and top managers is that talking to them is easy and uncomplicated. As people who have achieved great success, they explain and talk about complex things in simple words and in a straightforward manner. This is very fascinating, very appealing, and it sets a great example for an educator that can be shared in classrooms through lectures.

When our colleagues say, "I am just doing my job", it seems to me that if I can continue to be the best at what I do, and people see my knowledge and experience and come to my business, company, or our programs, and through this find their own fulfillment, while we just continue to do our job as best we can—that still inspires me. In that I find inspiration and great meaning.

I would say it’s empathy. The ability to feel, to step into the shoes of another, to have a good, balanced sense of understanding for a person, a situation, whatever is happening.

Of course, it’s communication. It is taught in many places, mastering this skill… But a skill is something you do regularly, something that becomes almost automatic, if we go for dictionary definitions, or something that becomes a part of life and is repeated over and over.

As I understand it, a skill is the ability to use knowledge and know-how to complete tasks and solve problems. They can be described as cognitive (including using logical, intuitive, and creative thinking) or practical (including skillful, nimble use of the hands or body and using various methods, materials, tools, and instruments). But the thing is, from a communication standpoint, it shouldn’t become automatic. Because you find yourself in a new situation with every person you talk to. It’s an important skill for a manager and leader, since each new situation is never 100% identical to the previous one. Wherever you are and whoever you’re with—for example, when you go into a classroom to teach a marketing course—the people, the executives are always different. Even if there is a company whose managers have studied here before and you taught them.

When we talk about formulating a strategy, people often ask, how many years ahead should we plan today? Well, ideally, you should see the company in 5 years as alive and well, growing, developing, thriving. But when we look at today, many listeners agree and say, yes, today we plan six months to a year ahead. It is normal for planning. But at the same time, we keep a five-year, seven-year, ten-year goal in mind.

This is an important skill for a leader. You see, for example, the school remaining in the top 3 leading private schools in Russia in the next 5, 7, or even 10 years. You see yourself and the school as a flagship of business education in Russia. And that’s important.

The skill of communication here goes hand in hand with strategic thinking, with balancing strategy and day-to-day operations. You need to think not only about putting out fires but also about strategy and keeping the strategic goal in mind. We often find ourselves drowning while putting out fires. By the way, a nice antithesis I did here. Drowning while putting out fires. Yes, yes, that’s really how it is. Stepping back from routine daily tasks is still a part of many trainings and short programs, as well as long-term programs like MBA.

There’s another thing. I wouldn't call it purely a skill. It’s probably something today’s leaders need—propriety. It’s not just about being intelligent, but rather both intelligence and good manners. Today’s environment requires a leader to be the best, confident, balanced, self-sufficient, steady, patient, energetic, but also working 24/7. Staying informed, flying high, looking at the business from a helicopter view, but without losing sight of operational processes and the team. Setting their sights high but keeping their feet on the ground. And after all that, you probably want to ask: "What must be going on inside a leader to manage all this, to handle it, to process it?" Sometimes when talking about this, you want to say that only propriety in communication, in processing everything and giving the right tasks to the team, formulating strategic goals, reaching out to stakeholders to explain the tasks facing the team—but without losing the strategic vision, without losing touch with reality, and, first and foremost, without losing touch with oneself.

All this I would sum up with one important word, not a skill, but let’s say a quality that is necessary today, in my opinion. Propriety.

Of course, they are all three. A wonderful colleague and professor of mine once said: "Fedor, your role as an executive director, as a dean, is to imagine yourself as Sergei Diaghilev." As an impresario, he knew everyone, connected everyone. And as new projects emerged, who was supposed to tell everyone about them first? I had this hobby: when I traveled, I always looked for a street, a square, or a café named after Diaghilev. Once, in Paris, near the Opéra Garnier, I took a photo at Place Diaghilev and sent it to my professor colleague. He replied: great, keep it up :)

The role of a businessman, of a strategist planning business development, is like that of a director. This is the person who then communicates things to the team, explaining where we are heading. This means telling the actors what the play is about, what the vision is. Why the original play has been modernized, for example. This is the director’s role. During rehearsal, it’s sometimes important to suggest to an actor what to emphasize in a particular scene. By demonstrating how it could be done, you become an actor in the rehearsal for those 30 seconds, for that minute.

It’s the same as in a project; if a new employee joins, you become a mentor. You sometimes step into the position of that employee—a marketing expert, a finance specialist—and say: "Look, for example, in our experience, this was done like this. In theory, we could do it this way, that way, or another way. You have your own experience, so you could bring something new to this role." Thus, you combine the historical context, best practices, what needs to be done according to the plan or instructions, and the best personal qualities or experience each employee has. And here, of course, the director steps into the actor’s role.

Sometimes we oversee the stagecraft, sometimes we help the artists. And by performing this role—whether as leaders of companies overall or as leaders of a functional area, like a marketing director or a business owner with years of experience—we are, of course, directors, we are producers, but at some point, we are also actors. We stand with the captain if our colleagues are co-founders, or we stand at the captain’s bridge ourselves. If we see that the weather allows it, we go down, check how things are down in the crew’s quarters, or look at the mast. We go to the workers, we ask the sailors: "How are things?" That is, we communicate with the team. We take on someone’s role, step into the role of an actor, in this case, at some point in the play. By the way, some directors often act in plays today, taking on one of the roles. That is very wise. First, it’s a strategic backup if suddenly one of the actors can’t make it to the play, like if they fell sick. Second, by being in the production, they see the audience’s response, how the people react to certain lines, to certain scenes. This allows them to adjust the play, add new elements.

It’s the same as when, for example, in 2021, the head of MIRBIS and I chose a practical training called Management through Learning. When I enrolled in the Executive MBA program, I went through the process as a client. And my key deputies enrolled in MBA programs for strategy and marketing. What did we do? We studied in groups that we ourselves had formed. We worked with professors, did homework for them and for ourselves. The people teaching us were selected for these specific groups by an expert council. It was challenging, but very interesting.
In theatrical terms, we found ourselves in these plays as actors. For two years, in different roles and different scenes, we observed the feedback, we watched the audience’s reaction. It turned into a really interesting theater metaphor.

We explored this theme of theater, which turned out to be very close to business management. People often ask me about it. I go to theater plays a lot, I have my favorite theaters, directors, actors, and I really love modern theater. Theater is a form of mental reset for me. I decided that if theater didn’t happen for me professionally, I would still keep going to the theater in the evenings after work, immerse myself in the performance for three hours, and basically completely reboot.
I watch a play, sometimes I think—how would I have acted in that scene? Why did the director choose that approach? Sometimes it gets in the way of watching the play as a regular viewer. Sometimes people ask me, "So, what did you think of the play?" And I think: "Darn it, I missed a few scenes because I was thinking about how else those scenes could have been played."

Anyway… it’s really hard for me to give any recommendations. Because for me, theater is a personal thing. For example, I really love modern theater. And modern theater drives me because, while knowing the classic elements and the essence of the play, I understand what the director is trying to say with modern ideas.
Of course, I would always recommend reading the play the performance is based on. For example, if you’re going to see a modern version of Hamlet, it would be great to know who Claudius, Hamlet, Gertrude, and Ophelia are to each other, where the story takes place, what the overall message is. Recently, after the premiere of Hamlet at the Taganka Theater, a young man asked his friend, "Do you know why Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark?"

Thanks to theater, you can read (or reread) a lot of classic and modern texts. Preparing properly will let you notice the director’s innovative decisions, instead of spending three hours wondering what’s wrong with Hamlet and his mother.
I wouldn’t recommend any specific plays to watch. I would probably suggest a certain approach, if you want to give theater a chance, if you want to watch what’s happening with interest, see what new productions are being staged, and eventually even find your own director, or producer, or actor, or cast. If you want to one day realize that this particular cast at this specific theater really appeals to you and then become passionate about theater. Well, first, go to the theater. Experiment. Before going, be sure to read the play, at least a summary of what it’s about. Or at least check the theater’s website to see the plan. Theaters are open about this. Read about the director’s vision.

Some people come just to relax. For some, theater is a beloved place, where the walls are comforting, the portraits of favorite actors are fascinating, and where you then see those same actors perform on stage. Some people watch their favorite actor and just feel happy.

Listen to experienced colleagues and experts, like your professors and mentors, listen to your heart, and… get enough sleep.