Contacts Is a Business-Related Category When Things Are Looking Up
In spite of constant and quite fierce competition, contacts between top company executives as well as smaller-scale businessmen have long become an integral part of the business environment of civilized states. In this country, however, non-political inter-corporate get-togethers, although not so rare an occurrence, are not yet common practice. Moreover, what was termed “advanced experience” in the Soviet lingo seems to be discussed least of all. Is it not because our businessmen have so inadequate knowledge in many fields to implement their plans? The first national business forum held in Kyiv at the end of last week tried to remove this deficiency. Why? What for? How?
“We are responsible for the market we are working on,” Alla Savchenko, president of the BDO Balance Consulting company, told the forum. “I just feel distressed that Russian business people are two-to- three years ahead of us in their expertise. The time of lobbying is gone forever. Even if we again resort to this, it will bring no desired results. So we must seek out a different way; and, to do so, we ought to share our experience with each other. Businessmen of all countries have the same problems, and you will find it far easier to work if you see that you are not alone in this respect. The more so that a country develops as much as its economy allows it to do so, and each of us is responsible for our country.”
Hearing these words, I began to understand that what really rules the US is not the White House-based political government but the inconspicuous clerks who work on the stock market and Wall Street exchanges. I wish the same would be in Ukraine: the country should be run not so much by politicians as by dollar rate and oil price fluctuations, for which our business community is supposed to strive - at least in theory. And I wish it would depend on this community, not on the newly-elected president, in what kind of a state we will wake up tomorrow.
Ms. Savchenko also told the forum about the Institute of Managers situated near London’s Buckingham Palace and well known not only to Britons but also to the global business elite. In her words, managers teach one another to be really good managers at this institution. This may be called a union of professional associations each of which looks after its own field, lobbies its own interests, and just gives industrial captains an opportunity to communicate and share experience. No executive will become a true manager without going through this institute unless, of course, the enterprise is his private property.
“We wish to set up in Ukraine a center for a free exchange of information and advanced managerial technologies for owners and top company executives,” said RAYTER INC president Gregory Rayter, a special guest at the forum. “This will the place where they will be studying the technique of leading their companies to prosperity and learning on other people’s mistakes and achievements.”
“Companies can no longer work for themselves only,” Oleksandr Melnykov, director of the SAP Ukrayina insurance company, told this writer at the post-forum press conference. “We work not only for an insurance company or its founder but also for all those linked with this company. Every firm bears certain social responsibility to society, so it must, above all, work to improve itself.”
The forum delegates clearly found a common language. As one of the organizers noted, “businessmen strive to share information, which means that business is steadily developing in this country.”
