Mikhail Khabarov, CEO of Alfa-Capital asset management company, tells us how while creating a team in a company that was "bleeding", he instilled corporate culture that combines entrepreneurial initiative and team spirit.
1. How do you build a team?
Alfa-Capital is one of the few companies on the financial market, which can positively say that they have a team. Any of our competitors, if you ask them about us, will confirm it. How it works?
First of all, there is a core of people, which work together for many years, there are mutual relations between people: everyone understands his/her area of responsibility, has certain qualities, he/she is completely responsible for his/her work, and the most important - grows every year. We can't stay on the same place, not a single member of my team can afford it. If he/she stays behind, he/she becomes ballast, and, unfortunately, it is necessary to throw the ballast off. The core employee should grow faster than others, so that the entire team moves forward. However, knowing that the company is growing quickly and we have strong corporate culture generated by this core, we constantly should bring aboard new strong people. I believe that it is a big competitive advantage because the team can easily involve and absorb new people in order to grow the business. For example, this year three really capable strong professionals with a big potential have joined us.
Another component - we secure extensive growth of the company: we were 30 people in 2006, today we are 300. We had a problem with finding enough employees. When we came in 2006, the company was "bleeding", people were leaving. And if something like this happens, what is there left in a kind of company which is engaged in asset management? Today, there are more people who want to work for us than we can take. At this stage selection begins. However, first of all, we take those who are good by birth. We can teach them all the rest. Now our staff turnover is at the level of 4 %. Taking into account the present condition of financial market it is a very good result.
2. Who was this core?
There are 10-15 people who form the core. Or may be a bit more - 20-30. Let's assume they constitute 10 %. This is the core formed from people who work and are loyal to the company for a long time.
3. How corporate culture can be preserved?
This question can be given A+. It is, really, a big challenge -to be able to have time to convert newcomers into our ideology given such extensive and fast growth. First of all, every Monday I hold morning meetings, and for the whole year we were starting it with a question about people. It was the question of the day. Today we already address this question at operational level. It means that regular personal attention of management and weekly review of all relevant questions leads to certain results. If some problem becomes a priority, it has to be solved. It is important to define this priority. HR became for us such priority.
Secondly, we have built some points of growth (we use this term for a lot of other things): almost half of our new people are from the regions. By appointing some strong regional employees who could independently hire people and who carry of corporate culture, we have expanded our recruitment capacity. And today we have one of the best regional networks, among all asset management companies. This is how it works: you hire someone, share with him part of corporate culture, and delegate to him the possibility to scale it further.
Thirdly, we, obviously, have created some business processes aimed on involving people in corporate culture. They include trainings, instructions, adaptation process for young employees, basic training during trial period, mentoring, etc. These are things everyone perfectly knows about, but the trick is to convert them into business processes, which really work. Then they involve people into the corporate culture. Every month we gather all the employees for a meeting to announce the final results on the past month and to address different questions. I speak, the financial director speaks, the director for products speaks, the HR director, etc., we discuss all the main issues. When you have a possibility to gather everyone together, you also have a chance to communicate the corporate culture, principles to all at once, directly from the first in command.
4. And what about disintegration tendencies?
As always, in any decision you need to strike the right balance. There is always a struggle between synergy and competition. Which one is better? Do you need to pull people together, by reducing the competitiveness, or create competitiveness to make them work, with less interaction? It is a very interesting question especially if you take our sales people. If we will take the whole ideology of Alfa-Group, then here we'll definitely see the ideology of competitiveness. Every financial structure, Alfa-Bank, AlfaStahovanie, Alfa-Capital, - each is an independent organization, with its own strategy, with an independent board of directors, its own management. Their goal is to take the leading position on its market, not to interact as closely as possible with each other. It is a general ideology of "Alfa". I absolutely share it; I like it, that's why in the internal culture of Alfa-Capital we also have it. Yes, we encourage the competitiveness, yes, it is our engine. When you see that your neighbor is successful, that he gets the results, it also motivates you to do the right moves. Does it have some negative aspects? Yes, it does. When the competition grows, everyone tends to build some sort of personal economy. And here, shared technologies help a lot. When we talk about business with clients, we have CRM-system, we have business processes which describe, who and on which place can work. We have understanding what level of service can be offered to the client, who can do it and who can't. All these components together help us to outline our core areas of competence. This combination of two approaches, as a result, moves the company forward, allowing us to achieve high results. For the past 2 years our business has grown almost 8 fold. It means that, probably, we are right.
5. Do you have any recipes on how to pull the team together?
Yes I do, on Wednesdays we play football. There are elements of normal human life. I know for sure that, usually, we conduct the team-building very well; later on we collect the questionnaires. In general, there are, usually, 80-90% of those who enjoyed the participation in team-building. We know how to live with a smile, and not only work from early morning till the late night. It is also necessary to get some fun out of all of it. There are sports, competitions, team-building - all this together creates a certain atmosphere. Anyway, the client likes when we come to him with a smile. He has enough dark thoughts anyway, so, what's the purpose to open the door with a gloomy face? Client should feel good, that's why the sense of humor, the sense of nice dialogue should always be with us.
6. How often do you meet with your team?
I don't think it's necessary to bring the entire team together every week; we have meetings once a month and there has to be some serious agenda, not just a small talk about everything, but to discuss some important questions facing the company. We call the management team together 9:30 every Monday to define whether everyone is still alive this morning. The purpose of the meeting is to look at people' faces on Monday morning in order to understand what they are capable to achieve this week.
