Learning to think bigger at every step

In the 25 years since you founded the company, how did your management philosophy change?

Cinimex was founded in 1997 as a joint venture to develop tools for automated software testing and bug fixing. Over the first few years, we accumulated significant expertise on IBM’s integrated application servers. In Russia, these servers were mainly used by core banking systems. Thus we ventured into the banking market: at first, we assisted banks in addressing a wide number of applied tasks, and in 2004-2005 we were one of the first in the country to start offering integration solutions.

We had to learn how to think bigger at every step. In the beginning, our strategy was a trivial one – “follow the vendor”: we offered solutions, which were developed on a big vendor platform, taking good advantage of the partner support. Today, we are learning to work on “two markets” – the  customer market and HR market. These days, in order to be successful, you should treat both of them as top priority. By the way, we haven’t lost a single customer in 25 years. We are currently transforming our HR policy, which will address both potential and former employees. Because if a person comes back to the company, it means we are a better employer.

What changes are there on the integrator market? How do they affect the company?

We have always been and we still are an integrator – developer of IT solutions for business. We are an “opportunistic” company, we grow by leveraging the opportunities which present themselves on the market. We are mature and flexible enough to embrace changes that seem beneficial for the industry and promising for our business.

In the recent years, the demand for serious integration solutions (ESB) has shifted into other industries, such as manufacturing, so today we have customers from the oil & gas industry, among other. We create value on three different markets: deployment of third-party software, turnkey custom software development, and iterative development of IT solutions — building joint teams with customer for agile-based collaborative work.

In the last 5 years, we have witnessed a drastic transformation – customers started to set up their own IT divisions to accelerate software development using agile methodologies. In some cases, this really helps to reduce time to market, however, the cost of iterative development and ownership of such systems turns out significantly higher compared with turnkey development. For us, custom development, both iterative and turnkey – is a mission critical task, we help our customer to choose the best path based on the specific business task that need to be addressed.

How would you formulate Cinimex’s mission?

We are building a big company, which is liked by both our customers and employees. This is about the corporate culture, the people who share common values: professionalism, integrity, commitment to growth, a respectful and trustful working environment. Why do I say big? Because big companies come up with more interesting, bigger projects, research activities, investment into innovations. Why do our customers like us? Because we are professional, reliable, always open to a dialogue and driven by result.

Someone from the key top managers in the banking sector said that you can replicate the products a company makes, you can replicate the services it offers, but you can never replicate the corporate culture.

Corporate culture is our main competitive advantage. There is a popular belief that you cannot maintain a genuine and cozy climate in a big company. It is true. As the company grows, its administrative machinery gets bigger, inevitably causing a certain estrangement between employees. Our job is to replace the initial cozyness with professional relations, without losing mutual respect and trust. Sounds utopic, but I believe it is possible.

When did you feel the need for consulting services from the Adizes Institute?

Twelve years ago, when the company comprised approximately a hundred people, we felt like we had hit the limits of the management system we used to have back in the day. It was time to change it, so that resource divisions and projects could be managed separately. But we couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Our company has a pretty democratic leadership style. It was clear that in order for it to work, the reorganization approach had to be embraced by every key member of the team. So we needed an idea that would bring everyone on board. The Adizes practices played this uniting role, as they offered both an appealing theory and an efficient methodology of teamwork.

Can you say that the transformation has worked?

Absolutely. One of the main goals of the new transformation was to institutionalize several functions. So that alongside do-alls we would also have good experts with a deeper knowledge of their area of expertise.

Take HR. A good share of HR work was done as “internal projects” led by inter-functional teams. It is very expensive and a heavy load on management. Outsourcing this function to professionals is a much more efficient approach.

We also allow our employees to choose: they can not only grow into a management position, but also continue building their expertise as technical experts, become mentor or guru, who write articles for scientific publications, get invited to forums, and etc.

It is possible that the transformation we have been carrying out will not be enough for the next 10 years. But in any case, the new structure is not built to last just a year or two. It will be in place for at least five years.

Good balance between professional and private life – does this describe you?

I don’t split my life into professional and private. My wife and I work together (Elena Sykuleva is Cinimex’s Director for organizational development). As we are always close, whether we are in the office, theatre, or on a business trip, we always have the one true luxury, that of human relationships. There is no need to set boundaries between the professional and personal, the balance comes naturally.

Source: pdf.