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It was in the Moscow Government Committee of Public and Inter-regional
Relations where I first heard the name: Natalia Konstantinovna Nikitina.
Irina Grigorievna Leonova was talking about initiators of the Moscow Women
House project, and, among other names, mentioned: ‘Then, Nikitina Natalia
Konstantinovna. All brightness! She’s a professor at Phystech , and at
the same time runs a research and consulting corporation of her own...’
That was enough for me.
Irina Grigorievna kept on speaking about other project leaders,
but my thoughts were already on the separate course. Just to think: Phystech
professor! I always admired Phystech people. As a young girl, I used to
dream of becoming a student of it. Eventually I had to give up this dream
— to some extent because I lacked self-confidence, but mostly because everyone
kept telling me that Phystech was not for women...
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A few days later I was sitting in Natalia Konstantinovna’s office
and readily listened to her; and her voice was so surprisingly soft that
I could not believe that it belonged to a proficient lecturer. She was
telling me of her life’s turning points, of her searching and finding her
unique place in this world, and a sour thought tortured my mind: How long
absurd paradigms like ‘Phystech is not for women’ shall predetermine young
girls’ life choice? Natalia Nikitina’s example was a clear demonstration
of woman’s ability to study at Phystech, and to graduate it brilliantly,
and then to develop into somewhat absolutely new... She was a woman who
was at once a researcher, a professor, and a business leader. And she somehow
managed to combine all three with public activities and civic spirit...
To sum up, she appeared to be a woman meeting some perfect standard practically
unattainable in one’s personal life...
Q. How did it happen that you became a student of Phystech?
N.N. It was in school, in seventh grade, when I happened
to have read a book, Brighter than a Thousand Suns. I was astounded with
romantics of fundamental technological researches: dozens of most quick-brained
individuals join their efforts to solve some technical quiz of utter importance
to their nation and finally achieve results of outstanding value... Moral
aspect of nuclear researches didn’t bother me at all then.
Two years later I spent my last high-school summer vacations working
in a construction institute as a translator of foreign patents made in
English. The institute was a ‘regime’ one. So I had to turn up at 9 a.m.
and to leave at 6 p.m. exactly. And I remember the shock I experienced
then. I just could not get over the idea that I had to force myself to
come and go whenever an alarm would ring indicating my work hours had begun
or expired... I suddenly realized what a regular job was like. I saw my
colleagues beating off hours, prolonging their lunch by any means, waiting
for 6 p.m. to finally leave, talking of their plans for week-end from Monday
on... That was when I decided that I didn’t like it and just would never
surrender to such a routine. Beating-off time was not for me. My idea was
and is that if you are to spent one-third of your day at work, then, however
reluctant, make it fun! make it an adventure!
I always wanted to be a scientists. And of sciences I preferred physics
as the most serious discipline. And Phystech offered the best education
in physics. And I applied to Phystech and became its student,though I didn’t
have a slightest idea of what it was like to be a professional physicist...
Q. And when did the understanding come? Was it after you had finally
chosen your field of specialization in your third year at Phystech?
N.N. Initially, I specialized in nuclear magnetic resonance.
But on my third year at Phystech, when I had to chose the field of my future
research activities, I found that I had come to understand that for me
the most interesting problems were not those studied by physicists, but
rather problems of human relations and, in particular, their manifestation
in organizations.
Any organization is made to oppress its members. It forces them into
mechanical mode of thinking. If an individual wants to make a professional
career, he or she has to concentrate on his goal and rush headlong toward
it... Therefore, the organization is a limiting factor of personal development,
it produces one-sided individuals. Moreover, an individual inevitably gets
drawn into various internal organizational conflicts arising from unequal
access to limited resources, human ambitions and vanity, and many other
reasons.
Of course, I was twenty then and I could not name and analyze reasons
this easily; however, my basic standpoint had already formed: organizations
must serve people, help them fulfill the purpose of their lives, express
themselves in what they do, and evolve as individuals; instead of oppressive,
workplace environments should be facilitating and creative influence on
organization’s members. My social-related interested finally took over,
and at my fourth year at Phystech I wrote a conceptual study based on ‘system
analysis’ (it was an obligatory pre-exam research in philosophy) and then
transferred to the department where I could study system analysis and where
I first read works of Dr. Spartak Petrovich Nikanorov describing his very
specific theory of organization design.
Q. ‘Organization design’ sounds somewhat unusually...
N.N. The universal belief is that structure of an organization
comes as a result of history of diverse influences related to organizational
culture, management and employees habits and interactions, legislation,
political considerations, etc. In his articles, Spartak Nikanorov offered
an absolutely different approach to organizational planning. In short,
his assertion is that organizations can and need be designed with application
of scientific methods of conceptual modelling and system theory.
All at once I understood that this approach was just what I needed,
and eventually I became a disciple of Dr. Nikanorov. I graduated from the
Phystech, kept on working for Dr.Nikanorov, and only then it occurred to
me out that the organization design was a field of science which practically
undeveloped. To describe a properly built organization, you have to introduce
models with so many equations and variables that you have to ‘dig through’
dozens of books on numerical modelling, system theory, organization planning
standards, system analysis... Gradually, scores of folks which used to
turn around Dr. Nikanorov dissolved, and I found myself to be one of his
few consistent disciples. And that is what we are by now. We helped this
theory evolve, and equipped it with practicable tools, and found ways to
put into action...
Q. And what do you mean when you say ‘a properly built organization’?
N.N. There are exact laws describing organizational behavior,
just like there are exact natural laws describing behavior of physical
bodies. But unlike the physical world, organizations are human creation,
and for this reason, given we have knowledge of these laws, we can build
them in such a manner as to exclude any flaws and conflicts and thus make
them perfect.
Q. But once an organization is a human product, it inevitably
bears inherent flaws resulting from personal bias of the designer. Then
how can it perfectly match these objective laws?
N.N. Here’s the point! Neither I, nor my colleagues believe
in existence of any ‘objective’ laws. The Nature bears some regular patterns
in it. And here comes a researcher with his imperfect tools and measures
these regular patterns, and describes them. And then he finds or produces
some model matching these regularities he has discovered, and he calls
it an objective physical law. But as soon as scientists invent some new
and more precise tools, it turns out that the law is outdated, and they
produce other models and call them ‘laws’, and the old ‘laws’ are invalidated.
The example is the quantum mechanics described with its own laws, and laws
of the macrocosm are not applicable there.
That is why we have to part with the delusion that scientists ‘discover’
natural laws. What they do is inventing, testing and adopting descriptive
models. The same is true to organizations. Functions of a researcher include:
observation, finding regular patterns and, finally, building a model that
would describe such regularities irrespectively of particular organizations’
specifics, a sort of dry residue, you know. Once such regularities are
described and modelled, we may apply them to other organizations — aspect
by aspect. So our job consists of producing abstract concepts or schemes
of organizations as objects of system theory research, building an enormous
data bank of such descriptive patterns, and then synthesizing them in a
comprehensive model of organizational structure.
For example, if an organization pursues certain goals it needs a management
system aligned to these goals. And the system of organizational management
consists of definite blocks, functions, and connections. In other words,
it is structured as described by certain laws. And hundreds options exist
to align such a structure to any given goal. And if we have some additional
information about the organization and its goals, we can choose the best
option. In short, that is how a purposeful organization shall be built:
optimum delimitation of functions; optimum organizational structure; optimum
sequence of operations; job descriptions; standard forms... Finally, we
come up with what we call an organization design.
Q. And what about the business of your own, I mean, MetaSynthes
research and consulting corporation? Is it built in accord with your organization
design theory?
N.N. The corporation was organized in 1992, and we visualized
it as a kind of pilot site to test recommendations of our own.
Q. What problems in managing your corporation are most troublesome?
N.N. First of all, it is relations between myself as
a corporate head and my co-workers. The problem is that my employees are
at the same time my academic disciples. Therefore, I find myself in position
when I cannot afford a single flaw. It results in that I’m always in search
for some new and untraditional approach to personnel management. In this
country, the prevalent management style was always based on pressure and
fear. Now, how can you direct people not by force and fear, but rather
by competence and love? So I have to change myself first. Am I not a fruit
of the same tree? The second problem is: how shall we share our knowledge?
how can we make our clients — and all others — how can we make them understand
and adopt our recommendations? And, finally, how can I stay in good health
and, at the same time, keep on evolving and hold my fingers on pulse of
everything that goes on around me. Is not it a problem all in itself?
Getting back to the beginning, I am happy to say that I realized all
I wanted. And my work is what make me going... Of course, I have my family,
I have my home... My husband, he is my follower, by the way... Anyway,
my family, my work, my hobbies, — they all fall in the singular pattern
of what I call my life...
Q. Your corporation’s advertising claims that you are experts
in social security, employment policies, science communities, Russian land
resources management, and so on... Don’t you think that, to cover the scope
of problems claimed, you must have an institute and thousands of researchers
at hand? And you have twenty employees. What is the secret?
N.N. Curtains removed, all the subjects claimed are based
on the same abstract patterns. We have a very definite know-how: it is
a kind of scientific approach that takes years to master; but once you
have mastered it, it takes you a few hours to get a deep insight in any
specific problem. Generalizing, we choose areas where most problems arise
from inability to formalize objectives. People use to think that a task
is easily formulated, and then it takes lots of effort to solve it. And
we practice an approach that is absolutely different. Most efforts are
spent on working out the exact formula of a problem, and then the solution
comes automatically. Now, everyone is concerned with the problem of employment.
And what does it mean exactly?
Q. To my opinion, the problem is, first, to eliminate hidden unemployment,
and, second, to reduce the number of officially registered unemployed...
N.N. And this is the example of aggregate approach. In
real life, the problem is much more complicated. Questions are many: Where
shall you employ these people? Will they like jobs you are going to offer?
Will this jobs match their skills and qualifications? To obtain a comprehensive
model of ‘employment problem’, we must define both people’s expectations
(capacities, needs, etc.) and public or economic expectations; then we
need to connect one to another with inclusion of all the relations between
the relevant subjects. The task is not easy, but once a comprehensive model
is built, decision-making processes on federal, regional and local levels
will be facilitated dramatically. Therefore, decision-making is derivative
of decision-makers’ understanding of an area they deal with. The better
they understand the problem, the better are their decisions.
Q. The Government is going to approve and implement a new Program
of Social Reform which suggests ‘addressed’ social privileges and compensations.
As the ‘addressed aid’ concept is very popular today and your corporation
has produced a concept paper on addressed social security system for the
Moscow Oblast Administration, could you describe it in short, please?
N.N. In 1993, when the term ‘addressed social protection’
first emerged, nobody actually knew what it could mean. At that time I
closely interacted with Mr. Laptev, Moscow Oblast Vice Governor, as we
discussed problems of science communities. These communities asked for
social protection so badly that when I heard the word ‘addressed’ for the
first time, I immediately estimated that with our modelling potential we
can make it work. And so it was, and today the model is implemented not
only in science societies, but throughout the Moscow oblast.
Now I describe the approach we used. First, we introduced the definition
of ‘socially vulnerable’ to designate persons unable to satisfy their basic
needs. Second, we categorized socially vulnerable by ‘vulnerability groups’.
That is, if we take disabled, it doesn’t mean that we blindly follow medical
disability groups, but classify disabled by types of injury. The reason
is that traditional disability classification does not say anything about
actual needs of disabled. For example, the ‘second disability group’ includes
blind, deaf, limb amputations, chronic heart diseases... All these people
require absolutely different ‘addressed social aid’. That is why we had
to introduce new qualitative categories of ‘vulnerability’ instead of traditional
disability groups — to make social aid really effective and ‘addressed’.
By the way, we were the first to state that two types of social security
existed: passive and active. Passive social security consists of mere protective
measures: we provide a person with sustenance, and he asks for more. And
active social security begins when we provide a vulnerable person with
means of compensation for his/her vulnerability: that is enable him to
provide for himself. Our civic duty is not to distribute whatever limited
funds we have, that is pay each poor and disabled his fifty rubles and
wash our hands, and that was the usual practice; our duty is to put them
in such an environments when, despite their vulnerability, they were in
position to actively live and earn.
Q. And does it work? I mean, does the social security system of
the Moscow oblast adhere to your recommendations?
N.N. I’ve been following the system’s operation for four
years now. And I am happy to say that it has been gradually developing
all this time. Eligibility grounds has become less formal, though the reserve
is far from being expended. Moscow oblast now has a good data base at its
disposal, and social research teams work in most major communities... So,
basically, the system works, though it lacks proper precision... And, of
course, our recommendations were implemented only partially. To organize
actually effective system of addressed social care, it will take form packages
of social services by vulnerability groups, work out personnel qualification
requirements, organize training for social security workers, fine-tune
management system... But the most critical problem arise from lack of financial
adequate resources and unwillingness of governmental bodies to further
develop the system and make it more complicated.
Q. I suppose, it would be a good idea for MetaSynthes to calculate
an optimum frequency of government officials rotation. In the past they
held their position for lifetime, and today we witness the opposite extremity.
As the result, policy-makers pay practically no attention to long-term
programs and lack strategic thinking...
N.N. You are right. Take science communities, or ‘sciencevilles’
as we call them. I brought it to all Duma’s assemblies, to all government
structures and committees, to all relevant ministries. Every time I did
so, I had to find officials responsible for the problem, establish contacts,
describe the matter, force them into understanding of its seriousness...
and then those people were removed, and others took their office, and I
had to start it all over...
Q. You are a board member of the Sciencevilles Development Union.
Could you describe the organization and its mission, please?
N.N. It all started in 1991, in Zhukovsky. The community
was dying: roads and buildings lied in ruins, and no funds were available
for reconstruction because they were property of research institutes, and
institutes completely lacked resources. Municipal budget was also miserable.
Then Zhukovsky municipal council chair asked me to perform system analysis
of community problems.
That was when the term ‘scienceville’ emerged. ‘Ville’ was to designate
an urban community intentionally built, and ‘science’ meant the intention
for which it was built. In 30s through 70s, the prevalent ideology of ‘planned
socialism’ resulted in many towns built under government directions to
perform some specific functions. In planned socialism environments, so
it happened, the most effective way to carry out a political task was to
bring all the best human and material resources together in one place and
make them work on it. That is why we have so many defensevilles, tankvilles,
oilvilles and so on. Unlike Moscow which is historically situated at major
trade routes crossing and provides its population with diverse occupational
opportunities and product exchange markets, communities built under political
directives were all artificial. And once the macro system of which they
were products and integral parts, I mean the centralized national economy,
has ceased to be, these communities are doomed.
We modelled diverse scenarios of natural development of these communities
with all possible management decisions introduced, and came to the conclusion
that local governments had no levers to improve the situation. Without
federal support, one-function communities have no future. On reading our
report, Zhukovsky leaders were outraged. Just to think: the community that
had been built to serve national political ambitions was actually disposed
off as garbage as soon as national priorities changed! Municipal council
head immediately summoned a meeting of heads of other Moscow region communities
of this type: Dubna, Kaliningrad, Troitsk, Chernogolovka, Obninsk... The
total of Moscow oblast functional communities is over twenty. Most of these
communities had research centers and institutes affiliated to Phystech,
and many municipal heads were its alumni of my age. So we had no problems
finding common language, and soon the Russian Sciencevilles Development
Union was instituted. Here is an example of how conceptual approach to
a systematic problem may result in national-scale public movement. A draft
law ‘On Scienceville Status’ has already passed first Duma hearings. The
law is based on concepts I proposed back in 1991. And this efforts of mine
have nothing to do with my research or consulting activities. Sometimes
I receive some financing, sometimes not, but I do it to my best, because
I believe it to be my civic duty. Some of my fellow analysts are depressed,
because sometimes they cannot help seeing that neither the state, nor the
communities themselves are interested in our findings. But I say to myself
that we must keep on working, and, however unpleasant and sour, the knowledge
we obtain must be published and disseminated to reveal some of hidden mainsprings
of this world. And I believe it to be our mission!
Q. And your participation in Women’s House project, does it come
from the same belief of yours?
N.N. The idea of Women’s House is to consolidate mature,
dynamic, professionally consistent female leaders in variety of large-scale
joint projects of high social impact. We adopted the following model. The
Women’s House is an association of about twenty corporate constituent members.
Association’s by-laws require that members should spent one-tenth of their
work time for purposes of the House. Now we are in process of forming branches
in several Moscow prefectures where the actual work will start. In these
district branches, we plan to introduce new methods of public communication,
test regulatory tools, and attract new members from among local female
leaders and their organizations. We have already received many applications
an proposals from women who are ready to participate.
What can we offer to public? Each organization member of Women’s House
will make its input in form of shared professional experience. And since
corporate members of the House are organizations of diverse interests,
we plan to work in multiple fields: consulting, training, health, public
education, etc.
As for me, I am going to offer consulting services in family business
and employment. The other organization plans advanced educational programs
for children and classes and consultations for problematic teenagers. The
third will open a psychologist’s office. And so on. To sum up, we all hope
that district premises of the Women’s House will become center-sources
of love, serenity and positive problem-settling.
And getting back to your question, my motive for participation in Women’s
House project is based on my intrinsic belief that it is women who are
vessels of creative power required to help Russia raise from ruins.
Interview by Julia Kachalova
